Old media tried to kill them by cutting them off from content. Instead of letting it happen, they proceeded to replace old media as a source of content.
Old media is still producing the content. Netflix doesn't own lots, or cameras, or catering trucks. This is predominantly a change to financing and a change to what type of shows get produced. It's not a change to who produces them.
Old media is still producing the content. Netflix doesn't own lots, or cameras, or catering trucks.
Those aren't the the part of old media that people are dissatisfied with. Who decides what gets produced? How do advertisers affect the decisions? Isn't that what is changing? Also, aren't the decisions at that level what viewers tend to be dissatisfied with?
I had Netflix around 1999 and I lived close to one of their shipping centers. The turn around time was about two days and I could request three DVDs at a time. It was glorious. Huge selection of awesome DVD movies. All sorts of stuff you would never find in a rental store. Sad that you can't stream those great movies now but I'm still a Netflix subscriber.
What's even more sad is they are blocking VPNs and have more of the actually good shows only available in the UK. I'd like to see them fix their multinational deals better. Going to have to find alternative means soon.
And unfortunately, now that they've killed the local DVD rental business (Redbox aside), they're letting their own DVD rentals steadily decline with more and more titles no longer available to rent.
It's pretty much gotten to the point where, if there's an older/less popular movie you may want to watch, there's a good chance you'll need to just buy it.
To me the deal breaker is ads. I think as a society we have begun to grow out of ads, I personally cannot stand them. I can only just tolerate the 5 second YouTube ads.
I have nothing wrong with ads, though my viewpoint of ads is they need to target `me` instead of `them`. Eg... 6700K Is now for sale for $200AUD or 1080p is for sale for bargain prices!
Though most of the ad's I see have a handsome margin added to the product that I neither want nor if I did I could find somewhere on ebay cheaper.
My problem (not a problem for me though) with ads is, that I do not trust them at all anymore. Even if I would see an interesting looking ad advertising a cheap 6700K I would think to myself, that they must have paid for the ad somehow and I can probably find it even cheaper somewhere else.
I have to agree I've had exactly the same situation. Wish I could say otherwise.
The only thing today that directed me to specific products and services are sites like hackernews, youtube channels like Eli the Computer Guy, and Louis Rossmann. I've donated about $500AUD to different youtube gaming review channels (because I like their content). I've donated to schools and donated my time with teaching programming. Though do I trust a advertisement GIF or Ads in the middle of a youtube video (hell no!).
Deep down I do want advertisement to get better and I DO want them to target me with meaning full advertisement. Though it still is a game of pop-ups in the middle of the screen of Skype, News, Web-sites all wanting to TELL me about how special they're.
Spot on. The concept of advertising is completely outdated. If you look at how advertising began in the first place, it began as a way for for people to discover new products. Back in the day, that was not bad. Not today. Today there is absolutely no need to hammer you with information. There are easy and affordable means to get whatever information you want. So yeah, advertising is another 'inherited money making crap' that we are just living with.
I really hope Netflix disrupts this in some way and not become another engine for bombarding users with ads.
This was true for me up until about a month ago, when I started getting unskippable 1-5min ads before and during YT videos. Talked to a few people recently having similar experience. Seems to be based on user profile; incognito + ublock completely blocks them, not incognito and regardless of blocker settings, the ads leak through
I tolerate quick ads. But lengthy or too many consecutive ads, and I switch channels and never return.
I would probably prefer more frequent very very brief ad breaks than infrequent longer ad break. Better then to be very infrequent, middle ground is the most annoying.
I am sure there have been many statistical analysis of ad break lengths, frequencies and lost viewers. And that there are big differences between countries.
I can understand general commercial channels needs ads. Not everyone can be Netflix or tv license subsidised. But that is also what they compete against so they can't have too many ads.
I remember whenever I am in the states that I am shocked at how much commercials there are during the shows on US network tv channels. And when visiting family in Norway at Christmas the financially struggling TV2 seemed to have extended their ad breaks so much that none of us watched their channels any more.
I can't even tolerate them. The sick part is that I already pay for all access and should have youtube red but it is not available in my country.
So I adblock or on my ps4 hit the back button and reload the video until it comes ad free even if it takes me 2 more minutes. I just can't stand ads,
Now that net neutrality is history doesn't it seem like netflix (and by extension Amazon) extremely vulnerable to the lack of competition in the ISP space in the US?
Google at least had something of a workaround with their various efforts to provide access, but I don't see how they are going to circumvent the tollbooths which are popping up on the last mile.
You can also get HBO online in Sweden and Norway for example, but branded as HBO Nordic. So it's not only in the US, but for some reason they're not using the HBO GO branding outside the US.
Lack of competitors? Now that Netflix has seemingly accepted having a terrible selection and is focusing on producing their own content, they're just one of many. Their distribution mechanism isn't even that unique (subscription over the Internet) with the likes of HBO, Hulu, et al.
Netflix's main advantage is that they have by far the best UX of any of the streaming services, but that's unlikely to be a particularly durable advantage, and probably not what many people make decisions based on.
Time to watching something is good but everything else about the experience I find aggravating. They got rid of the "click to continue" after a couple of episodes feature for instance. So now a series will play all the way through and drop off the continue watching list.
I agree with both of you. Netflix has the best UX, but that UI is still terrible! I personally would love to see a competitor with a catalog similar to Netflix come out and actually create a good UI.
I wish their streaming catalog was better, I can never find movies I really want to watch so I still get blu-rays because it actually has a lot of content.
I agree, Netflix is killing it. First of all, their selection in Canada is amazing, despite what anyone says. Second, I'm pretty sure I watch more of their original content than anything. They have great taste, fund the right people, they've progressed well beyond what I ever expected. Third - great app, can download content for offline.
Anyhow, they're killing it on every front, and it costs what, $10/month? I'd pay much more. Anyhow good job Netflix.
Why are there ads on cable tv? Why can't they just charge tv subscribers the whole amount and get rid of ads on tv? If netflix can do it, why can't tv do the same?
This is actually a common myth. Cable initially was a service where the feed for certain terrestrial broadcast stations was transmitted over a cable for users who could not receive a clear signal. Since the same feed was used, it had the ads the broadcast affiliate put into it.
Which basically means it's the consummer fault again. I mean, yes, they are evil. But just like disease, it's useless to blame it. There will always be diseases. It's our responsibility to cure current ones and create environments to avoid future ones. Which means for businesses, if you want them to stop misbehave, you should stop rewarding them when they do. Just like in politics.
Why cancel a cushy $10 Netflix subscription when 1 ad pops up every session?
