I’m bored of Netflix. They have simply gone the assembly line direction instead of the direction of art, at least for some big niches. For example, every True Crime docuseries on Netflix is the same crap. Once you’ve seen three, you’ve seen them all. They get each cop involved in a big empty room, sit them on a solitary chair, put a dramatic light above them, and shoot them in 4k. Then they direct it at a pace to bore the hell out of you.
My business produces storytelling videos for e-commerce and we almost got into the television/entertainment business at one point, as it is simply so cheap to pump out middling quality documentaries. Stock photography and interviews and cheap-but-good editing. You’ll notice solo YouTubers are making great documentaries. I don’t know how they are spending so much money considering the quality of much of the crap they make. High schooler YouTubers make similar quality with their iPhones.
There must be thousands of talented directors who haven’t been given their big break yet who have artistic ideas and would almost work for free to be given a chance to make a name for themselves. Give them resources and a chance and see who has what it takes.
This is only one relevant factor, ofcourse.
Unrelated: I’m currently trying out CuriosityStream so I feel less guilty for the time I spend watching TV. At least I’ll be learning something.
> …it is simply so cheap to pump out middling quality documentaries. Stock photography and interviews and cheap-but-good editing. You’ll notice solo YouTubers are making great documentaries.
Not only that was hilarious, but also grabbed at the same time the essence of Netflix, and all that is wrong with it. 300K a year Netflix producers...take notes.:-)
Yup. This is exactly what we do at work. At least the past few years, most people couldn't tell the difference. We pump them out. It's 80% as good as something way harder to make. But by now people have seen so many, maybe they're starting to tire of it.
> My business produces storytelling videos for e-commerce and we almost got into the television/entertainment business at one point, as it is simply so cheap to pump out middling quality documentaries.
Funny, I stumbled upon a documentary “Meltdown”, which is about the Three Mile Island nuclear incident in 1979.
I expected something along the lines of HBO’s Chernobyl, but it just seems like a very cheap, Discovery-style documentary?
It’s very poorly done, and I stopped watching after 2 episodes.
Chernobyl is historical drama based on real events, not a documentary. Some characters are entirely invented, sometimes multiple different people are merged into one and so on. The authors even made podcast where they explain what is made up and why
It realistic and quite close to what went on, but not documentary at all.
Maybe the story just isn't as exciting as Chernobyl. I mean, nobody died. Nobody even got sick with radiation poisoning. Not to be morbid, but that just isn't going to be as compelling a story.
I wonder if they just greenlit it because they had such a success with the Chernobyl series and wanted to do it again.
> There must be thousands of talented directors who haven’t been given their big break yet who have artistic ideas and would almost work for free to be given a chance to make a name for themselves.
You're assuming the general population wants artistic, fresh ideas rather than the same re-hashed tried & true stuff.
Disney pretty clearly proves rehashing the exact same thing over and over again is a never ending gold mine.
Isn't this true of the broader media marketplace? If you look at Prime, once you're past some recognisable movies, you'll see a hilarious list of 3-4/10 IMDB movies you've never heard of before. They're out there and they get no buzz and are largely ignored.
On Netflix, they're throwing stuff at the wall to see what will stick. And they're doing it in various genre because it's a diverse world out there (an Indian soapie is different to a British one, for example). While your bar might be high, someone starved of space x zombie crossovers will like something just enough not to cancel their subscription for a couple more months.
I had CuriosityStream for a year, and used it for about two weeks. It's also just formulaic drivel accompanied by stock B-roll. My day is much better, and bears more fruit, when I don't waste any of it in front of a TV.
Yeah, I am little confused by all of this as well. Maybe because I don't "stream". But from the article:
> “We have to have an Adam Project and a Bridgerton every month and to make sure that that’s the expectation of the service constantly,” he said.
Are there people to watch an "Adam Project" and a "Bridgerton" (I assume these are interesting shows) every month? Are there people that are some kind of stream-receptacle?
> Are there people to watch an "Adam Project" and a "Bridgerton" (I assume these are interesting shows) every month?
In case the specific shows threw you off, those were meant just as examples of quality. They don't mean that people would literally rewatch the same show.
As for are there people who watch shows every month? Absolutely, many people watch an episode of a show or a movie every evening.
Our family cut off all of Netflix, Disney, etc. and now I have just CuriosityStream[1] (I think after hearing it on Curiosity Daily Podcast). I watch that. Our family rarely watch TV.
Maybe something like Steam Greenlit for Netflix. But as some have pointed out already Netflix is in the streaming business, not the risky content creation business.
(I still fucking miss the OA and Sense8 if you follow my comment history)
The OA, in particular, was one that I loved. It lived in this niche that I really like. Abstract supernatural horror? Lynchian stuff.
Dark was around the same time as well.
My perception of the untouchable Netflix was changed when they cancelled The OA. For one, I didn’t really trust them with multi-season serialized content anymore and, two I started to notice good content on other streaming service.
I sort of wonder if every faithful Netflix subscriber had an OA moment over the last few years? Where they lost faith in the service because of a poorly-handled choice for a show they enjoyed.
(By the way, if you dig the OA and Sense8 you might like Severance on Apple TV.)
I had that OA moment. I loved it and they cancelled for no apparent reason when there were so much more to be told. It made me wary of getting involved in a Netflix story again.
> Netflix is in the streaming business, not the risky content creation business.
You could say this about anything. “Walmart is in the selling business, not in the food business.” But in the end, when, in a remote village in France, 3 dads discuss at a bar about how Netflix has probably gone below TV level (which is quite a performance), then you business opportunities dwindle pretty fast.
It’s known. People discuss it for lunch. Everyone’s looking for a Netflix alternative and is discussing their experiments. Only young teens without much taste are satisfied, and not that much.
> I’m bored of Netflix. They have simply gone the assembly line direction instead of the direction of art, at least for some big niches. For example, every True Crime docuseries on Netflix is the same crap.
My benchmark for this genre is Forensic Files. I have yet to find another one that is this concise and informative.
I agree. Though slightly off topic, Forensic Files was pretty biased. The educational aspect mostly makes up for it, but they make forensic science appear way more rock solid than it was back at the time. Many of the crimes featured were solved because the perpetrator was so incompetent. But every episode had to end with something along the lines of "this would have been the perfect crime if not for the science!"
Would be nice to have a show like that again with a similar format but eased back on the law enforcement propaganda.
I thought I noticed this in one of the Netflix movies I watched with my wife:
* audio sounded odd, like it was dubbed but it did match facial expressions. It lacked any reference to culture or geography, like it was made to simply swap out sound tracks in another language.
* the settings were minimized: house, hospital, vet… and not much else. This also was unnerving because it felt like it may as well have been shot in another planet.
I assumed the dialogue and the sets lack of references resulted from an effort to make it really easy to just swap audio tracks and launch it in another country with as little work on their end. I understand they’d want to do that but their cookie cutter formula resulted in a terrible movie.
4K is not the issue. The issue is that they achieved a standard style of filming that is entirely unremarkable, and the only thing they have going for them is the fact that the image is crystal clear. Competently shot 4K has a certain aura of legitimacy.
I always thought that when the likes of David Attenborough get awards for their natural world documentaries - the award should really go to the camera makers Arriflex, Red etc. who enable the gorgeous footage.
“Content is King”
We all know this, Netflix knows this. And yet for some reason for years they have been aiming for quantity and not quality.
Money is not enough in this department and baseball metaphors don’t do justice illustrating just how hard it is to put together a team that has that special thing going on. Some would argue it’s impossible - teams like the one behind Better Call Saul are just extremely rare and can’t be rushed. The traditional system has sort of known this for a long time, I think.
Netflix tried rushing. I’ve personally worked on a failed series season made by the company and it was a chaotic clusterfuck. So are their efforts in ordering and buying content haphazardly to stuff their library with something. Now they’re probably going to have to learn the slow quality development and bring back many of the traditional practices they threw out the window.
This is a good thing for audiences though. I think we’re going to be seeing Netflix settle as one of many big content delivery platforms in the long term.
There's a legend of when Sony bought Columbia Pictures which is probably not true but the story is, after Sony bought Columbia Pictures, some Japanese executives flew over to meet with the top management at Columbia. The Columbia management explained to the Japanese execs that only 1 in 20 movies makes a profit. The Japanese executives talked to each other in Japanese and then turned back to the Columbia management and said "Please only make the profitable movies" (lol)
Just to spell it out in case the point wasn't clear. The Columbia management was trying to explain they don't know and have no way of knowing up front which movies will be good and which movies will sell and make their money back. Instead they're always gambling by funding a bunch of movies and it only works out because the few hits pay for all the non-hits.
This seems like a mirror to the other classic apocryphal story where the IBM ask a new Japanese manufacturer to only have a 3/1000 defect rate and the Japanese seem alarmed by this request.
When the product arrives there's a seperate little box with the defective items that have been manufactured seperately to meet the spec.
(There's also the "half of my advertising is effective, I don't know which half" line)
The half of advertising is effective trope hasn’t been true on the internet for over a decade. Advertisers on the internet know exactly how effective their advertising is.
Most of the internet ads I see are for stuff not available in my country, and if they even bother to translate, it's pretty random what language they choose. Just my IP adress or browser heathers should tell em both. That's assuming the product category is something I care for.
If they know exactly how effective their advertising is, they have too many dollars they want to get rid of.
Ad networks don’t get paid for targeted ads unless you do something. In the case of Google, you click on them and in the case of Amazon affiliates, you buy something. They aren’t paying for ads based on how many people see the ad.
I get your point, but it doesn't necessarily implicate that you should try to replicate precious hits? Why pretend you've found the formula when it's clear you have no idea?
It seems like every celebrity had their shot at a sitcom in the 90s for example. Is it like the saying about nobody getting fired for buying IBM? But then, risk-taking within that narrow space was limited. From the Seinfeld Wikipedia article:
'The pilot was first screened to a group of two dozen NBC executives in Burbank, California, in early 1989. It did not yield the explosion of laughter garnered by the pilots for the decade's previous NBC successes like The Cosby Show and The Golden Girls. Brandon Tartikoff was not convinced the show would work. A Jewish man from New York himself, Tartikoff characterized it as "Too New York, too Jewish".'
It was almost not even aired.
Squid Game seems to have been a gamble. I'd like to see more like that, but I'm afraid they'll over-fit to that success as well. US remake perhaps? Sequels, prequels, spin-offs. "The 100 must-see dystopian Korean horror shows on Netflix 2023“?
Squid Game's success is partially due to international mainstream audiences not being familiar with Korean overly dramatic narrative style. Once one has seen and gotten used to their melodrama style, they are in a rut just like US laugh track sitcoms.
Metrics can easily fool you on Netflix, because many will watch an entire bad season of a show. If you had to watch an episode a week, and you don’t care for the show, missing an episode one week will easily cause you to just drop the show and viewer number quickly drop off.
On Netflix I’ve watch entire seasons of bad shows, because it’s easy, and it might get better and now I’ve already watched the first two episodes. What does happen, and which can’t be meassured, is how many shows I don’t start the second season at all, because season two of that other Netflix original was bad, so there’s a big risk this is as well.
Part of the problem could be eliminated by moving to more classical episodical shows, rather that trying to make every show storylines. It would also make meassuring easier.
Yes! It takes so much more to gain the kind of insight that is valuable for film/art. And it is very difficult to scale. I thought they were onto something when they were experimenting with the gamified Black Mirror stuff because A) it implied something totally new and proprietary in the artform and B) it could probably lead to more information and more feedback all around.
Also, they never even tried to build any sort of community or conversation around anything on the platform. No creative form of discovery for different types of viewers. It’s just a one-way interface of content rectangles that are presented to you in algorithmic order.
In my own personal view on this, I think we will see a whole plethora of boutique niche vod platforms built using off-the-shelf tech from the cloud providers. Netflix only had around a decade of a technological upper-hand and it’s been a couple years that anyone can build a VOD platform.
Netflix viewers used to be really good at rating movies and then getting recommendations based on those ratings. The Netflix ratings actually meant something once upon a time.
And then, one day, Netflix just got rid of this.
I’m still awestruck by the fact that they had this incredible and free source of data and they just relieved themselves of it.
Participation rate is significantly higher with the new ratings system. The text of the reviews are missed by me and likely you, of course, but most didn’t read them.
Very true. They find something that's kind of amusing, then milk it until it bleeds (gross analogy, sorry...).
"Nailed It", sure, I can watch it from time to time but it doesn't mean I will watch 150 other baking shows.
Same thing with "Jessica Jones". I literally found articles about "The top 30 superhero shows on Netflix this year", trying to remember the name of this one.
After a while you realize that the funny premise stops being engaging after a couple of episode and the spell is broken.
I watch almost no Netflix these days but I got excited about the new season of Russian Doll, but despite an original script, it doesn't have the punch of the first season. Perhaps it's not just a money grab, but I would have preferred more risk-taking. Why not let created Natasha Lyonne, Leslye Headland, and Amy Poehler do something new and crazy instead of a season 2, for example?
People want good stories told to a satisfying conclusion. Both cancellation and dragging on with no end in mind fail at this simple unsurprising wish.
S2 of Russian Doll also fails because S1 felt like a mini-series that nailed it's landing. It was one of the few series Netflix had with some artistic integrity and they bust it open again for a "not as good" attempt to milk it.
The problem is not so much whether shows are killed to early or too late, but when you blindly follow metrics to determine either way.
There are plenty shows pre-streaming that got killed prematurely (Firefly) and plenty that dragged on way past their prime (Simpsons) because of exec idiocy or internal politics or whatever that had little to do with whether the quality of the shows was good or whether they had found an audience or just needed time to grow.
I think Netflix tried to avoid that by using data-driven analysis to determine whether to keep or kill a show, but it turns out you probably need some human in the decision chain with an experienced gut. Another problem is that you don't necessarily know whether a show is going to be popular upfront, so the writers try to have a self-contained story arc within a season. If it gets renewed you end up having to awkwardly start a new arc with characters that were pretty much "done" in terms of development. This is pretty obvious with Jessica Jones and Stranger Things, both of which were arguably much weaker in their second seasons.
One issue is that they don't keep writers and show runners around. Each season gets new writers so any magic there was in season one of lost in season two. The tone is the same but you lose something when you bring on me people. The do this because of the lag between seasons and the fact that they don't hire on writers, but rather contract them on a per season basis.
Most of what I watched on Netflix was this cookie cutter rubbish, but what they don't know is I was usually just putting that on in the background or when falling asleep.
Even though that accounts for 90% of what I watch, I cancelled Netflix because the 10% I actually care about isn't there now.
I think they realized a few years back that HBO, Disney and the other major IP holders will be pulling out entirely and setting up their own streaming services, not because Netflix didn't give them a big enough cut of the pie, but simply because they saw how well Netflix did and realized that tech was no longer an issue they'd work hard to resolve in 2020+.
Once Netflix saw that on the horizon, they went into panic mode and bought anything half decent to have something to put on their library. In particular, it seems like the main thing driving one special niche Netflix created - the movie packed with multiple A and B list stars that has great production but a mediocre story at best - it gets views and attention, even though it's boring as hell...
Arguably, MLB Advanced Media killed Netflix by commodifying streaming tech.
Using MLBAM, any company could set up high quality streaming services cheaply and instantly.