A year later
Why cancel a cushy $12 Netflix subscription when 5 ads pop up every session?
5 years later
Why cancel a cushy $20 Netflix subscription when 10 ads pop up every session?
Do you see where this is going?
Ad and subscription creep is a very real thing, and consumer will not "protest" because behaving is so easy when they betray your trust an inch at a time.
In a capitalistic world, the bank note is a vote bulletin. The only one that is always listened to, and that you can use every day, on every topic. And also the one they don't teach you about in school.
Think about what your local cable company charges for HBO. They have no advertising and programming is pretty good. Back in the day it was $20/month, now it's something close to $10/mo, right?
What would your cable bill look like if every single channel was $10/month?
I just navigated through Apple's maze to cancel my HBO subscription. I realized that, after months had gone by, it just represented a crap value next to Netflix.
I find HBO shows equal or better in quality than the best Netflix shows. Westworld was fantastic. My wife and I just started watching The Young Pope. In a few months GoT and SV will be back on. HBO is learning from Netflix and coming out with some fantastic shows. I also like catching recent movies on HBO before they show up on Netflix, Amazon Prime etc.
Of course, Netflix is well worth the subscription and if you don't watch a lot of TV, it has enough content to keep you entertained for a while. But I've noticed that I discuss HBO shows more with my friends/family than Netflix ones.
I live in a part of the world where the opposite is true. The Netflix catalogue of originals is there but apart from that its pretty weak. Not value for money at $8/mo. On the other hand there is a legit service that gives me the sports I'm interested in (minus basketball), all HBO shows and recent movies at $3/mo. I'm canceling my subscription to Netflix for now because I find I don't actually spend any time watching it.
Even in the US, Netflix is for watching their originals plus a pretty good back catalog of TV shows. If you're looking for anything else, it's a bonus if they happen to have it but you shouldn't really count on it.
A former Netflix tech guy once told me that "People get Netflix for the movies and stay for the TV shows." Though that's probably less true than it used to be given Netflix Originals and a pretty wide recognition that their streaming movie catalog is limited. Today it's probably the Originals that drive the purchasing (as with HBO).
Netflix makes it's content choices based on demographic data, and HBO makes it's choices because they have artists who are excited about the project and think it would make a wicked show. The old fashioned way gives better results IMO.
That doesn't sound correct. HBO wouldn't make a show just because their artists are excited, but because the artists are excited and they think their demographic will watch it. Netflix makes the same, just for a different demographic and with more accurate data. It looks like these data points don't help them, which is interesting. Or those (on HN) who say they don't like the Netflix originals are not part of Netflix core demographic.
Well before these even. HBO has been pioneering the edgy, interesting, original content model for television shows since the 80's. 1st and 10, Larry Sanders Show, Oz, Real Sex, America Undercover, Not Necessarily the News, and on and on...
Netflix has obviously run with the idea though. I'd love to see Netflix and HBO merge actually.
> HBO is learning from Netflix and coming out with some fantastic shows.
HBO was doing that long before Netflix had original programming and Netflix, fairly overtly -- as in, I'm pretty sure I remember Netflix execs saying this -- was following HBO's arc rather than vice versa.
IMO, Netflix originals mostly suck and HBO is king. Tho, if you come from network and cable television and your standard of good television is Prison Break, I can see how Netflix content and its originals could be appealing.
> IMO, Netflix originals mostly suck and HBO is king.
Lately I'd agree, but a few years ago that didn't have much and it was mostly high quality. So many of netflixs originals seem to fall into the super hero category that I'm not interested in.
The thing is that those "20 other channels no one wants" typically cost them nothing or a minimal amount.
It is true that, if you start slicing out ESPN, A&E, etc. it would theoretically be possible to subscribe to an overall lower cable bill but the cable cos would almost certainly raise per-channel (or mini-bundle) pricing to compensate.
As bad as bundling is, it also has historically subsidized smaller channels that sometimes come up with innovative programming that would otherwise never happen.
Everyone passed on Mad Men except this little movie-rerun channel called AMC. Would Walking Dead have happened without it?
Sucks to be them. Sorry, but why should I subsidize channels that nobody wants to watch? Sure, occasionally a hit will come out of them, but if a channel can't stay afloat on their own, too bad so sad!
Well the vast majority of the money from bundling goes to ESPN. If you don't like sports, or only watch during one kind of sports season, then much of the money from cable is a waste.
Legacy and entrenched interests. Cable services have optimized their process to call and convert users instead of offering them something useful. TV is often bundled with internet and you are charged extra without you explictly asking for it.
> Why can't they just charge tv subscribers the whole amount
The secret is that there's no "whole amount", because that would imply the concept of "enough money". There's no such thing as "enough money".
I mean that entirely non-sarcastically; to the extent it doesn't go to cover their costs, it goes to increase their profit, which has no upper bound. If they've found a way to extract more money, they'll do it. They question then becomes "to what extent have they found a larger revenue stream, and to what extent have they obtained more money now by alienating customers and driving them to other services".
Only if all competitors did the same. Unlike cable or terrestrial broadcast television, with Netflix the consumer has choice and can simply go to a competitor (this includes piracy). If Netflix starts experimenting with advertisements, they will give competitors a chance to move in on the subscribers that won't stand for it.
Losing subscribers is fine if they don't go anywhere else (because they can't), but losing subscribers to a competitor is a risky move.
They have too many competitors right on their heels for that. Netflix introducing ads would drive people to Amazon Prime, and vice versa. (Hulu partially gets away with it because they have an offering their competitors don't, namely seasons still in progress.)
Amazon Prime has gotten awful for adverts. They have pre-rolls for their other shows, which you could consider OK at the moment but this is exactly what happened with their Fire $TV_DEVICE line. They had a banner ad for new shows and that banner ad slowly morphed into advertising for financial services and such.
I've never been so upset about a product like this. I think I paid ~70GBP for the Fire TV and 20 each for two Fire TV sticks and then they sneak advertising in with a software update after the fact. It's particularly egregious because they've recognised the equivalence of ads and charging you money on their tablet range which I think you can buy at a discount if you agree to have ads shown to you on the home screen.
Bin them. Bin Amazon Prime too. Be sure to tell them why you're doing it.
Cable was originally advert-free. It was slipped in gradually over time. They got away with it because people put up with it and didn't call foul and stop subscribing. Expect Amazon, Netflix, everyone to do it. Precedent was set with cable subscriptions. The bar is set very low, and our resistance is known to be pitiful.
That would be altruistic but I don't think that enough people will do it with me (and I have no interest in organising them to do so). I'm tempted to return the device since they've changed the fundamental functionality, IMO.
But why would I ever be interested in watching a season in progress when I can watch backlog until it finishes, then watch the entire season on my own schedule?
There's a social aspect to popular TV shows that are airing.
If you keep up to date you can discuss the EP on various forums right after it airs. Then it's something to talk about with your co-workers who are also fans.
Two reasons. First, because during the initial transition from cable, you might want to keep watching existing shows from where you left off, without having to wait for the end of the season. And second, because other people watch the show live and you want to keep up with them.
The first problem goes away after the initial transition, and the second goes away when everyone you know also uses Netflix and/or Amazon Prime. But don't underestimate the value in getting people to switch.
I expect the same too. In a capitalist economy, companies need to market their products and they will always find a way to pay media companies for eye time. At the outset, I think fighting ads is. Lost cause though depending on the novelty of media there may be temporary relief.
> Really? So why don't they show more commercials, or charge more for the service?
Because there's a balance where doing more would lead to much more immediate revenue loss. Few people would watch a channel with 20 minutes of commercials for every 10 minutes of show, but network TV has already demonstrated that people will watch shows with 8 minutes of commercials for every 22 minutes of show, especially if they don't have a good alternative. The loss of customers from such a move takes longer to show up in the bottom line, and it started before alternatives like Netflix existed.
> The reason there are commercials is it allows them to offer the service for less money and most people don't care.
They're not in the business of offering a specific fixed service for as little money as it takes to cover their costs; that logic would apply to a non-profit or co-op, not a for-profit company. For a for-profit company, lowering prices isn't an end, it's a means.
>They're not in the business of offering a specific fixed service for as little money as it takes to cover their costs; that logic would apply to a non-profit or co-op, not a for-profit company. For a for-profit company, lowering prices isn't an end, it's a means.
Of course. There's nothing nefarious going on here. They're constrained by competition, the amount of advertising people will tolerate, and what their customers are willing to pay, but within those constraints they'll set up the business so that between commercials and the monthly fee they make the most money.
Hypothetically, because they've reached a local maxima. And they recognize that their customers like their current product.
As the article itself notes, few people buy a subscription service for one or two shows.
If Netflix can continue to bid high enough to starve its competitors of high-quality content (because it can amortize its costs over a larger subscriber base), then no competitor can grow large enough to compete without running substantial initial deficits (which Netflix can make temporarily worse if they choose to, by overpaying for content and driving prices up).
The goal is to maximize profits. If they show commercials for 30 min every hour, they lose subscribers and devaluate the commercial slots.
Somewhere is the optimal balance, where they have lots of subscribers, and show just the right amount of commercials to prevent people from leaving, and thus maximize the value of the ad slots.
Personally, I don't pay for anything with commercials. I just don't want to pay to be fed ads. Instead I pay for streaming services and movies. But if they want to sell me premium channels without commercials, I'll consider it.
Far less reluctant. Product placement, is so obvious anyway, but the alternative is some fictional name/logo. It doesn't detract from my experience, so I'm okay with it (for now).
Subtle product placement ("we need a product here anyway, do you want it to be yours or your competitors") seems completely fine to me. If the script calls for them to drive a car or drink a soda, and nothing in the plot depends on the details, then why not?
As for "native advertisements": it really depends on genuineness, and disclosure.
> Why can't they just charge tv subscribers the whole amount and get rid of ads on tv?
That's what premium channels (HBO, Cinemax, etc.) do, and they appeal to a different audience than non-premium cable, because most people are more willing to accept the cost of advertising than the cost of paying for premium channels.
In Australia when pay/cable TV first came in it was ad free, but then ads were slowly added to it, first just ads for content on the channel, but then normal ads came in. People were rightly angry about this because they thought that by paying for TV they could skip the ads.
However it turned out that by paying for TV they were signaling to advertisers that they were better off (and willing to spend money for things) than regular free-to-air TV watching people, and therefore their eyeballs were worth more. So now pay/cable TV in Australia has more ads per hour than free to air TV.
Look at the bottom line. Netflix lost 126 million dollars in 3 months. Revenue per user is negative and going down. Needless to say, this can't last. Either price more than doubles, or ads come.
I don't understand what you're reading that's different from what I'm reading. Where do you get this 126 million dollar loss? Netflix reported net income of $66.7MM for the quarter and $186.7MM for the year. [1]
And how could revenue per user be negative? Even if Netflix were burning cash they wouldn't have negative revenue.
Well, Netflix does have advertising in their originals, but it's much less in intrusive than the regular ad breaks. It comes in the form of product placement - characters preferring certain brands of beer, going to certain supermarkets, being fascinated by certain gadgets etc. House of Cards even had a warning about it at the beginning of the show, at least on Netflix UK.
Personally I'm not too bothered by it as long as it's subtle, and so far it has been.
Perhaps I'm just sensitive to it but the House of Cards placement in particular seemed really conspicuous to me. (Maybe especially because they just all had iPhones in the previous season and so there were lots of iPhone shots when they used their phones).
But generally I find I notice the product placement spots because they seem out of the flow of the program, I guess they work best when the brand is more hands-off and lets the creator do it subtly.
I don't even notice them and even if I had I wouldn't mind. I mean characters will use a phone in the series, the production might as well get something out of it. It becomes a problem when the plot is built around the product placement e.g its done a lot in modern family
Out of context like that it seems really obvious, but with the background of the character (he likes playing video games to relax), the first time I saw that it didn't seem so out of place for him to be interested in the gadgets. It does seem incredibly blatant in the clip though.
No, he likes playing video games on his PLAYSTATION(TM) to relax, and it feels like this bit of character detail was kludged in purely to satisfy the product placement requirement.
It's obvious that with a different sponsor the character would have had different behaviours.
I've just started watching House of Cards this month, and there is a disclaimer from Netflix that the show contains product placements, so at least they're being honest about it.
IANAL but I also think it might be illegal not to disclaim it in certain places. Not sure about UK, but it definitely is in certain European countries.
I actually played the amazing game Monument Valley after seeing it in House of Cards. Although from what I can recall this wasn't paid placement so much as the writers just loved the game.
Nokia's banana phone and Matrix comes to mind. I assume it was a product placement or they just picked what at the time was a good looking phone, though it seems odd now.
The Nokia 8110 is the one used in the Matrix. The later model, the 7110, was spring loaded. I still have mine. The spring broke, which is a bit frustrating. At the time it was a really nice phone though.