For example, WWE went from announcing they would be creating a streaming service to actually delivering a highly successful and glitch free one within months.
These last few years have been fantastic for show developers, screen writers, and anyone in series development, as all the new streaming services are literally trying to buy the talent to make their services successful.
The problem is, it's not even close to half-decent. It's just a huge amount of pulp that is so boring you actually ask yourself existential questions after a few minutes of watching this.
Yeah, I agree. I mostly gave up on netflix because their SFF catalog has been underwhelming for so long.
SFF genre has outstanding authors like Brandon Sanderson, Will Wight, Jay Kristoff, Jim Butcher etc. who are producing amazing content for an adult audience at a much faster rate than I can consume with a busy schedule. In contrast Netflix titles simply fail to catch up - there are few good titles (100 & Arcane are the last ones I enjoyed) but for those too the storylines come nowhere close to as interesting as the best works by aforementioned authors.
At some point I realized I was spending almost all of my free time in books and 0% on Netflix and cancellation was a no brainer at that point. Likely I'm just too niche for mainstream streaming services.
Nobody knows how to reliably create "quality"--the definition of which will vary by person. Take a dozen of the top quality series on Netflix or streaming services generally and I'll probably be meh on at least half of them.
Add to that the fact that for many, TV, whether streaming or otherwise, is essentially background and they'll immediately cancel your service if all they have is a relative handful of prestige must-see TV.
> Nobody knows how to reliably create "quality"--the definition of which will vary by person.
Try different things. Don't be afraid to experiment. Don't be afraid to fail. Do things nobody's ever done before. Create new trends. Hire professionals so that every scene gives the users some level of satisfaction in terms of plot and aesthetics. For example, in a good comedy, each scene (if not each line) should at least bring the corners of your mouth slightly up.
Instead, Netflix is doing the opposite: recycle, recycle, recycle. This is maybe fine for some genres like romantic comedies for Netflix-and-chill, you kind of expect everything but it doesn't bother you. But for the rest, Netflix has become a symbol of mediocrity to the point that I explicitly choose only movies/shows without the N letter on them.
They do, but it's very expensive and very slow. That kind of development culture requires discipline and quality control.
People like to throw this 'you can't cater to everyone's tastes' bit whenever talking about culture/film/game development. But everyone knows there is fast food and there is michelin. The latter requires a lot of hard work, and it is very hard to replicate at scale.
HBO is hit and miss too--though I agree that the "best" of their catalog is better than the best of any other streaming service (to say nothing of broadcast TV).
> And yet for some reason for years they have been aiming for quantity and not quality.
Even if we were to assume a good quality, there is still too much quantity. Netflix drops new shows so often that they never have time breath or get legs. I may see an interesting trailer, and then a week later there's another trailer, and so on. There's just so much stuff.
I agree that the content is not very interesting (to me at least), they still seem to produce a ton of it though. But companies like Disney, Paramount etc. building their own platforms and withdrawing their content from other streaming services makes it hard for Netflix to compete. Especially for families Disney+ is much more attractive due to their large catalog of AAA titles. Netflix just can't compete with that it seems, and all their self-produced movies were at most B+ in my opinion, not a single blockbuster there. I think right now Disney+ is well positioned to take the market lead, they just need to acquire a few more studios (and maybe Netflix itself) and they will have a moat that's impossible to penetrate. Personally I would hope that the market will consolidate, it's just annoying to have content I'm interested in spread out over 5-6 platforms, all requiring separate subscriptions.
Netflix bores me to tears (I’m into stuff like Criterion and Kino) but I begrudgingly have to admit that they offer a ton of kids shows. Disney+ is better quality but they too don’t have a lot to offer, or didn’t three months ago, in terms of episodic kids entertainment.
Disney is also hoarding the giant catalog of classic or older films. Fox wasnt just XMen and Simpsons, they had been making films since the 30s. Seems like Disney is going to trickle out the old content slowly.
Netflix is 'all you can eat', and all you can eat is about quantity ('good enough'). Also, it is a given you are not going to like/want everything. The quantity is in such abundance that they try to please everyone somewhat. I suppose you could call it spreading.
No doubt about it. The question is for how long will 'all you can eat' be sustainable in the longer term. Only so long until everyone will have had their crappy experience, loses trust and/or desire to continue paying, brand becomes tarnished etc.
I'm not saying this is an end to Netflix - losing your competitive advantage and having others catch up doesn't put you out of the race. Their brand is huge.
Imo the reason for this is because there isn’t one perfect show for everyone. If they have to cater to the world, then they have to cater to everyone’s tastes.
Content is king. But so is IP. Disney competes based on its IP. Disney has multiple studios that can create series that people will automatically see based on their IP - Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, and Disney.
Netflix really had a value proposition a few years ago before all the other players came in. A good selection of rotating movies and shows, sharing accounts with a good model (# of simultaneously running screens). This was way better than cable TV and more convenient than torrent.
Now it’s mostly quite mediocre content across services that easily cost $100+ a month, so we’re back to the old cable days in terms of cost and content and instead of switching channels we’re endlessly browsing the library for something interesting.
The consumers just aren’t complete idiots.
- lower quality productions (not the necessarily the cost, just not interesting)
- less good external content
- at the same time constantly increasing prices and/or charging for things that were free at a given tier
If you keep charging more for less, people eventually will get off their lazy asses and cancel the subscription.
One other thing that may have contributed: trying to keep users on the platform for long makes it more difficult to have good content left that hasn’t been watched.
The consumers kinda are the idiots here. They know what they like, but they have no idea why the content is getting worse. Why shows are being pulled. Companies that had their content on Netflix realized they were facing an existential crisis.
Ever played Settlers of Catan and find out another player had 9/10 victory points? Everyone does everything in their power to not trade with that player, send the robber, and limit their chances. It's the same with Netflix. All other studios realized at some point Netflix would become so strong, even the royalties Netflix pays for their content would put them out of business permanently. There is no amount of money Netflix can pay for other studios content. Consumers only see the net effect of good shows going away, and imagining reasons why.
While it is a valid point, Id argue that Netflix could have survived this - they had billions of dollars to create original content, and then they did create it, but some how screwed it all up. There’s at best 1 or 2 good show and no good movie Netflix has made in years. And anything half decent they cancel mercilessly without giving it a chance. This is not just in the US. The comparison of original content quality between Netflix and other services in India for example is even more laughable.
In the end, Netflix is a company that used to be great and kinda made some of the most genius ideas to fight the Goliath but was undone by a single dude leading a team making poor choices on what content to make. 3 Adam Sandler movies for half a billion dollars? I’m assuming this is as big or a bigger blunder than Zillow, and was powered by stupid data science ideas as well, probably.
> they had billions of dollars to create original content
they had the wrong idea that original content is their strong point. It's not. It's disney's strong point.
Netflix should've used their dominant position to lobby for new rules to the game - prevent exclusivity of content! They should've lobbied gov't to mandate that studio productions of content be permanently untied to a streaming service, and be available to all players in the streaming space. Just like net neutrality, we might call this content neutrality.
Netflix is at it's core, a tech company that solves technical issues with streaming. They pivoted to content creation, and they aren't very good at it - sure they got a couple of hits, but they cannot possibly compete on this with actual movie studios that own IPs from a century ago to this day.
> > they had billions of dollars to create original content
>
> they had the wrong idea that original content is their strong point. It's not. It's disney's strong point.
I guess there are different people watching content. Note that I mainly talk about TV shows, as I’m not a big movie fan.
Because I hate pretty much everything Disney. MCU is low-brow humor with plot-hole riddled writing and weak characters mainly fueled by action scenes and star power. I don’t know what Star Wars is, but nothing that interests me, I don’t think I’d even have liked the original trilogy if I had been older when it came out.
Netflix, both their English original content and many foreign shows (assuming good dubbing, which usually means the actors dubbed themselves) has far better content.
> I guess there are different people watching content.
and the different groups have different sizes. Your tastes, unfortunately, belongs to the smaller of those groups, so content-wise, disney's franchised content won't appeal to you. But they do appeal to a very large group. And this large group is where the profits lie, and why netflix is not competing well in. It's the wrong game to be playing for netflix.
When they started out creating original content, they were hitting it out of the park. Orange is the new black, daredevil, house of cards were all big hits.
They scaled, quality was sacraficed for quantity, and their brand became very dilluted.
I'm sort of surprised there is less effort in poaching series with an existing fan base. This would seemingly be an antidote to the complaint of too-"algorithm says it will work" programming, because it bypasses that entire flow with an established "we see the audience, they exist in fandom forums and such."
I've never used Hulu, but there's a good chance I'll sub in the next few months for the new season of The Orville. I'd expect anime series would be a great similar target- there are plenty of manga/novel adaptations that did one 13-episode series that covered the first fewbooks, and now the source material is finished with 25 more volumes they can adapt.
> There was a lesson there that Netflix chose to ignore.
What is it? Network television spent decades milking shows way past their expiration dates and still made bank.
The Office was originally a 14-episode arc built to an actual conclusion and NBC made who knows how much with middling season after season of the US version.
People watched because we're creatures of habit and you only have to get us hooked once.
That didn't change. What changed is the # of options. Instead of 1/25 shows catching on its 100/2,500 and it doesn't scale the same way.
Well but House of Cards had such a ridiculous tension arc, that you _really_ couldn't extend it past 3 seasons. And if you try it just gets absurd and nobody can stay emerged anymore. Add to that, that you suddenly need to deal with "you are not allowed to use Spacey anymore" and the attempt to push "women for every job" you end up with a predictable disaster. But even if either wouldn't have happened: They didn't have the writers to keep writing the same quality
The original movies I saw were beyond bad. In every movie they used every plot twist ever invented, and every bit of cliched writing. The overpaid actors just read lines.
It's almost like they locked sober hack writers in a room and told them just write. Write like your audience is an angry/perverted Forrest Gump, and can't speak English. (I threw in sober because even if under the influence--they might have written better?)
They just wasted money.
I understand comming up with original clever scripts is hard.
I felt they could have redone classic movies though--instead of the garbage they threw at us.
I was watching Dog Day Afternoon the other day. The movie aged very well, and is an all time classic. No one is going to top that movie on any level.
Netflix could have tried to remake it though with up to date references, and even change up the script. Sonny, and Sal could have made it on the plane, and go from there.
Dog Day Afternoon is a bad example because it aged so well, but their are other good movies that could have been brought up to date?
I believe it's too late for Netflix.
In retrospect, I would have rather had them throw money at students in film school.
(I don't bet on stocks, but we all saw this comming. Every studio was working on their own pay per view service a year after we started talking about Netflix. Someone brobally made millions shorting that company.)
I don't think you remake excellent movies like "Dog Day Afternoon", you remake the bad ones, usually B-movies, that showed potential. Maybe revisit "A Boy and His Dog", for example.
> Netflix is at it's core, a tech company that solves technical issues with streaming.
Netflix used to be a tech company that solves the problem of content discovery, too. Then they chose to not generate recommendations based on data but instead push their in-house content.
Netflix was a dvd mailing company with a website and they pivoted to streaming. Amazon did too. Streaming tech is pretty much tablestakes for any company with a billion to spare. You can’t keep insisting that’s all Netflix should focus on.
I’d also argue Amazon prime has fared far better with OG content than Netflix in a fraction of its budget. The blame should entirely fall on its current ceo who imo should be ousted and Hastings needs to come back to salvage his baby.
Totally agree. If streaming video could get the same terms as streaming audio/radio (standardized mandatory licensing fees) and services could compete on encoding (cost efficiency on their end) and UI/UX (which Netflix is... not great) that would be an entirely different ballgame.
> Netflix should've used their dominant position to lobby for new rules to the game - prevent exclusivity of content!
Countries like India already have protections like these in place. They haven't regulated the streaming space yet. However, the other channels are very well regulated and content cannot be tied to the delivery channel. This means consumers win at the end of the day and competition is preserved. Content can be acquired by competitors _without_ consolidation.
No chance that would've worked. Netflix saw themselves as a content creation company because they realized that having great content is the only way to keep growing.
Netflix failed precisely because it's a tech company at its core. It can't outlobby the copyright industry, because it lacks the experience, the goodwill, and the political connections. And the celebrities supporting its goals. If Netflix wants to be successful in the entertainment industry, it must act like an entertainment company and give more power to the producers and the creatives.
Netflix could have bought a few of the legacy companies. Amazon bought MGM, Netflix could have bought cbs/paramount, or ABC, for the cost of a series of the crown.
That is very subjective. My wife and I really liked The power of the dog. And I am sure there are more.
Also subjective: watching Netflix every day (I do not) will end up in watching below par stuff. No service will be able to produce that much high quality content for everybody’s taste.
You are implying netflix needs to offer a ‘ movie in top 20 for the last decade’ every week or so. You will indeed get very disappointed by all streaming services.
I mean I don’t know about screwed it up. You can’t expect any artist to just consistently produce pure hits. The creativity seems to come and go, the zeitgeist and the cultural context matter so much. Nobody (except, I would argue, Marvel) is able to be really consistent with their art. They were always doomed to fail producing their own content.
HBO seems to be doing fine producing their own content so I don't see it as a foregone conclusion that Netflix was doomed to fail. They didn't have the back-catalog but they had the head start in online distribution and could have bought a studio or two as they have for video games in order to seed their back-catalog.
I think a large contribution to their failure is Netflix cancelling shows after two seasons. If a show's probably gonna get cancelled before it gets a good run, why why would I bother watching it? People want easy watching, and they want a lot of it. Eg The Office, which ended up lasting nine seasons. Only Netflix knows exactly why they canceled shows, as only they have the viewer numbers, but a rumor I've heard is that after two seasons is when the production starts to get expensive because that's when a show gets traction and the production team and actors can unionize to demand more money - money that Netflix doesn't want to spend.
Unfortunately, in cancelling shows so quickly, there just aren't the shows to keep subscribers on the service - especially if subscribers have to keep picking a show to watch every two seasons. There's nothing more unsatisfying than spending an hour on Netflix trying to find something to watch only not to find anything. If they had more shows that ran nine seasons, it would be easier to justify keeping the subscription just for those shows. Two seasons just isn't enough episodes to keep watching a show and by playing penny-wise and pound-foolish, they just don't have the catalog. Which is sad, because the have a ton of good short-run shows that just needed more of a chance.
The other thing is their habit of releasing entire seasons at once. Their choice, but it's very supportive of my habit to cancel my Netflix subscription every time I run out of things to watch, and subscribe to a different service.
> The other thing is their habit of releasing entire seasons at once. Their choice, but it's very supportive of my habit to cancel my Netflix subscription every time I run out of things to watch, and subscribe to a different service.
If they didn’t do this and I were going to screw about with subscription micromanagement, I would just subscribe when an entire season had been released, since I have no interest in being drip-fed a show or watching something over several weeks.
The idea that Netflix is failing because of identity politics is just ridiculous and doesn’t hold up to even the slightest examination. It’s just another reactionary talking point that feels right enough for people to not examine it.
I know multiple people which complained about it and made them unsubscribe (none from the USA, so these topics are neither interesting nor on topic for any of us)
It was definitely a contributing factory that's for sure.