It helps to remember what phones look like at the time. They were all fairly ugly and blocky. The spring loaded mouthpiece was fairly cool looking. Of course, it doesn't exist. That phone never had a spring in it. That was a modification for the movie and I'm fairly certain you couldn't make out the logo or brand. So I'm guessing this probably wasn't product placement. Imagine the angry customers flocking to the store to see that the phone doesn't do what it did in the movies.
I guess its okay if its subtle, but I'm still scratching my head over an episode of Mr. Robot that was pretty much an Amazon Alexa commercial. The Alexa dialogue didn't do anything to advance the plot or build out the characters or build drama. It was completely tacked on and a bizarre attempt at several minutes of product placement. Worse, the USA Network also runs ads. So it was needless double-dipping.
To be fair, the message I got from that episode was "Alexa is a poorly designed friend replacement for lonely people", so I'm not sure Amazon really got their money's worth there.
Yeah, I saw it asa way to flesh out the anti-social nature of Dom. And I'm not sure if it's the same episode as her Alexa chats, but the scene of the lawyer's apartment going all haunted (via hack) certainly isn't a strong endorsement for smart homes.
Never mind advertising, look at how awful the interface is on Amazon to get an idea of why Netflix's content is crushing it. For instance, Transparent and Catastrophe are both Amazon Prime shows and are reportedly excellent. I have never seen the UI suggest I watch them. It's too busy suggesting I buy something. (Oh yeah, advertising...)
For players: Amazon's interface is much better than it used to be when Prime TV firt began but it has a lot of gimmicks too that take time to understand. Hulu's still buffers or gets stuck on an ad or does something dumb.
Finding stuff: Hulu isn't great for that and I hate my queue/watchlist. I think it was following in the footsteps of Netflix, switching to the big pictures, which I'm assuming is meant for swipe-y screens/tvs more so than the computer browser these days. The findability of items on Amazon is appalling, despite having a generally good selection.
To actually browse, on Prime and Netflix at least, I use instantwatcher.com.
I have an Apple TV, so to watch Amazon content I'm consigned to stream it from my phone using AirPlay.
However, that works surprisingly well. And it has a bonus feature: While the episode is playing, you get annotations on the phone about what actors are on the screen and what music is playing, with the ability to click on them to get bios etc.
(I'm sure this isn't offered on every show streaming on Prime; the last example I remember was Goliath.)
This a million. Hence why I only watch BBC IPlayer, Netflix and somewhat Amazon Prime. No ads.
Also why I don't bother streaming from UK's other commercial channels e.g. ITV and Channel 4 as they are riddled with ads. And you have to log into them which is annoying, not helped by rubbish players especially on Linux. May also be that their programming is mostly irrelevant, e.g. reality show and singing contests etc.
I do endure some ads when streaming sports channels. (Sky sports, BT Sports, Eurosport). But at least then they are limited to before and after the events.
This somehow never fails to anger me with HBO as well. Why are you interrupting a service I'm paying for to advertise...the service? They could just have a previews section in their apps and call it good.
I've been doing TV via iPlayer, (formally) piracy, and now Amazon Prime and Netflix for about five years now. I can't stand watching TV with adverts now, I find it almost impossible to follow a TV show when the story is being interrupted every 15 minutes to bombard me with adverts for things I don't want, so I just don't bother starting.
This, more than anything else, sums up why Netflix is doing so well.
Viewers/subscribers are a zero sum game, as they're not growing as a total in places like the US.
Traditional content was designed in a content-scarce environment (from the few broadcast channels, to a few more cable channels, to VHS, to DVD).
That's not the world we live in anymore: now it's a time-scarce environment.
There's more content (both legacy and new) than I could hope to consume, so I'm only interested in the best content for me. Traditional content providers aren't optimized for micro-targeting.
It's been about 8 years since I've had a cable television subscription, and it now feels really weird that past me was willing to pay $100+ USD/month to have access to television shows filled with commercials. I barely have the patience to sit through a single commercial anymore. Not only am I unlikely to buy any given car, feminine product (as a male), bottle of alcohol, financial product, prescription drug, etc., I simply don't want to reminded 58 bajillion times that I need something I really don't need or want.
I tried to watch Friends on comedy central, which is 20 minutes per episode... each episode had 3 ad slots... 3!!! ad!!! slots... and I was paying £70 a month for that thing, they were trying to milk me out... I've quit sky and I don't miss it at all, and am very glad I quit it.
I've also abandoned Sky to a combination of BT (my broadband provider) and Amazon Prime on a Firestick. In my experience so far Amazon has much less pre-movie advertising and also doesn't interrupt movie end-credits with a very intrusive ad while you are still in the movie's 'zone', which really annoyed me. The downside is the top-up charges of a few quid over and above prime membership costs to get most good films and TV shows. But for the amount I watch TV, this is still affordable, and the overall range of content is much larger than sky, even if you have to pay extra sometimes.
even that short spam fest of commercials prior to the show I wanted to watch on HBO's service was enough to make me cancel after the season ended. I simply didn't want to watch anything else they offered because of unskippable ad spam; its like those horrid DVD ads that some companies still have.
Still, while some of their original content is good I am not subscribing to their service just for that, let alone I don't need six semi super hero shows. If they keep pairing down their catalog I am going to lose interest real fast
I'm going to have to agree. I recently cut the cord and now when I watch network TV (via my DTV tuner) commercials feel really jarring. One of the reasons I cut the cord and got off social media is I began to feel as though many of my thoughts were not my own anymore because I was subjecting myself to daily brainwashing . the further away from those services I get, the more abnormal they seem.
The worst part of TV are the ads DURING the shows. Ads for other shows taking up a quarter of the screen, without regard for the what its blocking under it. Completely ridiculous.
What's interesting to me is that while Netflix is often the primary financier, the traditional studios are still the ones producing the content.
If Netflix has found a worldwide market for content, that's good news for the studios they're hiring to produce that content.
I'm curious if the additional revenue from Netflix, and presumably Amazon, Hulu, and a nervous HBO will be enough to offset the declining revenue from broadcast TV.
Netflix is such a great service, I'd say they are the ones that are truly represent the disruption Silicon Valley dreams of so often in, in the positivest sense. Shame the world around them is less than great. Their existence in the US is being hampered by petty, extortionist ISPs who couldn't tell the truth if their lives depended on it and by dumb licensing and copyright laws. Their catalogue abroad is often less than 10% of the American one (my country has 12% of it! - according to https://www.finder.com/netflix-usa-vs-world-content). I remember, when they finally expanded to my country, I quickly signed up and the first thing I did was search for House of Cards, just to see no results. It was very disappointing, because their original content is really good, in fact good enough that they created the market in which everybody wants to be Netflix, so they are all trying to create quality original programming, and that's a competition I love seeing.