The number of people who care about this kind of stuff is very low. Most people just want to watch movies, laugh, cry. They don’t even know about the culture war. That’s only relevant in the bubble of malcontent that is mostly made up of twitter users.
I think more people care than you think, but they might not realize that identity politics (or politics in general) are what’s making a show worse. Star Trek: Picard’s latest season was terrible in many ways, but it seemed like the entire plot was made just so the show runners could say “ICE bad. Global Warming scary.”
That’s all well and dandy if you have an actual point to make, but they didn’t. There was no nuance because in their minds any deviation from those political beliefs are evil.
For it to really be that big of a factor you’d have to explain a) why it hasn’t been a factor before now (did Netflix suddenly become “woke” this quarter? Doubtful) and b) why haven’t other streamers like Disney+ and HBO Max had similar declines? Are they less woke? By what quantifiable measure? (e.g. Disney has warnings at the start of old movies about how racist they are, it was a whole controversy a few months ago)
Any examination of Netflix that does NOT include Go Woke Go Broke is a joke. Everyone I know is at least aware of how cookie cutter and predictable the woke agenda is on every Netflix original, and it is a reoccurring topic when people finally decide to cancel
My empirical evidence says otherwise. It is the primary reason I cancelled my subscription, and I've heard an awful lot of people complain about how every show has some forced social agenda. I suspect that Elon's tweet regarding Netflix, and the "woke" virus that has infected it, probably didn't help matters either. Say what you want about the guy, but he has a pretty massive amount of influence.
I cancelled, after being a member for 10 years. Three of my friends have gone back to torrents.
The main reason... Almost everything has some fringe minority edge, a gay lead, a token trans friend and most of the stuff is "victim porn" with the usual white male protagonist.
100% reason why I cancelled and the same for my friends.
Case in point, Dave Chappelle's stand-up. He doesn't say what you're supposed to say about certain subjects, leading to outrage and calls to take down the show, yet it's still up. Were Netflix that left-leaning, that show would already be gone from their catalog.
> Case in point, Dave Chappelle's stand-up. He doesn't say what you're supposed to say about certain subjects, leading to outrage and calls to take down the show, yet it's still up. Were Netflix that left-leaning, that show would already be gone from their catalog.
That's not the point. The point is "making money". Netflix is throwing a lot of money at their originals, the clear majority of which are "Woke" with a capital double-you. From all that I've read, the clear majority of Netflix originals are also losing money. Now before you claim that there is no reason to believe that the shows that lose money and the shows which are Woke are (in the majority) the same shows, let me clarify.
With their 220m+ subscriber base and deep knowledge of what people watch, there is no reason for Netflix to have this much uncertainty about what will be a hit and what will not.
They know exactly at which point each subscriber gives up on a show; they know which episode the subscriber saw last, they know which minute of that episode the subscriber stopped viewing at. They have much more detailed knowledge of what turns off viewers than Hollywood does, or any of the more traditional production companies.
They know what genres do well, they know what mix of genres do well, they know what the viewers appetite is for particular mixes, they know what most viewers want, they know what the long tail wants.
Netflix literally knows what doesn't sell, and yet they keep making shows that don't sell. The only reason for going against the data has to be due to a top-down directive from the company itself.
After all, if you have data that says "this will more likely be a hit than that", and you go ahead and make "that" anyway, the only reason you would do so is because you were told to do so.
Now, with all of that in mind, ask yourself what that top-down directive could possibly be ...
This is total nonsense. Sorry. You’ve fabricated some weird scenario in your head where the data screams out “woke content sucks” but god damn the executives just won’t listen! And then you attribute that to the Illuminati or the Woke Agenda or even the ghost of Carl Marx.
Nobody knows “literally” what doesn’t sell when it comes to film and TV. It’s a shot in the dark each time.
> You’ve fabricated some weird scenario in your head where the data screams out “woke content sucks” but god damn the executives just won’t listen!
No, I did not. I said they have the mountains of data to predict better. I said that there must be some reason why they are ignoring that data. I said that you can figure out what the most plausible reason is for ignoring that mountain of data.
> Nobody knows “literally” what doesn’t sell when it comes to film and TV. It’s a shot in the dark each time.
It's not a binary possibility; of course they literally know what does not sell, because they just made something, and measured it, and determined that it did not sell.
You make it sound like it's all down due to chance; the reality is that while luck plays a part, Netflix has much more agency in determining whether to continue on a certain path or not.
You hysterically screaming "It's not Wokism. It CAN'T* be Wokism because it hurts my feels and damages my worldview"*[1] doesn't make the data go away.
[1] I don't normally point out how absurd people are in this manner, but I feel you had it coming with you attempting to cast my post as some sort of conspiracy theorist. I point out that they have data, and you respond with false accusations of Illuinati and Marx.
> I said they have the mountains of data to predict better. I said that there must be some reason why they are ignoring that data
Are they ignoring their data? Says who?
I guess it’s more comfortable to your worldview to make several jumps:
1. The data must say Woke content sucks
2. Netflix must not be listening to this data
3. Something must be forcing them to ignore it (but hehehe I won’t say why I think that is!)
And pretend that it’s fact. The anti-woke agenda being pushed by the conservative media as a next-generation “roe vs wade” division point has no bearing on me and my country, so I don’t really care. It’s just funny and a bit sad to watch.
Well, the fact that they are following flops with flops is a good indicator.
> I guess it’s more comfortable to your worldview to make several jumps:
Ironically, the only person who made jumps here was you. All I'm doing is pointing out that they have to data to reduce the number of flops, and it isn't getting reduced, hence they must be ignoring that data.
You are making the unwarranted conclusion that it's all down to pure chance. There is no evidence that that is true.
If you feel strongly about this and have the empirical data to back it up, you should write about that data publicly, post it on HN, call for a shareholder suit. I feel strongly that this is all conspiracy, but of course that’s why we have the legal system and the concept of fiduciary duty.
It isn't the wokeness that's the problem, it's the bad writing that tries to cover up for how shit it is by using its wokeness as a defense. Maybe it is my nostalgia talking, but it seems that the quality of the average TV writer has plummeted in the past 20 years.
Owl House is pretty woke, enough to make Disney uncomfortable with it, but it gets great reviews and has a large fan base because it is written well. Meanwhile Star Trek: Discovery is rightfully being trashed by life long Star Trek fans like myself, who are pretty accustomed to progressive themes, because it is written largely by hacks.
The only examples on there are one cafe, plus crazy people trying to claim P&G and Disney are somehow failing. Looks to me like both are closer to owning the entire planet than failing at anything.
People who talk about things are people who care enough to talk about it, thus companies will assume that the people who do not care enough will accept woke or non-woke content equally.
Anyone seen Shameless? Seasons 1-9 featured loads of gay and trans characters and plots, and they were superb. Seasons 10.5-11 were unironically woke garbage, and I had to abandon it midway into 11. I actually could not stand it anymore. The in your face preachy wokeness.
You're demonstrating nothing but your own hyper-fixation on superficial identity characteristics by failing to recognize that there are plenty of "women, LGBT, PoC, etc" in all kinds of media beloved by those who are sick and tired of woke media. You think that these characteristics are sufficient for people to dislike this media, whereas the precise inverse seems to be true, wherein pro-woke people seem to be perfectly happy accepting garbage as media so long as these identity groups and messages are present.
I'm not interested in continuing this conversation by taking some kind of boomer position on wokeness, I just think that you're willfully arguing in bad faith, but you already know that.
That's not stupid consumers that's people not rightly giving a f what nonsense licensing setups requested by ip owners and enforced by a government monopoly on force. The consumer just wanted to watch the media, which is fair because they probably just spent 8 hours at some nonsense unnecessary job and would like to switch off... again.
Stupid is probably the wrong word here; "clueless"? I personally think consumers are on the verge of reinventing TV channels, with each streaming service acting like a channel. Consumers, who liked that Netflix had so much content in one place, are slowly pushing time to go backward.
I still don't see how it's the consumers' fault. Say there was one single person out there who wasn't an idiot or clueless, and just wanted to watch some TV after work. What should this person have done?
Consumers want high quality, entertaining content, at low cost, with little commitment, at any time. Prior to Netflix, there wasn't such an intersecting product. Now, Netflix has low quality content, but still has all the other stuff. Consumers see this, forget what life was like back in the early 2000s, and switch/sign up for several other services. It's where consumers spend their money that will result in this regression.
You ask what this person should have done? Not sign up for other services. The other providers are better quality, but regresses on all the rest of the experience. Youtube TV is more than $60 a month. Disney+ great content, but an extremely narrow content offering ("few but ripe"). HBO lagged like crazy when the season finale of GOT came out. When the regular person you asked about spends money on these other services, it encourages them to grow. The content is great, but the bad-experience, price, and schism is what they will get in return. They are unknowingly demanding it.
The issue is Netflix as it was is not sustainable. It's like plenty of VC startups, build the market at a cost, and then go down in quality so you can make a profit. Or sell the company. But they can't do that because it's already public. In fact that means earning reports and they've just recently turned cash flow positive.
Like you say, consumers want high quality content. That costs money to make, and when Netflix first started streaming, the cost of shows was subsidized by cable TV. Cable TV is declining or dead now, so who is going to pay for those shows?
Look at how Netflix's prices continue to rise, but their originals are mediocre for most people. Not signing up for other services would just encourage Netflix to keep doing that.
For Netflix it is worse than selling at cost. They were sourcing most of their content from the companies they were putting out of business. It was unsustainable at any cost.
Until Netflix, TV production was funded by Networks paying for first run rights. The re-run/steam right were worthless unless you could get big re-run deals. So they got the rights for next to nothing and destroying the networks that paid for the content in the first place.
I agree that high quality costs something, but anyone familiar with modern media should be aware that the relation between cost and quality is not 1 to 1.
Red Notice would be an example, and interestingly enough, an argument against the idea that consumers want high quality content. Sometimes consumers just want content that will be exactly what they think it will be, no more and no less.
I generally agree with you, though I would say now we are finding out if it's sustainable or not. Remember that for the past 2 years, TV Studios have been on lock down and the only stuff Netflix was really releasing was stuff that was nearly done before covid. Netflix has tons of cash that _they couldn't spend_, but now they can.
The difference is switching services is easy. Month over month billing means I simply watch what I want on one, unsubscribe, and then go to the next one.
The real trick here is Amazon right now because the Prime subscription has other benefits - in my house we've kept that active because it makes ordering baby stuff much cheaper.
Great analogy, and it's what I think about every time I hop on Netflix.
The old Netflix was an absolute gold mine. There was sooooo much good content and almost none of it was their own. The place was overflowing with great movies from every genre. It had all these great movies because they were the only game in town and the studios hadn't yet identified them as a competitor. It was a novelty. "Hey sure, movies on the internet. Why not! Here's our entire back catalog. Go nuts."
Once everyone realized this wasn't a novelty the IP holders began to pull back. First it was increased rates, which meant Netflix could have fewer of the top items available for streaming at any given time. Fine, kind of annoying that I can't find everything I want anymore but there's still a lot of good stuff! Then the megacorps that own all of the studios began to develop their own platforms to cash in on the money train and stopped licensing their content to Netflix altogether. Instead they began to pile the IP up to be released exclusively on their own platforms. Netflix knew this was going to happen so they went absolutely nuts on the spending, trying to produce enough of their own content to fill the gap left by 60 years of the top IP that was (mostly) banished from their platform.
The spending didn't work because it turns out making high quality IP is really, really hard. Think of all the film and television IP created over the last 60 years. Not the hits, I'm talking about everything. Now think of the hits. Those are like, what, 1% of the total? Netflix can't fill their catalog to compete with who they used to be. It's not physically/creatively possible. That means they will never live up to the initial experience of using the site.
As a consumer, I'd prefer they shift to become something closer to HBO/Apple TV+. A company that focuses on high quality, carefully curated productions. At least then I would have a good reason to continue subscribing. As it is, I don't find much value in the endless stream of schlock they've been producing to try to fill in for the lost IP. Quantity doesn't have a quality all its own when it comes to entertainment.
Netflix is the one that got greedy and over estimated their position.
Serving video is an absolute commodity. They should have been getting pennies on the dollar if that. A simple distribution service for studios who should have been thought of as their customers. But no, making a steady, useful, profitable business is not enough.
Taking a big cut from an easily replaced service, and using the money to fund a direct competitor to their customers sure was something. Took a lot of chutzpah, is about the best I'll say for it.
>Ever played Settlers of Catan and find out another player had 9/10 victory points? Everyone does everything in their power to not trade with that player, send the robber, and limit their chances
This is why my group of friends stopped playing Catan after a while..
I know a number of people who have just gone back to torrenting everything they care about (such as For All Mankind or Foundation) and are very unlikely to ever subscribe to a 2nd, 3rd, 4th streaming service.
They either picked netflix and have stayed with it at $22/mo or have changed from netflix to 1 other service like paramount+ or whatever, but the idea of paying $50-60-80 a month for more services on top of their residential broadband connection at $55-85 is a non-starter.
I'm seeing that a lot too. Netflix killed piracy with price and more importantly convenience. But the extreme fragmentation of the streaming market is driving people back to the torrents. They don't want to sign up somewhere for every new show that they hear about.
The industry is killing itself this way. Netflix is just the first to take the hit because they have the largest market saturation.
Actually sort of have that in Denmark, in Yousee - can't really see anything about it https://tv.yousee.dk/ without being logged in but they have an online cable service which also allows you to take content from HBO, ViaPlay etc. as well as current content from free tv and cable you are signed up for.
They also offer HBOMax, Netflix, and Disney+ but when you take those as your media offerings you have to use the various sites which I think is a mistake (probably they have to do it that way because of contractual requirements) but obviously if you use up your potential media selections from an YouSee account on other providers at some point you probably think why am I using YouSee?
They call these services "private trackers" and "VPNs". They're inexpensive and probably have a better UX than whatever other five streaming sites you'd otherwise have to use put together.
Don't even have to do that. There are tons of "free" streaming sites out there that have a decent interface and a massive library that blows every single paid service out of the water.
I'm totally fine with spending $100+ per month on streaming. My issue is consistency.
Every streaming service had their own app which may or may not be available on my TV, tablet, phone or computer. The experience is varying on each device (e.g I can disable auto playing trailers for Netflix on my phone but not TV).
Then on top of that, each streaming service requires additional complexity (logins, setting up profiles) and has varying UI (search, continue watching, subtitle and quality control).
It's significantly less hassle for me to just Jellyfin + *arr services than try to manage this on a daily basis.
Appletv+ is available on android, web, and quite a few smart tvs so you can subscribe without having any other connection with their ecosystem.
It’s more likely they pirate because apple’s library is pretty small, compared to others, so it’s easier to just torrent than pay for the couple of programmes they want to watch.
It’s also more difficult to share logins with appletv (no profiles etc), so you’ll get less of the account sharing that Netflix is now trying to crack down on.
This is basically me. I have the 15 dollar tier of Netflix and then my friends and i share a Plex hosted at a buddy's house where we get whatever content we want.
I could be in the minority, but I'm perfectly content with just having Netflix. There's a long backlog of shows that I haven't had a chance to watch, and they keep adding new ones.
Sure it would be nice if I had HBO max, hulu, disney, apple, but honestly I don't think I'd have time for them.