I used to be a Netflix subscriber via VPN, before they officially opened here, but it just became cumbersome and risky to connect (remember the controversy surrounding sketchy Chrome VPN plugins?). Unfortunately, right now I don't have an active subscription at the moment, sadly, because I finished watching most of the things that interested me from their catalogue in 4 months. Kind of a shame because the company that cracks international expansion first is usually the one to stay in those markets.
On the streaming music front, aside from some sketchier ones, Apple Music was one of the first to open up shop here, and I'm still using it with no plans to ever abandon it because it's a great service -- not only that, but Apple decided to offer regionalised pricing, so their is priced very fairly (to compare and contrast, their subscription costs a little more than twice the amount than here, but the country I live in being a poorer one, I think it's perfectly acceptable). On top of that, they have their original content. Even if Spotify managed to come to this market, I wouldn't switch. There was a time when I desperately tried to pay for their service but they did not let me, now I wouldn't, because I already have superior service.
Edit: I can't stand advertising on services, the ads on most American TV channels and services are so bad that I have to stop using them from time to time. It's not exactly the norm in my country, but there was a time when I thought our ads were crazy annoying! Some of it is extra annoying, like YouTube's, I would love to get YouTube Red, but it's not available here, even tho Google introduced some really crappy business practices to try and steer users towards it.
I met a then-CTO of HBO on a train once, talked for a few hours from NYC to upstate. I (digitally) followed the news about him for a bit - it seemed pretty clear from the time we spent talking, and what I saw digitally subsequently, that he tried and failed to get HBO to understand streaming and the web. HBO content is still amazing, and HBO isn't bad, but... It's certainly not as good as Netflix.
It occurs to me that it's a lot easier for Netflix to become HBO, than for HBO to become Netflix - You don't need to build up a tech base, or a talent pool, to make an amazing show - it's all rented or hired per thing, so if you can pay for the talent, it's available, and can start making magic immediately.
Not trying to imply the creation of amazing content is easy, more that the lead time is waaay less than for the creation of tech like Netflix's.
It's more like there was always a lot of pent-up supply of amazing content available. The reason the supply was not finding an outlet was because of the problem that such content doesn't have the mass appeal required to be a hit show on non-premium cable (or, god forbid, a theatrical release movie). So the outlets were limited. HBO was one such premium outlet but it was always limited by the number of primetime hours in the day because of the cable based business model (still is).
Netflix comes along and starts ordering shows where they know the target audience is going to be very limited, say only 10% of all college graduates from big metro areas. That's enough for a show to be Netflix success. Some of them they contract with US production companies (House of Cards, OIT New Black etc.), others they source from non-US TV networks (Sherlock, Black Mirror etc.)
If they have enough of these shows, they can cover most of their target audience and make sure that most people have at least a few original shows keeping them hooked to the $10/month subscription. There's no limit on airtime since Netflix is all on-demand. So now there are dozens (or who knows, even hundreds) of these shows and all they need for you is to get hooked on one or two of those. And a few of them have been legitimate breakout hits like House of Cards, Stranger Things, OITNB etc. Maybe individually none of those shows is as big as Game of Thrones, but combined, they're obviously doing a great job for Netflix.
For HBO to truly compete with Netflix, they'll have to break their "Cable first" model and truly start thinking in terms of unlimited online hours. We'll see when they release their first online only show.
Worth noting two prongs of Netflix's strategy: proven properties (Fuller House) and swinging for the bleachers (Sense 8). The second doesn't always work, but when it does...
When HBO launches a new series, they market to their entire viewer base and arrange/hope for more attention.
When Netflix launches a new series, they know exactly what is similar to it and who watched those things, so they target those viewers first. Odds are, those viewers talk about it in their circles and word/attention spreads. If it blows up further, great! But since they knew exactly how big their starting niche was, they probably (a guess) had their ROI planning based on those.
As noted in the article of the top 10 shows googled last year, 5 were Netflix Originals. They're not just winning, they're blowing away everyone else.
I think my hope is that HBO sticks with the TV "style" - weekly episodes that drop at specific times - while Netflix keeps going with their "new bag of tricks" (binge!).
Diversity is really good, and both of these methods bring something special to the table.
Specifically - You're spot on with Netflix's limited audience appeal per show, and making the work. What HBO really brings to the table is a show that EVERYONE talks about - and by releasing it on a TV-style schedule, we all have time to talk about it. GoT was as much about all the hubub (re: watching twitter when readers knew Red Wedding was coming, and viewers didn't...) as the show itself.
As much as I love Netflix shows, you don't "bond at the watercooler" over them nearly as much, since you have to worry about where someone is in the plot progression, and by the time we've both seen it, the moment has passed. I tell people to go watch Netflix shows, but I talk with people about HBO.
Although many people will doubtless come to Westworld later and watch it in a binge-y way, it was really a blast from the past to watch it week to week and read online discussions, etc. about it. IMO, it's a great example of a series (see also Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, etc.) that really benefit from week-by-week release even if you don't literally watch it in realtime as it's release.
he tried and failed to get HBO to understand streaming
I think it's very difficult when you're in charge of a business with a line of business that's profitable /right now/ to knowingly cannibalise that line of business with a new model that will /make you less money/ - even if the change is vital to keep you in business in 10-20 years time.
After all, if you're making $10 per customer per month, it's bound to be an uphill battle to convince people you should change to a business model that makes you $5 per customer per month.
It's not just difficult, it's a bad idea for you. If you know your company will be successful enough to give you your paycheck for the entire duration you stay there (10-15yrs seems like a reasonable maximum), then you should actively defend the status quo. Why make such investments, stick your neck out, and assume extra risk when you're not going to see the payoff?
This is my theory for why so many companies have outdated business models.
> After all, if you're making $10 per customer per month, it's bound to be an uphill battle to convince people you should change to a business model that makes you $5 per customer per month.
That's something I just didn't get. Netflix has already set the bar by pricing their content at $10/month; why can't HBO do the same?
HBO Go/Now (that's another thing; why two different apps?) is $15/month, but with less content, albeit most of it better than the average Netflix title. So...it's not exactly a losing proposition for them. Why is it such an uphill battle for HBO to do this exactly?
Why wouldn't they want to do that? When they were pushing EME garbage into HTML standard, their main excuse was that it's not because they want DRM, but because without it, major film studios won't release anything through them. That was before they started making their own stuff. And now that they do, where is it DRM-free?