How many hours of streaming video can a person possibly watch that one would find stuff on Netflix not adequate?
Or is this more about keeping up with friends and families and what they watch?
> is this more about keeping up with friends and families and what they watch?
Yeah. I love discussing shows with friends and family and I’ve been finding it harder and harder to watch shows together or watch them later on our own time to discuss them later.
For example, I recently watched Pachinko and would highly recommend it but none of my friends have Apple TV so they can’t watch it (unless they pirate it)
Apple TV+ is $5/month. People used to pay $100+/month for cable and satellite TV. If people do not want to pay, then it must not be about the money. They even have the choice of easily just paying for one streaming service per month, and not spending more than $15 per month.
Like you said, all my friends and family can afford it, but there is a psychological barrier to adding yet another subscription service when they already have multiple. You could switch around, but that is also a hassle.
It is far less of a hassle than it was with cable/satellite companies.
For example, I go to TV app on my phone or laptop or Apple TV. Search for what I want. Pay for it, and if it is a subscription, then go back to list of subscriptions and then cancel.
If it is Netflix, then you might have to do this in a browser since they do not cooperate with Apple.
Not sure how much easier people want it to get. I will gladly take this method of paying and watching for media than anything I experienced in previous years.
I agree with you 100 percent that it’s not too hard. But even smallest bumps tend to discourage people. I’ve gotten people to switch/ subscribe for a month couple of times but I had to make a very strong recommendation of a series.
We generally wait for an entire series before starting to watch anyway (so we can watch at a pace we want, rather than having it strung out over weeks) so it is not much hardship to just sign up to a service for a month or two at a time and then "bleed it dry" of things you are watching then move on to another service.
I keep hearing this $100+ argument all the time, but do you really need all the services simultaneously? As you point out, there isn't that much to watch. So just unsubscribe for a few months, let the new content build up and safe money in the meantime.
Well no, but I also don’t want to constantly be switching just to watch one or two shows. The original benefit of Netflix was that you could have a service with a decent selection, no hassle.
If I click unsubscribe, that’s more or less final.
That wouldn’t work for me at all. I’ve been rotating around all the services, one at a time, since sometime last year. I quit Netflix for the first time since ~2007, last September. Nothing watchable that I hadn’t seen. I resubscribed for the last season of Ozark. When that was over, I looked around for what good stuff they’d added in the last 7 months and found squat. Promptly canceled again.
I’m fast approaching the time when I won’t be subscribed to anything most of the time, and occasionally sign up for one to watch one show.
Yeah, this is not rocket science. Subscribe to one service at a time. Switch to another service when you want to watch something different.
It's not like the old days where switching from cable to satellite TV was a huge hassle.
I don't think you're wrong, but to over-simplify what you're saying: "Netflix took my $100/mo cable bill and $40/mo Blockbuster habit and turned it into a $10/mo fee. Now I'm not getting all that entertainment for the now $15.50/mo fee."
Again, you're right: before the other players came to streaming, Netflix had an amazing value proposition. Why? Because "the other players" didn't realize that streaming would displace cable, DVD purchases, and Blockbuster rentals so they licensed their content to Netflix a lot cheaper than they would have if they'd realized that. Yes, there was a golden era of Netflix before "the other players" realized that streaming was the future. Over the long run, it's logical to think that they weren't going to just want less money while you got the same quality content.
I would disagree that it's mediocre content across the streaming services. I do think Netflix has invested too much in mediocre content and that's biting them (as the article notes). However, we have so much amazing content being produced.
I also think that "across services that easily cost $100+ a month" is a bit unfair too. $15.50 Netflix, $8 Disney+, $6 Hulu, $15 HBO Max, $5 Apple TV+, Paramount+ $5. That's $55. "Oh, I don't want ads so it's $13 for Hulu and $10 for Paramount+." Fair, but it's not like cable TV was cheaper, it had practically zero content compared to these streaming services, and more than 25% of its time was ads.
I think a lot of people don't really remember how there was almost nothing to watch back then. I think people's memory of the earlier days of Netflix streaming is colored by the fact that they went from "there's nothing on TV" to "OMG, Netflix has so much to stream! This is amazing!" Part of the issue is that we've gotten really accustomed to having so much to watch available. Even if Netflix were giving us just as much quality as they were when they were a "good value", people's perception of what is a good value has changed.
Netflix is still way better than cable in most ways (live sports being a big exception). It's also way cheaper. But it's also not unique anymore. When Netflix launched (and for many years after), we were all thrilled that we could watch 20-25% of the content we wanted via this one service. That was amazing. However, I think our expectations have changed: we think we should have access to all the content we want - and for cheap.
For ages, people complained "why do I have to pay for a cable package that includes X which I don't watch! I should be able to select services a-la-carte!" Now that we're offering services a-la-carte, it's becoming clear that the real complaint was that people just wanted to pay less money for the same content.
I think that Netflix launched and was such a huge jump from the old experience of cable TV and people expected that $10-15 to keep jumping from 20% to 40% to 70% to 90% of what they wanted to watch for one low price. I do think Netflix has had missteps along the way including pouring money into a lot of stuff that ends up being background noise rather than great television. However, with others entering streaming, they were going to keep their own shows for their services more often than not and there would be more competition for high-quality content. Disney explicitly went after Star Wars and Marvel to build a content portfolio they could leverage and bought Fox and its huge library of TV and movie productions (both the historical library and ongoing) as well as Hulu (pending them buying out Comcast's 33% which they're entitled to do).
I guess I wonder: if you could go back in time (knowing what you know now) and take control of Reed Hastings, what would you do differently (with the caveat that you do need to create a business that will make money)? My suggestions would be things like: don't keep throwing money at low-quality content that people "watch" but don't really watch. Just because you can measure streaming hours of a program doesn't mean that people like it. I might suggest buying a content company, but that seems like it would be a hard thing to do. It'd give them owner-economics over a large back catalogue, but even in 2016 Netflix was a $40-70B company. Who could you buy without giving away half (or almost all) of your company? 2016 you're talking $40B for Viacom without CBS. Disney would be $150B+. In 2016, AT&T made its deal for Time Warner for $85B. Disney bought Fox for $71B in 2017 - minus the US stations and Sky. If you go before 2016, Netflix is a $25-30B company in 2014 and a $5B company in 2012. They don't have the money. Do you try to negotiate even longer-term third-party content deals for streaming in 2007-2010 before third-parties realize that you're going to be cannibalizing their business? Get Time Warner to give you their catalogue for a 20-year run - giving you a very long time before they can compete with HBO streaming? Do the same to others?
To me, the big misstep seems to be that Netflix invested too much in low-quality filler that shows up as "viewing hours", but isn't quality viewing hours that keep customers loving your product. It's more like settling hours. Beyond that, I think a lot of it is just that people want access to everything for less money and realistically that wasn't going to happen. But maybe you have other ways they could have gone - without saying "keep spending more money, keep losing it, die a hero."
I think all your points are spot on. One thing to add is that we are in the golden age of content (it takes some volume to discover on good shows), and it is probably coming to end as cheap money goes away. At no point in history has so much money been spent on content creation.
At 17B/year Netflix alone spends ~$48/year for every single person in the US. Prime spends 13B, Apple 6B, Disney 33B, Warner (HBO, etc...) 18B. Or put another way ~$250/person in the US/year on content.
Even if accounting for world wide distribution, these numbers are just not sustainable from an investment standpoint.
Disney also has the benefit of being able to makes billions in movie theater that pays for content before if ever gets to streaming. On the other hand, how many people watched Loki and WandaVision to have context for Dr. Strange? It’s the famous “flywheel” that Disney has been talking about since the 60s.
I’m not sure if there’s something Netflix could have done honestly. They had a technology moat with video streaming tech at a time when everyone else focused on cable but video streaming and streaming apps became a commodity over ten years or so.
To expect them to also become a great studio company when they started out with the tech moat would be a bit of Silicon Valley hubris. It works for a few like Amazon but even Amazon is facing similar issues where online shopping tech is now commoditized and rivals have better depth in retail itself.
I think the issue of low-quality filler being the issue is debatable. House of Cards or Orange is the New Black hasn't stopped the platform from sinking to where it is now. But as long as people are watching something, they're subscribed to the platform. The real problem is a lack of shows with nine seasons and plenty of shows that got canceled two seasons in. Viewers will take a chance on a new show, binge watch the two seasons, then end up blankly staring at the Now Playing screen and this hollow feeling of Netflixlessness - that listless feeling you get when your life was previously consumed by a show that you've now caught up to, so you have nothing to watch.
The worst thing the service can do is force viewers back to that New Playing screen, and just hope they find something before giving up, disgusted at your library's lack of content. Netflix never did conquer the Now Playing page. If I don't have a show that someone else has promoted to me, I'm not opening the Netflix app, that page is where dreams of just watching some TV go to die. Not for lack of trying, mind you, they've run a large number of experiments on that page, it's just a difficult problem when you don't have the content your users really want. It's thoroughly unsatisfying a UX, especially if you can't find something before your attention span gets bored of trying to find something to watch, and you switch away entirely. To Fortnight or TikTok, as the article suggests.
Spin-off shows don't generally do well on network TV, but things are different for streaming, and mediocre content set in the same universe as existing shows, for easy transference of viewing keeps users on your platform. Even if viewers are rewatching The Office for the Nth time. Because that show has nine seasons, Netflix might as well just be The Office streaming program and it would keep subscribers just fine. You're right that they're "settling" hours, but not everyone is a TV show snob. Netflix was never going to afford to be at ABC/Paramount/Disney level but it's trying to play there and make shows that rivaled their quality - and cost - that killed them.
> To me, the big misstep seems to be that Netflix invested too much in low-quality filler that shows up as "viewing hours"
Reflecting on that: I’ve started to reduce my consumption all together. Bought Blu-ray’s of one or two shows I was interested in and that have been around long enough to buy at a reasonable price for all season (though I won’t bother with that anymore after relocating to a different region).
But the biggest change: turning away from the TV in the evening hours. Back to educating myself or gaming.
Netflix is doing what they can to survive in the face of the mob.
They're the outsider compared to all these old boys studios and copyright holders. The old boys are literally the mob. And when the mob saw how much cake Netflix was taking, they said "Nope". Given this, I feel like Netflix has less and less of a choice when it comes to what externally-produced movies/shows they offer. They're just trying to survive. And keep their kneecaps.
Given Netflix comp levels, "trying to survive" might be overplaying it. The reason for the schadenfreude mentioned in the article is the massive cost inflation Netflix spending levels created.
I think a lot of the discussion in this thread could be summed up as, maybe Netflix should have been content to be a low margin tech supplier to the studios rather than try and spend it's way to becoming a new Disney. A lot of tech firms are built off the back of the fact that it seems to be harder for other industries to learn how to be a tech firm than the other way around. Streaming video is clearly one of those cases where it's the opposite and that fact had been hidden for a long time by the flood of QE funny money.
So the problem with media conglomerates (including big studios) is they want predictable returns. More specifically, they want a formula. Let me introduce you to Save the Cat [1]. This book has become so influential that you can read this book and then watch pretty much any movie and you'll be able to tick off everything in the movie to this structure.
It's why studios love sequels and franchises. They have a built-in audience ie predictable returns.
The biggest innovation we've had in this industry is the advent of highly serialized TV shows, made possibly in large part due to (at first) DVRs and then streaming. 30 years ago it just wasn't possible or practical to do somethin glike this when people had to tune in at a set time. The audience drop off would've been too severe.
For me this has been the true Golden Age of TV. But movies? It's all superhero films now and dull, dull, dull for the most part.
So the lesson Netflix is learning here is you can't just scale up a content business by throwing money at it. Studios would love if it this were true. Netflix has thrown many billions at this problem and not spent it wisely. You can't just write a check for $10 billion and become HBO.
Movies in particularly just don't make economic sense without theater releases. We've seen this durin gthe pandemic with movies that have skipped theaters out of necessity. It just doesn't work.
I agree Netflix needed to create original content given the inevitable "me too" streaming platforms from all the studios would otherwise rob Netflix of their catalog. But they may have just saddled themselves with so much debt that they're forced into ever-increasing sub prices because of decreasing subscriber numbers, which just accelerates the need for more price hikes and so on.
Ironically this is exactly what is killing cable TV.
I would add that "a formula" doesn't mean it's bad. I regularly drank beer since like when I was 14 until when I was like 35 or something? I do it way less now but still sometimes drink beer.
My favorite style changes. Sometime I just drink a new one because like dopamine hits and I get excited about the potential novelty and discovery. But it's beer, and I think there's nothing wrong with it. From bud light to like whatever quadruppel or super IPA monstrosity someone in the Bay Area decided to brew and that may work as an antiseptic, I like them all. There's a formula and I like it, and I also like Marvel movies. Maybe I'm a basic bastard and I'm making a cardinal sin by spending my money on non innovative things and I should be only watching surreal pieces shot in a single take where at least one actor committed suicide or got addicted to opioids while shooting the movie. Don't get me wrong, those are great too and specially the followup documentaries. I also can then participate in high stakes intelectual debates. But that's a formula too.
And maybe I should drink sours but fuck that.
But yeah I think your analysis is great but I also think it's important to say that milking successful formulas is not wrong or morally reprehensible. If you scam people or whatever while doing yeah that's bad, but letting the chicken lay the golden eggs and not changing anything about it is pretty much ok in my hierarchy of sins.
I can't match the near-unhinged brilliance of the above comment, but I'll add that many meditation traditions encourage serenity by inspecting the details of the ordinary instead of a constant grasping for new stimulation.
Sure, but they have tapped into a pre-existing fan base and many decades of storylines, themes, and characters. Disney has also done this successfully with the Star Wars franchise, and the Mouse House will likely continue to make most of its profits in the future from long standing cultural properties.
I brew. I've known a lot of weird fanatics. A friend who also brews and is serious enough to do meditation retreats has gotten into a thing where he's making beer harvested with wild yeast in turn harvested from ginger root... some tradition somewhere he says.
> From bud light to like whatever quadruppel or super IPA monstrosity someone in the Bay Area decided to brew and that may work as an antiseptic
On this note, Pliny the Elder (the highest rated IPA in the Bay Area) used to be hard to find but recently is just everywhere, and it turns out it tastes horrible. But it’s like single-origin horrible. Like drinking the highest quality grass clippings.
Another commenter described what I meant using what I think is a more accurate term: assembly line.
My point is that creating original content is a creative endeavor that doesn’t naturally scale. MrBeast is obviously successful but that doesn’t mean you can just cookie cutter another 100 MrBeasts. That’s not how it works.
I mean you probably can, but art and engineering are more of a spectrum if anything. Even if the CCP seizes all of Apples assets in China can they create another iPhone? I don't think so. If part of that is getting people to pay 1000 bucks for it.
I kinda wonder how long movies will continue make economic sense, at all.
What we call movies are 1h30 or more of continuous contents, and in this day and age this becomes an increasingly long time to be stuck in one place doing one thing. If it’s a full hobby, like pottery or bordering why not, but for “casual” people I feel the proposition is less and less attractive.
Binging happens on your terms, you can stop and resume on smaller units of time (e.g. 1h for western tv shows, 20 min for anime).
Worse case if you’re disrupted is you’d restart the eps you were on at a later and you’d lose less than an hour of watch time. Current movies go up to 3h…
I see as the same paradox as people watching Tiktok shorts for hours. Yes, in aggregate it could be more than several movies stuck together, but it’s order of magnitude less binding and requires less commitment.
I've been starting and early stopping many 10-episodes series because of how much they drag (looking at you, Servant, and Disney series). Maybe I became more impatient lately, idk.
My new hobby is watching movies as they were 4-episodes series. It's great, much more to the point.
I sometimes do. But outside of the cultural hurdle, movies aren’t planned that way so depending on what service/app you watch you‘ll need to remember where you stopped.
Rewinding until a point where you can get back the context can also be a PITA, and for many movies stopping somewhere in the middle lands you in the flat part which makes it extra dull to resume watching.
All in all, I’ll often end up dropping a movie if it was 3h30 and there was 40min left to watch, it’s just not worth it in general.
I was curious, since I have been watching the "100 Films To See before You Die" and so many older films seem to clock in under 90 minutes (to be sure there are plenty of exceptions).
Netflix has worked to infer predictable returns by using ratings and habits from its 222MM subscribers. They model potential market size against production and marketing costs, assess risk, and make decisions informed by all of it. Lots that can go right and wrong, but it’s a solid approach.
Bubbling customers in one or two genres of content with the addition of some "trending" original series that Netflix is pushing at the time. Their support suggests creating multiple profiles to avoid bubbling. You can't even delete/replace/reset main profile - just need to skip it all the time.
Most of original content is just crap produced to fill the library. Netflix creates more and more titles, not watching material. They are cancelling their own shows with such pace that I started avoiding investing time in their new content, assuming they will promptly fuck it up.
Abundance of unnecessary sex scenes. It's almost like watching bad porn: -Ma'am, have you called about cable TV not working? (oh, they're gonna bang now); -Oh, I'm stuck with my head in the washing machine (he's gonna bang her now); -Teacher asks student to stay after class? (banging in 3.. 2...); Opening Netflix (ridiculous, out-of-place sex scenes no matter the content). Just create "soft porn" category already and let people choose.
Production aiming at 100% engagement, giving viewer no time to think. Whatever the genre, every movie or show is unnecessarily action-packed like "Speed" (1994) or "Crank" (2006) making watching feel like work, not relax. Refreshing, thought-welcoming productions like Apple's "Severance" have little place on Netflix platform.
> "This show was so good I couldn't stop watching. But would I watch it again? Hey, this wasn't good at all, I got played"
It's seems clear to my family and friends that they have some sort of checklist for writers that includes garbage like mandatory regular sex scenes. In my case, they have _finished_ a tiny tiny percentage of their shows. They tend to string viewers along with contrived new-but-very-similar problems each season, and then just cancel once viewership gets bored. No thanks, give me a show that has an ending.
I think Disney has been better with their series in this regard. I've been watching a few shows that were planned with many seasons in mind, but instead of abruptly pulling the plug when viewership was lower than expected they gave them a final season that writers have been using to wrap things up really well. I can start a new show from them with a bit more confidence it'll get finished.
> Abundance of unnecessary sex scenes. It's almost like watching bad porn:
Weird. I've always felt Netflix moved away from sex scenes/nudity compared to something like HBO. It was so clearly different I thought it was a Netflix thing to avoid it.
You're so right about the sex scenes. Just before pandemic I saw Caligula. Back in the day it was notorious for the gratuitous sex and violence, and now it felt like yet another HBO show. I haven't had Netflix for a long time, sounds like it's the same but worse scripts now.
I was expecting to see some discussion over Netflix's depreciation models, which is (apparently) over 5 years, 20% per year.
While Disney (and other producers) do something like 90% depreciation over the first year, the famous "Hollywood accounting" that gets a lot of criticism.
But "Hollywood accounting" might be closer to the truth than Netflix's model. 20% of the movie "Bright" (released in 2017, the Will Smith + Orc buddy-cop movie) is still being "paid for" on Netflix's books this year.
--------
Since Netflix's growth has slowed a bit, the effects of depreciation are now going to start hurting it. But it seems like everything discussed in this article is about the fundamental viewership issue, which might be worse.
Amortization - Netflix treats content as assets, and recognizes on average 90% of amortized expenses in the four years after first broadcast. Net revenue looks better, but cash flow and balance sheets are still going to reflect outlays, which can often occur before first broadcast.
The "Hollywood accounting" recognizes 90% of expenses in the first year to artificially reduce net profit, which in turn means less taxes and royalties during the year when most revenue for content is recognized. Netflix can make a case that content continues to make an impact on subscription revenue over a larger window of time, and so expenses should equally be recognized in relation to the income statement.
Netflix also regularly updates their amortization schedule as trends shift.
> Netflix can make a case that content continues to make an impact on subscription revenue over a larger window of time, and so expenses should equally be recognized in relation to the income statement.
How many people are getting Netflix subscriptions to watch Bright (2017 Will Smith+Orc movie) this year?
Or from a Disney perspective, how many people are getting Disney+ to watch Coco (2017 Day of the Dead 3d cartoon)?
It’s even harder to account for because once you paid for D+ to watch Encanto or whatever, it now costs you nothing to rewatch Coco, but the ability to do so might be why you remain subscribed.
Motivation to start a subscription is irrelevant. It's what people spend their time watching that matters, and people are still watching "Bright" and "Coco" many years after release.
Netflix has lost 200,000 and expects to lose ~2-million over the next few months under its current guidance.
Does it make sense, from an accounting point of view, to have "paid" for Bright in 2017 dollars and its 2017 cash-flow? Or does it make sense to pay for "Bright" with 2022 dollars?
Its all accounting. But next year, when Netflix is down by 2.2 million customers, Netflix's 10k statement is going to be "paying" for 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 movies despite having much fewer customers.
In contrast, Disney+ or Disney loses 90% of their value in the 1st year, so Disney's accounting will only be paying for "Turning Red" this year and next year.
----------
It kind of sorta doesn't matter "how" accounting is done, as long as everyone understands it. Except because of this Netflix methodology, Netflix has effectively "borrowed future money", from an accounting perspective, to make 2017, 2018 and other years "look better".
> Does it make sense, from an accounting point of view
Yes, that's the entire point of accounting. They use ASC 920 and 926 accounting standards, so that anyone familiar with GAAP can understand what they're looking at.
> Disney+ or Disney loses 90% of their value in the 1st year, so Disney's accounting will only be paying for "Turning Red" this year and next year.
Disney+ also amortizes, and expects 80% over four years on original content.
> Netflix has effectively "borrowed future money", from an accounting perspective
Except that's not the accounting perspective. Netflix spends most of its cash on content before it even airs - should they recognize those expenses against income before that content has even had a chance to start generating income? That's borrowing future revenues against current cash outlays.
That's why we have these standards, so that when combined with three-sheet accounting we can understand how the pieces come together.
> Yes, that's the entire point of accounting. They use ASC 920 and 926 accounting standards, so that anyone familiar with GAAP can understand what they're looking at.
Things like depreciation curves are not standardized. It may all be GAAP, but there's a huge difference in how Disney's Coco was depreciated vs how Netflix's Bright depreciated in their respective accounting books.
The question is whether the 18-month schedule for Coco makes more sense than the 5-year schedule of Netflix's Bright.
> Things like depreciation curves are not standardized
Nothing was depreciated, because we're dealing with intangible assets. And yes, depreciation and amortization schedules are absolutely standardized. I literally included TWO standards in my last response that Netflix & Disney+ use.
> huge difference in how Disney's Coco was depreciated vs how Netflix's Bright
Yes, because Coco was part of Disney and not Disney+.
> The question is whether the 18-month schedule for Coco makes more sense
Yes, it makes sense for a theatrical release. "Bright" and "Turning Red" were created for streaming, and it makes sense that their amortization schedules cover the years that this IP will be helping the companies generate revenues as those titles continue to be viewed by subscribers.
If you were to take all the views for "Bright" and aggregate it by year, I imagine the distribution from year 1 to 5 looks very similar to Netflix's amortization schedule. Funny that, almost like the SEC approved it or something.
That’s interesting. And probably astute. One off movies not part of a larger series have significantly shorter periods of relevance. It doesn’t make sense to spread it out over 5 years at all.
It's clear they are just outclassed by Disney+. People thought the hard part was creating the streaming platform, the content was mostly licensed with a few exclusives. It's now clear that exclusive content is everything. Disney have new content every month (ie. Moon Knight -> Obi-Wan Kenobi) and high quality movies like Luca and Turning Red.
Netflix's strategy seems to be just get big name actors and mediocre creatives and hope it works. The Adam Project might have a lot of viewers but how many of those are just because it's there? How many people would say "The Adam Project is my favorite movie" and how does that compare to Luca?
Netflix has been essentially making the equivalent of direct to DVD movies as its whole strategy while Disney has been bringing their best. They are becoming The Asylum of the streaming world.
I feel like Netflix always kind of had an issue with poor taste. They have crappy reality shows and pseudo-documentaries about how the aliens build pyramids. A metric fuckton of content that caters to people with below average intelligence. In addition to this content being unhealthy because you either don't learn anything, or are actively being fed falsehoods, I think it just gives the platform a poor image.
It's kind of sad because Netflix had over 5 billion in net income last year, and 30B in total revenue. Suppose that Netflix can afford to spend 15-20B on content a year. You could do so much with that money. I mean, 20B is 20 thousand million dollars. Assuming you take just 5 billion and fund indie movies at 20M a pop, you could produce 250 indie movies a year. If they were smart about it, they would give scholarships to kids coming out of movie school. Create movie making contests. Give a lot of fresh young creative people a shot, and keep funding the creatives that produce the better reviewed content... Like, you know... A meritocracy of sorts...
Most people coming out of movie school never get to produce movies. There's just a lot of wasted talent out there. If you have tens of billions of dollars, there's no excuse for producing shit content year after year.
I suspect the data teams have a lot of sway at netflix right at the top exec levels. I know this anecdotally since I am close to someone who has approached Netflix and was told it wont work for them.
Their reasoning was as simple as it can get. Their data showed what shows people liked in terms of genres and runtimes.
That might seem reasonable for short term gains until you realise how silly it is for longevity.
Blind allegiance to data is a grave mistake. Numbers are meaningless without context. But if you misunderstand the context that is producing the numbers, you end up being much worse informed than without the data at all. I fear that people take data and whatever default interpretation as gospel and are loathe to go against it. Faux objectivity is an acute danger that we must all be on guard against.
I agree and I think it's kind of like that quote from Henry Ford: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
If you look at what people like in your current library of content which you've classified into 10 different categories, you get an incomplete picture and you're kind of looking in the rear view mirror. Steve Jobs understood this too.
>A metric fuckton of content that caters to people with below average intelligence.
The big question is how big is the fraction of people who are below average intelligence. Depending on that ratio, it could make sense to produce content for that part of the population ...
Additionally, highly intelligent people earn more money and don't have to buy content wholesale. They can afford to buy movies directly which means that each view of intelligent content is worth much more. Now, how can Netflix integrate that into their platform? There won't be any bargains left. Even young talented creatives will demand what they are worth.
There have to be different streaming services for different quality levels. Netflix has decided to serve some fraction of the bell curve and leaves other fractions to others.
I'd say part of the problem here is that consciously or not, people tend to follow influencers, and flock to brands that are more aspirational (e.g. Apple). If you cater specifically to people who like mediocre content, you lose the interest of the people with better taste. Your brand then becomes a brand associated with people that have poor taste, and eventually, even people with poor taste see that the brand is not cool, and they leave too.
Indie movies are absolutely notorious for their habit of appealing to low intelligence people, it's practically their main market. They don't have much budget to tell an interesting story with, and are often being written by grant funded people without much experience and who are just desperate to make a movie (any movie) so they end up relying a lot on faux depth and complicated BS to make the movie seem like it has more to say than it really does. Critics lap that stuff up but most people who just want to be entertained with a risky but well made idea that doesn't puff itself up, the bigger studios are where you'll find them.
The quoted "competing exec" is 100% wrong when he says Netflix is making a mistake ending shows after three seasons. Shows need to be pitched and run for three seasons max, period. Everyone has a life other than the show that's "hot" for the moment, from cast to writers to the source of money - the viewers. Shows that get dragged out inevitably suck.
That would be fine if the storylines were wrapped up at the end of season three but shows not only fail to do this, they often end on a cliffhanger and then the series gets cancelled. I don't know about other people, but I wait until a show has been on for years before bothering with checking them out. There are a few that I knew were continued as graphic novels, which I thought was a decent compromise but if I know there's an unresolved cliff hanger and a bunch of half finished storylines, I don't bother starting the show.
A three year series is fine but treat it like that in the third season before too many people's behaviors change and it starts to become difficult to get their attention to new series because they fear it ending suddenly without resolution.
I don't mean to sound like some "well akshuallyyy"ing Comic Book Guy figure, but you must realise it's not real life? If it's a Poirot-type mystery where the entire payoff lies in the resolution, then I totally understand, but for a regular TV show I can't see why you would enjoy the episodes any less simply because it might end without resolving all your questions. There's no real suspense - it's not real people, it's just a bunch of people performing in front of a camera. Being distressed about 'what happened to them?' seems, well, puzzling to me.
Almost all the shows i watch over and over and again are ones with 7+ seasons,
90's star trek (tng ds9 voy) all 7 seasons, MAS*H 12 seasons, Frasier 11 season, Scrubs 8 season (I skip season 9 and refuse to acknowledge its existance), Red Dwarf 8 season (+ more after the revival decades later), X-Files 11 seasons, How I Met Your Mother 9 seasons, Freinds 10 seasons, Stargate SG1 10 seasons, three seasons is to little to grow a fallowing and not enough for you to rewatch
Some other ones I watch again from time to time: Big Bang Theory, NYPD Blue, Supernatural, Cheers, ER, Law & Order, Blue Bloods, Waltons, Parenthood, Little House on the Prairie, Cosby Show, West Wing, MaGyver, Seinfeld, LoveJoy, Rumpole of the Bailey
A lot of series jump the shark of they get dragged out for long. Even worse, if it's a slow decline, it kills rewatchability. Some manage, but it goes wrong more often than not. And especially if your concept does not lend itself to a lot of seasons (like Chernobyl, for example), you should stop while it's still good.
Under that rule of thumb, The Wire and Babylon 5 would never have been made.
And from a more recent sample, The Expanse would not have been allowed to get to the end of the story arc.
All three have a few things in common. A strong cast of good-but-not-a-star actors.[ß] Writers who knew what they were doing. A story that they wanted to tell, and knew how long it would take. And above all: the integrity to end the series once the story was told. No stretching into infinity with useless rehashing or replaying of old hits. No resets. No desperate attempts to magically reinvent itself.
You pointed this out yourself: Shows that get dragged out inevitably suck.
Netflix paid $500 million for Seinfeld, a show that ended 25 years ago, that has constant reruns since, which best seasons are past the first three and that they themselves would have probably cancelled after the first one due to low viewership.
How about the show keeps going for as long as it’s good? Arbitrary time boxes on shows seems silly, some shows are great for 10+ seasons, would suck to lose that because we decided that wasn’t possible
The problem with American TV is that almost everything is unbounded. Some shows manage to keep things going. Others jump the shark.