> You're not buying their content.
What stops them from selling it? It's theirs, they can do whatever they want.
They do sell it... on DVD & Blu-ray. If you don't mind spending $120 you can get all four seasons of House Of Cards on DVD. But that would also buy a year of Netflix, and most people would see the Netflix subscription as the better deal.
Yes please. Let me automatically download episodes in the highest quality and watch them the way I like it, in Kodi: always full screen, 24p, CEC. In short, give me a legal usenet alternative.
The same amount as a Netflix HD subscription more or less. Download speed can even be a bit lower than streaming rate, and the connection does not have to be as reliable, so it should be cheaper to provide.
Unfortunately I think I am an outlier. Most people probably like the ready-to-use apps on tv/media box/phone/etc. .
The difference is that I can't access Netflix content after the end of my subscription. With your model I could pay for a month, load as much as I can and watch for the next 6 months. Repeat as necessary.
I'd enjoy a way _to buy_ not DRMed, high quality digital movies. But I don't have any illusions that a subscription model is feasible without DRM.
They just understood the basic, that people can drop 10 bucks a month for an unlimited pass. Meanwhile some other company still try to sell you downloadable 15 years old movies for $15 each ...
"In 2016, Netflix spent $5 billion on original programming. Netflix plans to spend $6 billion creating 1000 hours of new content this year, more than doubling its 2016 lineup."
That's a little bit worrying : double the content, with only a slightly higher budget. I wonder what impact this will have on the quality of the shows. No advertising is great but meaningless when the content is rubbish.
They double the content because they still have all the shows they made last year. That's what makes this model so powerful: new subscribers haven't seen House Of Cards, season 1 yet, so the value proposition keeps getting better.
For additional seasons of their existing shows, they already have sunk costs for sets, props, and all that jazz. I don't know much about the economics of production, but I'm sure there's some sizable cost savings from leveraging those existing assets during subsequent seasons (same for movie sequels).
They've also been pumping out animated kids shows quite heavily. Those are almost certainly less expensive per hour than a lot of their blockbuster hits, and would easily allow for a 66% increase in content-hours with only a 20% budget increase. And, anecdotally, are the types of shows that keep subscriptions active long after parents stop actively watching things. Kids get attached to characters easily, can watch the same season repeat dozens and dozens of times, and benefit from consistency (i.e. not app hopping between Amazon Video, Netflix, Hulu, etc). And the value of Netflix during times like extended traveling and running errands is not to be underestimated.
My subscription would have gone long ago if my daughter weren't so attached to some of their Originals. They're really good at making spinoffs of popular movies (like the Puss in Boots spinoff from Shrek) and popular toys (like Ever After High, based on the Monster High dolls).
I'm concerned, but optimistic overall. I see Netflix benefitting from all these factors:
- existing shows which reduce set/CG/marketing costs;
- lower production costs as shortage of sets and filming equipment is lessened by new supply entering market;
- less need to higher huge stars to sell the idea that the programming is high quality, and with more huge stars willing to do TV, paying not quite as many million dollars to get them;
- expanding into lower cost TV (similar to the Tesla strategy to move downmarket.) Sadly, this means people who enjoy a lot of the existing shows won't have twice as many shows targeted towards them, but it shouldn't affect their perception of Netflix.
Hah. Netflix has a glut of terrible, low-quality shows. I don't care how big their catalogue is if I don't want to see 99% of it.
Moana has been in theatres for a while, so Netflix offers "Lilo and Stich" as a poor-mans Moana. Who do they think I am? Old Netflix could have you watching a big-hit movie in a couple days if you waited for the DVD in the mail.
I wonder what impact this will have on the quality of the shows.
If they're smart, none. You can't just go out and buy quality. Stranger Things for example was a pretty low budget show and most people really quite liked it. Marco Polo on the other hand cost a fuck ton and I've yet to meet anyone who really liked it.
On further thought, I think my best bet is a framework...? Languages are much harder to get off the the ground, but the true beauty* lies in the amazing ideas in which / with which one thinks while programming.
* As opposed to, eh, merely aesthetic beauty - that code looks good.
If you are ever interested in pursuing aesthetic beauty as a developer, you might enjoy generative/procedural art.
Tools like Processing[0] are very accessible even to those with minimal programming experience, and can be very powerful and fluid environments if you have any familiarity with Java or similar languages (or clojure[1]). It's very easy to iterate rapidly (even some live-coding elements) and have a lot of visual feedback, such that it almost feels more like sculpting than a normal programming workflow.
Thank you! But not the thing. I don't want to use software to make something beautiful, or make software that is used to make beautiful things; I want to make beautiful code. Does that make sense?
(Unless you think the codebases of these projects are themselves beautiful? Then they might be a The Thing)
> Very few people will join Netflix for just one title,
Obviously, because it would cost too much. However with enough customers paying monthly for the full service maybe they will start thinking about video on demand. I'd pay 1 Euro (not more) per episode.
Am I the only one who feels "Netflix Original" became a negative this year?
When I first signed up, Netflix Original meant high quality shows produced/funded by Netflix itself, like House Of Cards & Orange Is The New Black & Daredevil. Netflix Original meant the best TV you've ever watched.
Now Netflix Original often means terrible unfunny stand-up comedy, or made-for-TV movies by big name stars phoning it in. Much of the new Netflix Original content is rated one-star - on my account I see Wet Hot American Summer, XOXO, Easy, Chelsea, A Very Murray Christmas, The Ranch, Mascots, Chewing Gum, Richie Rich, Lost & Found, all with one star. And there's a ton more. Worse is that it keeps pushing those as recommendations to me, even though it thinks I'll only rate them 1 star.
I can't see myself cancelling my Netflix yet, but there have been times when I've been tempted to pause it for a month or so.
He's not complaining about the compilation, he's complaining that every single Netflix Original movie from the compilation has one star. It doesn't matter if the results are different from everyone, you can access this content on your account.
Netflix is in a growth phase and, no surprise, they're catering a much bigger audience now. Besides all the shows you listed, it's recently aired Stranger Things, Narcos, The Crown, Longmire, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmitt, The OA, etc. These shows aren't going to appeal to everyone, but they're going to be somebody's favorite show.
Daredevil never really did it for me. I thought their Wet Hot American Summer reboot was really entertaining. Go figure.
Lots of the Netflix Originals aren't by Netflix at all. In Australia, The Expanse is a "Netflix Original", even though in America it's on Amazon Prime Video and was made by SyFy. Glitch is a "Netflix Original" in the US, but it was made by ABC Australia. And we have Designated Survivor as a Netflix Original in Australia, even though it's made by ABC Studios and currently airing on ABC in the US.
It seems Netflix Original now just means "currently Netflix holds exclusive rights to this show in your country".
> Glitch is a "Netflix Original" in the US, but it was made by ABC Australia.
Netflix is on the production team for the second season.
> It seems Netflix Original now just means "currently Netflix holds exclusive rights to this show in your country".
That's not really out-of-line with current industry norms though. Larger production companies buy the rights to films made by smaller production companies and put their names on them all the time. For example, Moon comes to mind. Sony didn't produce it but it's a "Sony Picture". Or Primer, StudioCanal had nothing to do with the production but is currently listed as the production company.
Nextflix Original is just a name for series that Netflix bought the exclusive rights to (in certain countries). There was an article the other day about an independent documentary maker that was approached by Netflix to make his documentary an Original, offering a certain amount of money (that I believe was higher than others would offer), but with the caveat that they would also give Netflix the right to make (big) alterations. The documentary maker declined.
Daredevil S1 was 7-8 episodes of content stretched over 13 episodes, with clear front-loading of the good stuff (where did the decent fight choreography and good direction/camera work go after the first few episodes?!). If they'd hit that same level of overall quality again I'd have stopped watching, but fortunately S2 and Jessica Jones were quite a bit better overall, though not perfect—haven't seen Luke Cage yet, can't vouch for it.
Luke Cage moves slowly. It oozes atmosphere, but it takes its time. I admit I dropped out after a while too.
My wife is not into superheroes and SF at all, but she loved Jessica Jones. She doesn't like Daredevil or Luke Cage at all.
There's plenty of other stuff to watch, though. We recently discovered a new season of Doctor Who, which I thought was supposed to be disappearing from Netflix. But for everything I could watch on regular TV, watching it on Netflix is simply more convenient, because we get to control exactly when and how to watch it, and Netflix keeps track of where we are.
It's certainly a polarizing show! I think S1 was lifted considerably by the presence of Vincent D'Onofrio as the Kingpin, who acted as a focal point of Daredevil's efforts. But S2 had no such character.
The Punisher was an attempt at a similarly complex figure, but it failed miserably, particularly because, for all of the Daredevil group's shenanigans, we know he's a protagonist, not a classic bad guy. The central dilemma that the series tried to elevate to a theme was Daredevil's non-lethal approach vs. the Punisher's lethal one, which makes for weak TV indeed. Especially since all of Daredevil's enemies were ineffectual McGuffins that only existed to be mowed down.
It was also bogged down by the fact that the character (or his portrayal, at least) was humourless, dour and unpleasant, adding to the existing roster of humourless, dour and unpleasant characters (including Daredevil himself, who must be one of the most boring superheroes of all time, as portrayed by the show). Karen Page could have contributed some heart to the proceedings, but as in S1 her role was merely being constantly on the verge of tears in every single scene.
Oh, and the ninjas. Apparently the comic is all about ninjas, but still. Ninjas, really?
In the end, I felt the show only come alive around Foggy, especially when he was being a brilliant lawyer. I'd personally like to see Daredevil replaced with a courtroom comedy/drama around Foggy Nelson.
Strongly agree about the ninjas. What a generic non-threat for a character like this. "Oh, look, another roomfull of ninjas. Bet this will be some riveting action. eyeroll"
And their half-assed effort to have that one Special ninja, but that never went anywhere. So strange.
The portrayal of Kingpin was the only reason I didn't stop watching Season 1 about half way through.
S2 had much better work on the action scenes (except The Hallway Fight near the beginning of S1, which remains the best in either season and had to be the work of someone they only brought in for that one episode) until the very end when S1's filmed-by-enthusiastic-amateurs-with-a-love-for-flat-medium-shots-and-one-camcorder-in-a-warehouse aesthetic came back with a vengeance.
Agreed about Foggy. Side characters and villains save the show, really.
> but they're going to be somebody's favorite show.
^ is the thing. My dad was really into this teenage Battle Royale type series, even though I thought it was absolute crap. Netflix is an international company, aggressively expanded everywhere. What one person considers crap and shovelware is someone else's favorite series.
Compare it to idk, games. There's a load of very weird games that just don't sell at all in the US, but catch on like crazy in Japan (for example). I hear rumours of this bad-looking brick video game that's objectively bad, but kids love it. Same with Runescape for example. And there's probably loads more similar things.
tl;dr, someone will like it, and I'm sure that Netflix is well-aware of this. They probably have lots of statistics that roughly estimate how many subscribers they get (or retain) for what show in what demographic.
Negative reviews don't matter if a show still gets them 100K subscribers.
The Expanse also claims to be a Netflix Original, which surprised me, because I thought Syfy aired it first. But since I don't get Syfy, I'm happy to watch it on Netflix.
Yes, "Netflix Original" can be very misleading. In most cases, it just indicates that Netflix owns exclusive distribution rights to a show in your particular market. They may have had nothing to do with the production of the content.
A Very Murray Christmas shows up as 3.5 stars for me. Note that the stars you see are how much Netflix thinks that YOU will like the show, not how much EVERYONE likes the show.
And this is the most confusing part of Netflix for me. I'm very selective in what I watch, and Netflix partly know it, but the star system is wrong. I have to check IMDB every time when I see a show or a movie with an interesting title/plot but 1 or 2 stars. It's almost as if they don't want me to watch their content.
I would prefer a lot better if it's displayed the average rating on Netflix or from IMDB for example.
"The problem isn't thinking machines, it's letting machines do the thinking for you."
Whether powered by algos or people, any rating system is "letting a machine do the thinking for you". Take the ten(?) minutes you spend researching the thing to watch ten minutes of the thing, and I bet you more often than not you'll know whether you want to watch it.
That makes sense. But in that case, it's bizarre to put 1-star recommendations in the "Top Picks For You" section. Feels like that section should be exclusively 4 & 5 star picks, no?
[I'm glad someone got a higher rating for Very Murray Christmas, I like some of his movies. Perhaps I'll give it a try.]
It's "OK." Not remotely one of Murray's best films but hardly a waste of time.
On the broader topic, I'm not sure anyone has really figured out how to do recommendations well whether film, music, TV, restaurants, or other products. And the more "clever" and personalized a system tries to be, the more likely it is to throw out some really bizarre recommendations.
For movies, you could try MovieLens. I started using it a lot once Netflix's recommendations were becoming inaccurate for me. You can choose between 4 different algorithms, there's tagging to classify what you like/don't like about a movie, and lots of stats to help you understand the algorithms & your own taste. It's run by the University of Minnesota.