It’s not that having 10 seasons is bad. But many shows tell the story they wanted to tell in much less time. At which point you should just stop.
Some formats are interesting though like American Horror Story. It’s more like an anthology. Different story each season. Some actors might return with different roles.
Dr Who is also interesting since the mechanism for “reboots” is built in to the character.
Or go the Disney route and expand the individual character stories like they are doing with Marvel and Star Wars.
I'm a fan of shows or movies being as long as they need to be. To Old To Die Young is a great example of a show that is bold and does this. Episodes range anywhere from 30 to 90+ minutes.
That said, for shows that have a continuous, overreaching storyline I'm highly suspect of the writers having no idea how the thing is gonna end. Sure, in some lucky cases it works out super well, but in other cases it gets us unsatisfying stuff that undermines the show like with Lost or Battlestar Galactica. Come up with the story arch and tell the story. Please don't keep stretching the thing out endlessly and end it when it's bad or the crew wants to move on. That's fine with shows that have disconnected episodes, but for modern shows or can ruin the whole thing and leaves me feel like I wasted a ton of time.
Other studios do "episode at a time" pilots, Netflix does "season at a time" pilots. Pretty much everyone misunderstands; and thinks a whole season implies more seasons.
But that's a problem. Watching a whole season makes you more invested in the show, so you're pissed off when it gets cancelled.
I also agree with OP that encouraging binge watching is not good. Netflix pumped out more content than any cable TV package I've ever had in the past, but by allowing binge-watching people binge and then get bored and say Netflix has no content.
If they spread out these shows it would be healthier for the viewers and would create a perception of more content.
> by allowing binge-watching people binge and then get bored and say Netflix has no content.
People don't say that Netflix has "no content" because they binge watch. People say that because Netflix does genuinely have dramatically less content than it did 8-10 years ago, because of the proliferation of competing streaming services.
If Netflix still had access to all the content it has hosted over the years, people wouldn't be making those complaints.
Yes and no, a lot of people say it has no contents because some stuff was pulled, but they still have a sh*load of content compared to what you got before, but people have already binged on all of it, so there's nothing new to look forward to most of the time.
Netflix also makes it super hard to find content and according to a recent Hollywood Reporter article the forces within Netflix that pushed for more middling, cheaper content over high quality content won. I think it shows. Really high quality content is imo more likely to appeal even to people who usually prefer a different genre. Netflix used to have that on the form of shows like House of Cards and even recently had the Queens Gambit which was apparently made by the person within Netflix who lost.
There are currently less than four thousand movies on netflix, and about 1.5 thousand of those are "netflix originals".
Maybe that sounds like a lot, but it really isn't. If you're browsing through random movies on IMDB and come across something interesting, the chance that Netflix will have it is vanishingly small.
> But that's a problem. Watching a whole season makes you more invested in the show, so you're pissed off when it gets cancelled.
This is because consumers have been conditioned since last century to assume this is how things should be. Netflix is trying to create a new [better] experience, and this is how they are going about it. Pilots of shows suck! Almost always the second episode the characters are more realistic, more developed. Sure, it hurts when the season gets pulled, but it was a much better experience during the run. Why say it's a problem? It's just "different" from what you personally expect.
People have limited time and investing in a storyline is not free.
> This is because consumers have been conditioned since last century to assume this is how things should be.
Or people aren't conditioned to care about what the idiotbox tells them at all. They are simply upset that something they like is being summarily made unavailable, like any other product.
If they release it piecemeal, I'll just wait longer to resubscribe to their services. If something is on HBO that I really want to watch, I won't subscribe to it until the season is either entirely wrapped up or at least will be within the month of the subscription.
But in that case you don't matter as a customer, because either way you only subscribe for binging one show.
I would bet that some people would pay for always getting the newest content, if only for being able to talk to their friends about the newest episode each week.
This is not a good comparison, because except in very few cases, the audience of a pilot is not the general public. In fact, the general public will never have the chance to see the pilot unless it's picked up, and in that case they'll still have to wait until the entire season is filmed.
By contrast, Netflix uses the viewership ratings from the first season to determine whether to renew for a second season.
I agree, milking shows usually ruins them. On the other hand, if they are great shows that last a long time you can gain a loyal audience. This seems to be how HBO has found so much success- Sopranos (never lost quality, even by the end), Curb, the Wire, etc. Although, GOT got milked out terribly. I think the hard part is just deciding which shows to drag on- and being based on a story that already has an ending helps guard against plot degradation.
GOT wasn't milked. It outran the unfinished source materials and then the director/producers D&D "phoned it in" because they started working on Star Wars.
And seasons are so short that even the bad seasons weren't a lot of TV.
It does seem like they had an outline for GRRM’s planned ending, but I doubt he was just going to have all the characters join forces and become a zombie fighting show.
Plot armour, a complete lack of consequences, CGI battles over dialogue, _really poor_ writing and ridiculous plots just to get characters in the right place at the right time.
The first four seasons are among the best TV ever. The final two among the worst.
Some kid-oriented shows seem to get by just fine, albeit their story lines don't necessarily connect. Sponge Bob, and Big City Greens are two of my favorite kid shows with a ton of episodes. Maybe I just like kid shows...
seasons are iffy measurement. episodes or hours is better. one season of star trek used to be 20+ episodes. no adays lots of shows are only 8, 10, 12 episodes.
tell the story you want to tell, with a satisfying ending. book and run the show for all of it.
no open ended shows that will run until it lives.lo h enough to suck. no shows canceled before their story is complete
It seems like strong shows can go up to about 7 seasons and remain good. Three does seem short for a very strong show.
Maybe personal bias, but it seems to hold up pretty well in my viewing history. Seinfeld definitely felt stretched at 9. Star Trek TNG's seventh season definitely felt like about time to wrap it up. Simpsons went kind of wonky around season 8. Buffy the Vampire Slayer seemed good for a 7 season run.
Not some immutable law, but really good shows ending after 5 seasons seems a bit disappointing as well, like Babylon 5. Writers run out of ideas and the original concept seems explored pretty thoroughly after going through 7 seasons.
Three is way too short. Seven seems like the sweet spot. Maybe everyone just gets bored and they don't do stuff as well after seven seasons, but shows really start to change after season 7.
I think the full release of everything prevents it from building up cultural relevance but I'd like to see something like 2 or 3 episode every two or three weeks rather then 1 at a time.
The same model is used for broadcast television in Britain - the standard British 'series' is 6-12 episodes. (Apart from soap opera, which cranks out massive amounts each year.)
Depends on the show (IASIP has been funny until recently, South Park is still good, et cetera), but I agree that shows shouldn't have the life wrung out of them
Sadly I think both are in their decline(and have been past few seasons) Both were the worst seasons of the series… South Park lost its edge where they poke fun at anything and everything without fear of backlash. The “tolkien” episode smelled of wokeness. The tegridy episodes are getting old, you can tell the two creators just don’t care as much about the show anymore as the IRL tegridy.
The mistake for Netflix was the price increase - I've had a bunch of online video subscriptions kicking around, and when I got the notification that prices were going up, it served as a reminder that I really wasn't getting much value out of Netflix at the current price, so it made zero sense to put up with a price increase. This actually made me cancel Hulu while I was at it.
It definitely doesn't help that it's about 99% certain that if there's a mainstream movie you want to watch, Netflix won't have it.
No regrets, haven't felt like I was missing anything. After the pandemic the last thing I want to do is spend more time shut indoors staring at a screen.
One comment about the article:
> While Netflix has taken small steps to evolve its release model, particularly with unscripted shows, it refuses to experiment with weekly releases on its original scripted shows. One exec at rival streamer I talked with yesterday believes this is a huge mistake, if only because it makes it harder for Netflix to build those reliable franchises it so desperately needs more of.
The only thing dumber than this idea is adding commercials, which they're planning, so I assume they'll also be dumb enough to start listening to idiots telling them to do weekly releases.
> The only thing dumber than this idea is adding commercials, which they're planning...
I will immediately cancel any service that has advertisements. One of them (I think Amazon) did not immediately show the video I asked for, but a preview of another video they think I might be interested in. Even that got my delete finger twitching.
> when I got the notification that prices were going up, it served as a reminder that I really wasn't getting much value out of Netflix at the current price
A perfectly reasonable reaction. Netflix is still generally my primary streaming service, but mainly because the others are either a terrible UX for my setup (Hulu), won’t ever get me as a customer for ethical reasons (Amazon), or have content/catalog models like Netflix, only smaller catalogs (basically everything else that isn’t a cable provider).
Netflix becoming a studio was great when it still offered licensed content I love. I could watch their originals and my favorites and things I’d put off watching. Now it feels like I have an HBO subscription I never asked for, where the only thing they offer is original content I don’t want to sift through to find out if it’s worthwhile.
I quit because I didn't like how all of their shows pushed an ideological message. I'm quite left leaning on most issues, but Netflix writers appear to believe that preaching progressive messages is all that's required to make a compelling narrative. If they had the compelling narrative too it might be more tolerable, but they don't.
In the children sitcom 'No good Nick' a female chef ignores feedback from her employee by accusing him of 'mansplaining'. The daughter accuses the white dad of 'cultural approriation' when he suggests taco Tuesday for the restaurant. And that was only the first minutes of one episode.
And that’s more extreme on Netflix than other channels? White Lotus on HBO touched every woke topic in existence and was enjoyable. It’s the content that matters not how it leans.
Enjoyable is subjective. White Lotus was terrible in my opinion.
Not sure why you are arguing? People have stated that's the reason they have quit, and yet you are somehow suggesting that we are wrong? Or because another service does it?
Accept that some people are tired and bored of having unrealistic plots and characters that are only there to "tick boxes".
But sure, recasting the queen of England as a black woman is obviously fine.
Let's do a series on MLK and get a balding white guy to play him, or perhaps an Asian person?
I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people has no strong position in the "culture war" and just watch whatever they enjoy. I'm sure some people will leave a service over "wokeness" but I would be surprised if that number was significant.
As for White Lotus: you might not enjoy it, but are you representative? Me and my wife enjoyed it very much. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 88% and IMDB at 7.6. I'm not sure if "terrible" is an appropriate word for that score.
I dunno. I'm not so unhinged about it as the guy above, but I do share some of his exhaustion at the ideological box-ticking of these TV shows.
I'm left wing and I believe everyone deserves equal rights and equal respect, but I find utterly fatuous the idea that 'representation in television shows' is an important political concern. I believe in fighting global starvation, climate change, social safety nets under increasing automation, etc - not how many transgender lesbians are in TV shows.
I do not give a fuck about that, I do not give a fuck if transgenders and/or lesbians give a fuck about that, it is not important, and I'm disturbed at the increasing frivolity, corporate-ness, and lack of depth in political life when people are seriously suggesting that this is a worthy expenditure of our political willpower and attention (which is extremely finite and scarce, regardless of what people on Twitter insist).
It is really funny to see comments like GP while netflix hosts Chappelle, tells its workers to leave if they don't want to work on projects they disagree with [1], and gets praised for it by the likes of republicans like Musk [2] who claim to be about free speech and what have you until they turn techno-fascist [3].
That would be great ... if human interactions happened in a vacuum then sure, nothing matters. But that is not how humans work. Every interaction matters, every interaction affects our brains, affects what we think is right and wrong.
You are free to reject everything, and anything, does not mean reality will bend to your will.
> That would be great ... if human interactions happened in a vacuum then sure, nothing matters. But that is not how humans work. Every interaction matters, every interaction affects our brains, affects what we think is right and wrong.
That is reality, not ideology. That is precisely the point I am making, actions have consequences.
Please point out __which__ part of my comment is ideologically fueled, because I see just facts.
Try She-ra and Shadow and Bone with a kid... and note the paucity of straight characters in the first or the sweaty gay sex scenes in the second. Deemed not just appropriate, but seemingly an end-goal for children to see. At least they rate them as TV-14, but kids won't let that stop you.
Netflix finally implemented rating selection filters for profiles, but a few years too late for us. Try taking those shows away after they've already been watching them.
Nearly every video is extreme left propaganda like black actor playing English queen Charlotte. That was so dumb and disgusting to watch that a lot of people canceled subscription on that time.
Bridgerton, set in an alternate universe is a show that has had a pretty intense trigger effect. The idea of black people playing Regency era personalities is unacceptable for some despite being obviously far from historically accurate to the point of being classified as “dumb and disgusting”.
Bridgeton is simply enjoyable and a bit silly, lots of heart. Its a bit of a new formula though. I know many who stiff it for being "historically inaccurate". The period is merely the setting for a story in my view. If it's your preference to get more of a dose of history and accuracy, thats your thing, not a requirement. Think kids of different backgrounds playing make-believe, can they not pretend to impersonate someone they admire, of another race? That aside there are some shows we watched a few episodes of that were dripping with what its creators think must resonate, but it comes of cheap and without conviction. Just woke throwaways.
I agree that it's ridiculous to assume everyone disliking the show is a racist.
However your race-bending example is not a good analogy because MLK was a Black rights leader whereas nobody (reasonable) admires queens for their white leadership. The queen's whiteness is not a defining factor in her historical character, at least from white folks' perspective. Compare this to how many Black historical figures do have their blackness as an integral part of their character's story. There is an in-built asymmetry here which makes race-bending arguments unconvincing.
> Blacks would burn and loot
This phrase is dripping with dog whistle and I almost didn't take the time to reply. It likely accounts for all your downvotes.
You can have your cake and eat it too. You can turn the screws on the woke-religionists and their moral panic, while still acknowledging that society has a lot of growing to do on race-centered topics.
Oh how I would love people to actually know what "extreme left" meant before being insulted by the massive propaganda coup which is a black person playing a historically white person. Kind of like that critically slammed and forgettable propaganda piece Hamilton, right?
This is starting to look like a generic problem for companies which are valued on the basis of future growth, but may have in fact reached their mature size. Suddenly they have to be priced as ongoing operating companies, which is based on revenue and profits right now. Facebook. Uber. Netflix. Tesla. They all do something that people will pay for, but they aren't going to get a lot bigger.
Not sure why you put Tesla in the list. They still grow substantially, just added two new large factories (Germany, Texas) and about to build another one (Indonesia).
Because they are a luxury car maker, a crowded sector. Tesla, to grow into its market cap, has to outsell the top automakers put together. They need something at the Toyota Corolla price point to do that.
Until a few months ago, Netflix was spaffing out content deals to support growth.(although they have announced a $250m deal with double negative animation.)
Everything is a genius growth model until its not.
> Problem is — and again, this is not some massively deep observation — wanting more hits and actually making them are two very different things. Netflix until now seems to have believed the best way to produce them is to throw all the money it can find at Hollywood and wait for the successes to start rolling in.
This is basically the VC formula applied to entertainment, and just like how sometimes you get a Dropbox, sometimes you get a Stranger Things. And sometimes you don't.
Of course the key in both is having people with a developed enough market savvy and eye for talent to spot the future Dropboxes and Stranger Things. In VC, it requires a deep understanding of market forces, founders, teams, and tech, and in entertainment, it requires an understanding of both popular tastes and critical tastes as well as the intricacies of production.
Smart people can make bad bets and anyone can get lucky, but the part that's so much harder than it looks is to improve that batting average. Everyone has an opinion on what Netflix should do – I certainly have my own thoughts on things that ought to work (sign Ian Hubert to make a Dynamo Dream series! Adapt Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination with The Rock as Gully Foyle!), but ultimately, it's just my guesses about the cultural marketplace. What Netflix needs is people with greenlight power who have a better feel for that marketplace than anyone else.
I think Netflix is learning a hard fact about the content business. Hits are hard.
All the shows I’ve gotten into on netflix get cancelled once the cast demands to much money around season 4. This strategy makes sense if you can turn around a new hit next year to replace it, but having to deliver an exponentially growing set of hits is really hard. At this point just getting cast and crew who want to work with you is a challenge with 5 other major content streamers. If given the choice, I’m sure hot talent would prefer a studio that won’t fire them once it’s a smash hit.
It's interesting that Netflix's hits seemed to come towards the start of their career producing content. If the issue is "hits are hard" then I would've expected them to struggle first.
My intuition is that it's more like statistics led Netflix to produce low quality content that performed on their target metrics. This strategy led Netflix to a local optimum that is far from a global optimum. Plus, given market conditions, that local optimum is starting to be, objectively, pretty bad.
>Netflix is further eroding its connection to audiences through its unwritten mandate to end the vast majority of its new shows after no more than three seasons, with only the very biggest (or most cost-efficient) scripted hits lasting longer.
One of my favorite shows by far was Disjointed. It was a very silly Stoner take on Roxanne. Cancelled after 2 seasons.
I get the feeling Netflix doesn't want niche shows, everything needs to be Squid Game.
I imagine experimenting with other rev models might work. You can already buy Stranger Things on DVD.
Let me buy the shows I want a la carta.
I've found Disney Plus / Hulu to be a better deal. Surprisingly stuff like Marvel What IF tends to be much more enjoyable compared to whatever animation Netflix is putting out.
Hulu has a better back catalog,
HBO Max has a better bang for buck when it comes to investing my time. The shows have decent writing.
Half the Netflix shows feel like you took a 20 year old English major, paid them in Blue Moon and asked them to write a script.
The best thing ends up being the show premise, once I have to sit down and watch it I'm not having a good time
I feel like Netflix shows / movies are written by algorithm. As much as management wants AI / data science to be drive creativity, the human soul and character simply isn’t replicable. Their original shows often feel hollow and lack depth. For example Space Force was probably the least funny thing I have ever watched and had all the elements of a show that should have been a hit, but somehow failed so spectacularly that everyone involved must cringe the moment it’s mentioned. Fear Street was an abomination. Just terrible quality. If anything I hope they keep making documentaries as they are far more interesting than their scripted content.
Netflix is not dead but they focused too much on the R rated content for grown ups and relied too much on algorithms for content too. The reason why cable and free television stays PG-PG13 is that is where the bulk of the population wants to stay. Watching television really is really a family thing even with the explosion of screens. Of course they unearthed and exploited the lack of content for grown ups but it’s obvious they exhausted that market. Once Disney showed up with family content it was a no brainer for people like me who stopped watching Netflix a long time ago and just kept paying to cancel
I don't know that I necessarily agree with this, some of the more mature shows are also simultaneously their most popular offerings. (Squid game, black mirror, the Witcher, etc.)
And I for one am glad when a show is rated TV-MA because it means that they can be more authentic and unfettered in terms of the vision for the show instead of watering it down to appeal to a broader demographic. "Television is for families" is purely your subjective anecdotal experience. There is a reason the expression is "Netflix and chill", not "Disney and chill".
Conversely, if you're not interested in yet another marvel show or movie, Star Wars or old animated movies, Disney+ is a desert.
I’m curious if this resonates with others. I’m not one to explore the catalog in depth but it definitely isn’t my experience. Most stuff seems solidly PG13 at a glance.
Interesting how we don't hear much about "big data" which - we were told back in 2013 starting with House of Cards [1] - was key to Netflix's success in picking new shows to produce.
This part of the article is telling:
>It’s why five or so years ago, anybody with a hint of success in TV (or movies) started getting a call from their rep saying, basically, “Netflix would like to write you a big check.”
I'm also very puzzled by how the quality could degrade so much. I was sure that they had cracked the "formula" to create good content via big data analysis after House of Cards.
My guess, and I have nothing to back it up other than external empirical observation, is that they didn't like what the big data revealed. The output didn't fit The Message, or The Ideology. So they ignored it. They decided to use the good ol' twitter mobs to Gaughan the success of a show/concept instead.
I hate it when people who have no context of the economy throws in the stock price as a point of data. Author is clearly bias. What tech stock has not plummeted in the last few months?
If you want to include financial data maybe consider that Walmart and Target both had lower profits, lower revenue resuting their stock price plummeted the most in decades?
What "bad habits" do they have? Target and Walmart are bellwether for consumer spending. If consumers are buying less essential items, maybe a stresming service is going to get cut too? Maybe....just maybe....people can't spend as much money anymore?
>Its stock price collapsed by more than 35 percent Wednesday, erasing more than $50 billion in value in a single day.
For people who want to be able to tax unrealized gains like stock, what is the plan for these kinds of events? Would stockholders receive a credit from the IRS when the valuation dips?
I don't understand why this is so often presented as such a difficult to understand concept.
People pay property taxes every year on assets that change in value without selling (ie unrealized gains). Nobody seems perplexed by that. But can't seem to figure out how it works for stocks.
Regardless of if you agree or disagree with doing it (which I'm not pushing for or against here), it's not a complex concept.
FWIW, the idea of paying taxes on a fluctuating property valuation has never sat right with me either. So you could say that I am perplexed by that. If I'm on some kind of fixed income, suddenly I might not be able to afford the taxes on the house that I bought 20 years ago and need to sell it? It's bizarre.
Property taxes certainly have issues; they tax building improvements, but we want those, so we shouldn’t be incentivizing people to not improve their buildings.
Land value tax is the proper way to go, questions of how to value land aside.
The issue with a wealth tax is it’s inflationary - most taxes are deflationary but a wealth tax forces you to sell assets to get their cash from them. It does encourage rich people to mark up their assets less, which might reduce apparent income inequality aka make poor people less jealous of them…
Couldn't you take loans against the value? I'm sort of assuming the wealth tax is a fraction of a percent, and that the burden would mostly be borne by high net worth individuals who could easily financialise their way out of small inconveniences.
Any tax on value is an eventual confiscation of the entire value given enough time, unless you have enough appreciation to outpace it (which likely is inflation).
There’s no way to borrow against a property to pay a 2% tax for mor than fifty years, for example. You need an outside source of funds, or appreciation.
> The issue with a wealth tax is it’s inflationary
If it encourages people to undervalue, or lower the value of something, I don't see how that's inflationary. Could you explain how it would be inflationary?
Because you can’t undervalue things with clear values like stocks. You have to actually sell them. The IRS doesn’t accept shares for taxes, it accepts USD. Selling -> increased money velocity -> inflation.
Lower asset values aren’t deflation because “asset inflation” isn’t inflation. You can’t eat assets and it doesn’t matter if their prices go up because you can buy fractions of them. Asset inflation (the theory that 2010 QE was causing inflation “in the stock market” even though we didn’t see it in goods) is a crank theory from online people who think central banks print money.
Believe me, as a European living in an American city currently “booming”, not only am I perplexed by it but also wonder how in the hell Americans have put up with it for so long.
The negative effects are quite plain to see as people get pushed out of their homes by the wealthy moving in from other states, and yet people seem to want to apply the same fundamentally flawed logic to other asset classes too.
My house needs protection from the police and all manner of city services. Land is one of the more tricky elements of property to handle fairly and one mechanism is property taxes given there is only so much land in prime locations.
Hard for me to make sense of taxing unrealized gains. Not even France could make a wealth tax work, and they tax everything.
The question is asked like it is some sort of gotcha, but there are clear answers for both the general proposals floating around:
(a) wealth tax. Every year each household with over $XX million in net worth pays y% of the amount above the threshold in taxes. No refund if your net worth goes down in subsequent years.
(b) treat unrealized capital gains as income. Each year you pay income taxes on the increase in the value of your stock portfolio, even if you don’t sell. Any losses can be written off subsequent years’ taxes.
Year 1, I own 10,000 shares at $0.1 each. I'm taxed 25% of $1000, or $250. Year 2, my super smart investment pays off and I own 10,000 shares at $100 each. I'm taxed 25% of an "income" of $999,000, or $249,750. Only, I don't have enough cash to cover the bill, so I sell about a quarter of my stock, leaving me with 7,500 shares. Year 3, the stock goes bust down to $0.2 per share. I write off a loss of $997,500? Does this mean I basically never pay taxes again?
So the end result is I paid a total tax bill of $250,000 on essentially nothing?
Furthermore, what if I decided not to sell my shares when they were worth $100 each and wanted to defer the tax bill. But now the price has crashed to $0.2, and I still owe a massive bill. Is that offset by my tax write-off?
Yes, you can keep writing off the loss in year 4, 5, 6, etc. until you’ve earned back $997,500. So another way of looking at it is that you prepaid $250,000 of taxes. Obviously not a desired outcome, but at least a reasonably fair one.
Also worth pointing out that under the current taxes rules the exact same thing would happen if you’d sold all your shares after year two and then invested all the profits into an ill-fated second company.
That sounds generally reasonable then. Except the pressure to sell stock in order to pay taxes. I don't know enough to know in all the ways this is bad, but don't you generally want to keep capital with the company that needs it?
Yeah the tax code generally tries to encourage holding stocks. So if it was just a question of the government getting the tax money now or later, I think most people wouldn’t want this.
However, the proposal is mostly to stop a specific tax dodge: stocks that are given as gifts/inheritance exempt both the giver and receiver from paying any capital gains taxes on profits from prior to the transfer. Combine this with tricks like taking out margin loans to fund expenses instead of selling stock, and someone can become a billionaire yet be paying next to no taxes
If I’m a rich person and I’m forced to sell shares to pay the tax bill, which then harms pension funds and sovereign wealth by incessantly driving down the value of everyone’s assets, isn’t this problematic?
That sounds dangerously close to trickle down economics. In any case, your example is far less problematic than the current situation where a rich person could fund their lifestyle off loans against their portfolio while never paying capital gains taxes at all
It would obviously work the same way a realized loss works currently. They’d be able to offset the loss against other gains and carry over any excess loss into future tax years.
The holders would pay less in taxes when the valuation drops, why would they get a credit? Also, the only people who would be subject to those taxes are already extraordinarily wealthy, so who cares?
> The holders would pay less in taxes when the valuation drops, why would they get a credit?
Perhaps you're not familiar with some of the proposals to tax unrealized gains or what this means. This means there have been serious proposals from so-called serious people to tax individuals when a stock they're holding goes up, even if they don't sell that. So somebody is making a point that nobody has made a serious proposal to give a similar credit for unrealized losses. It's just the government wanting to tax and take and take.
> Also, the only people who would be subject to those taxes are already extraordinarily wealthy, so who cares?
You've got it backwards.
The already wealthy aren't the ones bothered by paying a bit more taxes on unrealized gains too much. If Warren Buffet had to pay an extra few million because a stock he held went up, he probably wouldn't really notice. It wouldn't even be a buzzkill on his day.
In the event of a tax on unrealized gains, it's the middle class dude who made a great investment on the next Apple who is screwed over from holding for a few years because he has to sell the second the price went up just a bit to pay that tax.
Your “so-called serious people” swipe doesn’t exactly convey that you are making a good faith effort to understand these proposals…
Also, there no reason a middle class investor would have to sell all their stock to pay taxes. If the value of your portfolio doubled, you’d only have to sell between 7.5% and 10% of your holdings to cover the taxes (at the current capital gains tax rates).
If all you own is shares in a company, you are not rich, you can be homeless. If you sell your shares and make money out of that, then is the moment to pay your taxes, not a nanosecond before that.
No one is proposing those taxes on middle class people. For example, Elizabeth Warren’s proposals would only affect those with more than $50M in assets.
Second, the proposal isn’t to tax on price changes, its taxing the value of the asset at a given point in time. If the value goes down, the tax collected goes down. This is also how property taxes work - it’s a percentage of the assessed value. If the assessed value drops, you pay less in taxes.
Imagine you're the founder of NFLX and you held $1 billion worth of stock at the peak last year ($690 / share)
The IRS says you owe $300 million (30% of your unrealized gains)
Fast forward to spring 2022. The stock has crashed to $186, your shares are worth only $270 million but you owe a $300 million tax bill.
Not to mention the impossible situation this creates for corporate governance and the general functioning of a business when founders / board members are constantly forced to divest and therefore no one can know who will even control the company from quarter to quarter.
The majority of the hypothetical Reed Hastings in that scenario are also borrowing against and investing off of that $1B in equity. Maybe he should have diversified better, and I don’t see why the average person should care.
The reason for Netflix lost subscribers in 2022 is the same as the reason Netflix experienced a growth spurt in 2020: work from home. When people work from home, on average they gain an extra hour or more per day, because they don't have to commute. (Not to mention, the boss can't walk up behind you and catch you enjoying a movie!) Now that work from home is over, they no longer need the Netflix subscription.
While WFH probably did impact some of their subscriber amount, other issues definitely affect the total subscriber amount, including cost (compared to competing against apple TV+, amazon prime video, and disney+), lack of content (which they're trying to work on) and controversy.
They also have competition on the "content" front in that amazon prime video is now creating its own terrible "lets throw money at this until it works" service to compete with them, and many people already have it with prime so don't feel the need to pay netflix's increasingly expensive service.
I don't know about you but netflix costs more than amazon prime for me, so I could either get netflix or I could get all the amazon prime benefits. It's a losing proposition for netflix.
No it's not. While it's true that that suspending their service in Russia costed them 700,000 subscribers, Netflix is projecting that they will lose 2,000,000 users this quarter. [1]
Yes it is. GP is talking solely about what's already happened: -200,000 after having cut off 700,000 from Russia, which is a net gain of 500,000 outside of Russia.
They were responding to someone who phrased their comment as if they were also talking about what already happened, not as if they were referring to projections.
> Netflix losing subscribers is a false narrative.
So is that why the increasing competition from the likes of Apple, Disney+ and HBO, recent price increases and password sharing loopholes have plagued its growth?
All of that explains why they are (still) losing subscribers. Pulling out of Russia, just accelerated it and that was self-inflicting.
> So is that why the increasing competition from the likes of Apple, Disney+ and HBO, recent price increases and password sharing loopholes have plagued its growth?
This is also a false narrative. Netflix subscribers seldomly churn. Long lived accounts typically don't cancel, since new content comes out on a weekly basis. You can't cancel your cable subscription and just buy Disney+; you usually keep Netflix around too. Netflix is only tangentially competing with other streamers; they are directly competing with cable.
The subscriber count is affected by two things: new subscribers coming on board, and existing subscribers leaving. Since subscribers usually don't leave, the miss was on the new subscribers coming in. It absolutely was due to high growth countries (like Russia) not growing.
As mertd mentioned, Netflix losing subs was an _unexpected_ loss. In their 2020Q2 10-Q, they made it clear that the increase in subscribers was being pulled forward from subsequent years, and investors were made aware of this. The slowdown after Covid was expected, and factored into the price. It was the cutting off 400K+ subscribers from Russia that spooked investors.
The main reason I avoid Netflix shows is that their formula insists on a cliffhanger season finale, but there is no promise of another season. Many shows quite literally have no conclusion, ending in their version of the second act.
Sci-fi nerds are somewhat used to this; it was a problem even when cable tv was the dominant model. Netflix has somehow managed to bring this sour note to every genre.
The problem with the article is it assumes that Netflix's drop in stock price is due to mistakes the company has made. In my view, the reason Netflix has been less successful than shareholders expected has more to do with what its competitors are doing well rather than what its doing poorly. Netflix's CEO once famously said that Netflix had to become HBO before HBO could become Netflix. While Netflix has made steps to become a major content producer, the nature of copyright law means that they are simply starting from a disadvantage. Now that the old Hollywood juggernauts have launched their own streaming services, it's a lot harder for Netflix to grow.
Fragmentation of must-watch content across many streaming services will drive a lot of people back to torrenting.
Netflix was beloved because it was convenient, meaning everything you wanted was in one place. Now the things you want are spread out across many services.
By comparison a good tracker that has everything you want is more convenient vs searching a half dozen services.
I highly recommend you check with your local/regional library to see what streaming services they will give you access to for free. My local library in Canada offers a couple of services that have a really interesting catalogue of films from all over the world as well as some recent classics.
This is not the latest and greatest, but much of the content is far more interesting.
The children's content on them is extremely good. If programming for kids is keeping you on Netflix, some of these (Kanopy, Hoopla) could easily eliminate your need for a paid subscription.
TV shows take about 2 years from greenlight to being distributed for Viewing. Cindy Holland was fired in September 2020, which means we will need to wait till this fall to see if the decision has improved the quality.
I don't know about that. Wasn't she was fired because she refused to green light piles of what she found to be low quality content and then the CEO got frustrated because he wanted quantity and decided to allow a bunch of other people to override her decisions?
I was under the impression she hadn't had any good hits leading up to the end of 2020, and enough misses caused her to lose favor. I can't really think of any great Netflix originals from 2018-2020.
And ads are what killed it too, once a competing technology (finally) came out. From what I understand the US shows way to many adds compared to Europe, it's nearly half of the show time. If TV/cable execs weren't so greedy, they might still be alive. It seems like US companies tend to kill the golden goose.
Where does the myth that cable ever was ad free come from? Cable started out as a method to deliver broadcast TV to people who couldn’t get reception. Then superstations like TBS started broadcasting local content. Cable always had ads besides premium TV like HBO
> “Two hundred million was a fairly easy climb,” one industry vet who works at a streamer told me Wednesday.
Yeah fuck you. I am a Netflix subscriber with little to no love for the company. The algorithm fails for me and I detest the user interface. If Netflix disappeared tomorrow my life would be barely affected. But getting 200 million subscribers to anything, much less a paid service, is a massive achievement. If that person knows so much, why are they anonymous? If they’re that brilliant, they could go out and start a 200 million subscriber business themselves. Because that’s the easy part. Any chimpanzee could do it. The tricky part is getting to 300 million or 500 million.
The article makes some good arguments elsewhere, but this is one of its weaker points. There's no explanation of why 200 million is "fairly easy" while 300 million is "hard". If Netflix was at 300 million today, the magic "hard" number would be 400 million, and 300 would have been the "easy" number.
200 million "was" easy climb (for Netflix). I don't think it meant its easy in general. More of Netflix made it look like it's easy, (for Netflix). Now we see reaching 500 is not easy for them.
> We have to have an Adam Project and a Bridgerton every month
Decade+ subscriber: I'm never watching those shows. If they have to advertise or talk up their programming, it's not going to be worth the time to see how terrible it is. On the other hand, I'll have 3 people mention a new season of Ozark before I've noticed it's been released.... Actually, that was more true of the second season than the recent ones.
So, if fixing the content is the answer, then maybe the people who created the problem aren't the right ones to fix it. Their taste is out of sync with that of their subscribers.
HBO is still the master of curation and talent scouting/development.
While Netflix throws tens of millions of dollars on brainless scripts and big stars, HBO diligently shepherds the material it likes to completion, with talent that is great but that will not break the bank. HBO does not use stars - it makes stars.
For all the talk of Netflix not being a family but a team, it sure does sound like their content division management is pretty "tight", regardless of results. Did they think they were going to coast on the House of Cards forever?
Interesting that this analysis seems to attribute Holland's defenestration as a response to an anticipated loss of Netflix subscribers. I read another analysis which had the causal relationship the other way: Holland's replacement by Bajaria more or less led directly to the loss of subscribers. I'm not sure what to think, but from an outside perspective, it feels like Holland was done dirty by her boss like that. It couldn't have been a smoother, more empathetic transition?
Everyone talks about their content being the problem, but it seems weird to me that Netflix’s original differentiating factor, platform and distribution, isn’t what they capitalized on. They could have sold their infrastructure and technology as a service before any other media company had a chance to build or buy their own. Now we have shitty platforms with great content, and vice-versa, instead of the best of both worlds with Netflix powering it all.
I will tell you an anecdote: I pay and share subscriptions to 3 different streaming services with extended family. The only service we would never drop is Netflix. Maybe this will change. Maybe this is just anecdotal. But IMO Netflix brand/service has gained staying power compared to other streaming competitors.
I used to subscribe to Sky Sports. It had everything I was really interested as well as lots that I never watched.
Then the market fragmented and rights to certain sports were distributed among three broadcasters. Suddenly I could no longer watch many of the games I was interested in, I'd have needed three subscriptions instead of one. The fact that Sky didn't reduce their price didn't help. I ended up dropping Sky and taking out a subscription with an overseas service that had all the games and I could watch via a vpn. Then they tightened that up and the vpn method no longer worked.
Now I just pirate the games I want to see.
It feels like the same thing is happening to Netflix with Disney, Hulu, Amazon etc.
It’s more about how TikTok has taken over such a huge portion of the engagement hours basket. Hard to justify a paid sub when there’s a tool that sends you content for free and the only choice you have to make is to not watch something.
Parents: don’t let your kids anywhere near TikTok.
It's hard for me to even know if Netflix has anything I'd like to watch these days. They've stripped back the browsing features so far, it's hard filter through all the trash, and I wind up just giving up.
There’s another issue at play here: competition for time.
There are competitors, that’s a given. People subscribe to multiple services because one does not have all the content. That’s a given.
Therefore Netflix is competing for the time that viewers actually spend watching it, vs watching other services they pay for. If they end up watching less Netflix than, say, Disney+, guess which one they’ll cut if there’s a cost of living crisis?
In this market, I believe the best strategy is a small amount of high quality content. Disney+ is probably the best balance of this, and Apple TV+ is probably not a bad bet either, considering it’s also the cheapest service.
All organizations mature into "fat, dumb and happy" which ultimately seals the doom of 95% of them.
Even companies that were wonderful to work for (e.g. Hewlett-Packard when Bill & Dave were alive) have shriveled to irrelevance and horror. It happens.
It's what's convinced me that leadership is all their is to prevent this - the 5% of organizations that thrive longer all have charismatic and ethical leadership that is focused on the mission being done "correctly". Every time.
IMO once the netflix model was validated it was impossible to license enough good titles (they knew they were valuable).
Netflix pivoted to making their own shows under the premise that they have all the data. This is outside of their tech expertise and creates average content.
I believe netflix should create video editing tools (commoditize your complement) and make it easy for almost professional film makers to upload content. The area between youtube and professional films could discover lots of talent and keep those rights cost cheap.
I cut my subscription at the end of 2021. The comfort shows I'd watch from time to time were leaving to other platforms, and Netflix was pumping out so many originals that it would take forever to find a show I'd like, then they'd go ahead and cancel it after a season or two.
The nail in the coffin was the price hike - in Canada it went to $20.99 for 4k streaming, for something I was rage watching maybe once a week. It's just not worth the money to spend so long hunting for content, only to be disappointed.
Netflix's algorithms are very good at offering interesting content for a short period of time, like a few weeks.
Even when I'm crunching at work and can only watch Netflix a few hours a week, I end up running out of interesting content.
What follows is several weeks where I find out some movie or show that was released last year is not available on Netflix yet, or some old stuff is not available.
Eventually Netflix release some decent content, which temporarily fixes their APIs responses. Rinse and repeat.
Deal breaker for me was that tons of series will stop after season 1. Yeah and the content nowadays is mediocre. I have switched to Disney+ and Apple Tv
Does anyone else remember when the Amy Schumer comedy special got panned, and then Netflix got rid of the star ratings? They put placating Hollywood and traditional creators over serving customers. When you focus on securing supply over meeting demand, you lose touch with the customer. These poison seeds were planted long ago, and only now are we seeing them bloom.
If I had only two features that I would have Netflix implement, they would be:
- to add a setting to not show me stuff I've already watched (so that others who don't mind that, can continue to see their seen stuff).
- add a "don't show me again" toggle (I know I can dislike but maybe I'm just tired of seeing that one particular video and am fine with other such content)
One of my Netflix bad habits is fast forwarding through predictable scenes. A lot of their series appear to be padded out to make up a series instead of a long feature film, and as a result I find myself fast forwarding through at least 50% of a series. Time wise I am watching it all, however, engagement is self evidently lowrr
But that's not unique to Netflix - I can remember thinking how much better '24' would have been w/o all the filler crap - but then they wouldn't have been able to make a "real time" TV show (well, they could have, but they didn't). Also I tried watching the reboot of "Kung Fu" a few weeks ago - wow, there's more Asian family drama filler than there is actual "Kung Fu". It seems like the filler stuff is everywhere now.
But then again, back in the day of network tv shows when they did ~26 episodes per season, there were entire episodes that felt like fillers.
Yesterday while on Netflix with my fire stick getting bored I wanted to leave. Suddenly I have to search the app exit button and it turns out it moved from the main menu on the left to the bottom right of the screen. A dark and desperate move.
First time I thought seriously about leaving for good.
This isn't technically, it's content creation. An ancient business, and its hard to scale. Get the right magic group of executives who get lucky buying the right properties and you are a hero. Miss, and a bunch of HN users are actively angry with you.
It's what happens when you believe that tech can solve everything. Netflix thought they can automate makings shows with some predefined story templates. I mean it works for few shows but then people notice the pattern. Creativity should be organic.
How about Netflix has this user created content like YouTube. It’s free with ad supported but for users who has paid plan the ads are removed. I would keep a paid account if the user created content in Netflix becomes popular like YouTube!
I have T-Mobile pays for the very basic Netflix as part of the deal. I just canceled the ultra HD package ($11+) more a month. There is no way I could outright get rid of Netflix so I just stuck with the basic account for now.
Netflix just has nothing interesting, and you have to sift through endless mediocre movies. Once I'm done with Arcane and then Love, Death & Robots, I'll unsubscribe. Just simply not worth it.
I found that analysis of the big picture problems fairly insightful. Many of the stories I hear about working in production companies, especially during the big Amazon/Netflix competition for projects, felt exactly like the heyday of the dot com boom. Money was being thrown at anyone who had a 'hint' even of creating something big and as a result a lot of money got spent pretty uselessly.
I've also been a long time Netflix user from their DVD days to the present and while I did not feel like streaming would be the hit they did (I was totally wrong on that count!) I note that the streaming model had an interesting impact on control.
Specifically with the DVD model, Netflix could go out and buy some number of copies of a movie as soon as it hit the shelves and now you, as a subscriber, could watch it without forking over the $20 - $30. Since they had lots and lots of DVDs you could always find something you would probably like. But in the streaming model this changes. Now the people who "own" the content just rent it to Netflix and once that rental term expires it goes "poof" and vanishes.
Two things then emerged, the content holders created their own streaming service and stopped renting out their content, and Netflix's catalog of things to watch shrank so a customer who watched something before and liked it, and then went to watch it again couldn't find it.
That customer experience, going to a service for a product that was available before but isn't now, and is only available for additional money elsewhere, is a strong negative influence on the "let's find something to watch on Netflix habit."
Once the state of mind changes to (it probably won't be on Netflix any more) then the only reason you watch Netflix is because they advertised something new and you're going to watch it this month before it vanishes. And that can lead to months where you don't watch Netflix at all, and of course that often results in re-evaluating what you are spending per month on a service you aren't using every month.
The market response has been pretty predictable, groups who each sign up for one streaming service and share their passwords with other members of the group so they get access to the aggregated catalogs of a number of services with the monthly cost of one service. Service providers have hinted that they are going to "clamp down" on that sort of thing, but one thing that Netflix proved quite clearly was that "Piracy" was a response to cost and cost alone. Content providers really only have two choices[1], share the content at a price people are willing to pay, or collect nothing as your content is shared for free.
There is some hysteresis here, people put up with a lot of crap until they flip over to "alternative access methods" and then it takes a much lower price than you could have gotten before to get them to switch back to the paid access method.
[1] There is a third choice, lock up the content forever, but that is like the null choice for most content providers.
I wonder how much the cable companies are charging them to not throttle their content right now? The price would drop by half the second you put net neutrality back.
this is sorta of elitist article that people cant relate to. One of the major reasons why people are leaving netflix is because their sub is expensive af compared to all the other streaming services. I could sub to 4 different major streaming services for cheaper than the mid-tier sub on netflix. I'm glad to see them lose sub and look forward to see their complete fall for being greedy tools
It doesn't help that Netflix stands on principle and blocks all accounts in Russia, one of their major sources of subscriber growth. America, while being the most lucrative market, was already pretty saturated. Cutting off the countries with huge growth makes it extremely difficult to keep growing paying customers. But, principle comes first at Netflix, to the chagrin of their stock holders and employees.
Russia is tiny in the overall number of subscribers, it is not an explanation for the hude drop in the stock price.
Also the recent Netflix content shows it does not stand on principle, it is highly politicized.
It is small, but that's not what you should look at. The Derivative in subscribers matters way more (since Netflix is a growth company), and Russia was nearly doubling in subs each year.
Isn't the whole point of stock investments for consumers is to grow their money. All this ethics/morals is all passe . What they want is to invest in oil, defense companies and then talk to real people about global warming and peace on earth.
Generally Netflix makes shows in the same country in which it operates. This has a positive interaction between the country and the company, since the shows are more identifiable to the people who would watch them in that country. While the production in Russia probably would have to stop, there was no reason to turn off access to the existing and new customers. It had no measurable effect on Russia's actions or the outcome of the war. It was merely an attempt for Netflix to "be on the right side of history". Instead, it's shaping up to be Netflix "not being part of the future".
My business produces storytelling videos for e-commerce and we almost got into the television/entertainment business at one point, as it is simply so cheap to pump out middling quality documentaries. Stock photography and interviews and cheap-but-good editing. You’ll notice solo YouTubers are making great documentaries. I don’t know how they are spending so much money considering the quality of much of the crap they make. High schooler YouTubers make similar quality with their iPhones.
There must be thousands of talented directors who haven’t been given their big break yet who have artistic ideas and would almost work for free to be given a chance to make a name for themselves. Give them resources and a chance and see who has what it takes.
This is only one relevant factor, ofcourse.
Unrelated: I’m currently trying out CuriosityStream so I feel less guilty for the time I spend watching TV. At least I’ll be learning something.