Someone I know did a lot of work on music recommendation and gave some presentations on it (including at SXSW as I recall). It's a harder problem than one might naively expect.
I agree. I think their originals have become rather formulaic. That may be due to the sheer amount of content they are producing but to me it seems as if they try to make use of established categories, genres, themes and styles over and over again. Don't get me wrong - it's not bad content but I miss the willingness to experiment, to ignore their statistics to a degree and to stop working on faster horses. That's what makes exceptional content that stands out.
I think it's more of a sign that Netflix is trying to go more niche. Instead of releasing a few show that everybody kind of likes, they're trying to make more shows that will each a have different smaller core audience that loves it.
I wont be cancelling the service any time soon, but I agree a lot of the content is just not that great. Netflix is basically going with an approach of providing as much content as they can based on viewership data. The problem is when you do this the quality really begins to show. Further everyone is raving over Netflix and their quality with single seasons, but we're seeing what happens on shows that hit 2, 3, 4 seasons. OITNB is getting stale, House of Cards declined hard, Kimmy Schmidt season 1 & 2 were vastly different in feel, the Marvel shows are really beginning to turn into slogs, etc.
Netflix original content is amazing. IMO, they are the foundation of a new golden age of television.
Honestly, if you browse Netflix originals and choose one with 5 stars, and give it 3 episodes, you're most likely going to be hooked and start binge watching into the wee morning hours.
I speak from very recent experience -- first with Stranger Things, then Travelers (it's fantastic), and now Lovesick (possibly the funniest comedy I have ever seen and also my wife's new favorite show).
Although I really like Lovesick, it is only an original since the second season. That might be a really good strategy though, just buy up the best (cancelled) gems and let the original crew create more of it. They should have done that with Party Down too.
There is basically a line break between talking about the results and drawing conclusions. Nothing explains why the success should come from original content. Sure, it's a factor, but calling it The Reason is awkward.
Also I don't think Netflix has won the streaming wars, already. I use both Netflix and Amazon (with two more competitors I don't use, in my country). And they are actually different enough to both survive together. Netflix is the everybody solution: cheap, broad, but certainly not covering all corners. Amazon is the "rich" solution: You can have nearly everything there is, but for some of it you need to pay premium (i.e., buy/rent the movie despite paying for prime already).
Well, the fact that they're the only TV service that doesn't shove you "We don't want your money, go away" screen to most of the world is helping their subscriber count. And since they're a monthly billed service, adding a few 10 millions subscribers at 10EUR a month does help a bit with bottom line.
Meanwhile, HBO Now and other cable fossils still show "We refuse to accept your 15EUR/month" screens to most EU and world countries. Serves them right.
True. Last year the number of non-US subscribers overtook the number of US subscribers of Netflix. They are now starting to invest in non-English content as well. Should be interesting, as long as they keep offering their own content globally.
Netflix still suffers from a fragmented back catalogue though, where non-Netflix Original content can only be viewed in certain geographic regions.
It makes me happy as a Norwegian living in the UK that the major Norwegian language series (Lillyhammer, Occupied, Nobel) are now available on Netflix in the UK.
I still hope they can go even further and offer globally their back catalogue of kids shows in Norwegian language currently only available in Netflix Norway. I noticed some UK shows are available with Norwegian subtitles but for the smallest it would be good to have the audio track as well.
This is probably all down to what ever rights agreements they have signed with the local publishers. And would apply to every countries catalogue and agreements, so not an easy negotiation.
As Hollywood discovered in the 30's and 40's, controlling both production and distribution simultaneously can be very profitable. However, they also discovered that anti-trust lawsuits suck[1]. Refuse to show your competitors' movies in your theaters and millions of voting consumers begin to grumble.
Netflix's execs have some serious cajones to go where Hollywood went almost a century ago. They're going to need to be very careful in order to avoid government interference. Showing even a hint of favoritism towards their own content could land them in heaps of trouble. Maybe online distribution will be viewed differently than cinemas were, or maybe it won't.
Interesting. At home we've grown increasingly dissatisfied with Netflix. It takes forever to find anything good to watch. There was a time when they had reasonably current good movies. Now it can take us 30 minutes of clicking around to find something decent and, more often than not, we give up.
Let's put it this way, we are finding that we are recording dozens of movies shown on the FX channel an end-up watching these recordings, even though FX is great about ruining the experience with pointless commentary and tons of commercials (thankfully fast-forward on the DVR takes care of that).
FX (and others) have had better content for at least a year. Not sure why we keep paying Netflix. I need to have a serious look at Amazon video and other options.
271 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 293 ms ] threadBut there will always be someone bummed out.
Edit: apparently at least not within Australia.
You're right about Top Gun, though.
http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/netflix-cw-streaming-licensi...
Edit, source: http://www.businessinsider.com/blockbuster-ceo-passed-up-cha...
Those aren't the the part of old media that people are dissatisfied with. Who decides what gets produced? How do advertisers affect the decisions? Isn't that what is changing? Also, aren't the decisions at that level what viewers tend to be dissatisfied with?
But this isn't Netflix producing high quality content while the studios lose out. It's Netflix paying the studios for quality content.
It's pretty much gotten to the point where, if there's an older/less popular movie you may want to watch, there's a good chance you'll need to just buy it.
The streaming/cloud tech company sort of came later.
Though most of the ad's I see have a handsome margin added to the product that I neither want nor if I did I could find somewhere on ebay cheaper.
The only thing today that directed me to specific products and services are sites like hackernews, youtube channels like Eli the Computer Guy, and Louis Rossmann. I've donated about $500AUD to different youtube gaming review channels (because I like their content). I've donated to schools and donated my time with teaching programming. Though do I trust a advertisement GIF or Ads in the middle of a youtube video (hell no!).
Deep down I do want advertisement to get better and I DO want them to target me with meaning full advertisement. Though it still is a game of pop-ups in the middle of the screen of Skype, News, Web-sites all wanting to TELL me about how special they're.
I really hope Netflix disrupts this in some way and not become another engine for bombarding users with ads.
I tolerate quick ads. But lengthy or too many consecutive ads, and I switch channels and never return.
I would probably prefer more frequent very very brief ad breaks than infrequent longer ad break. Better then to be very infrequent, middle ground is the most annoying.
I am sure there have been many statistical analysis of ad break lengths, frequencies and lost viewers. And that there are big differences between countries.
I can understand general commercial channels needs ads. Not everyone can be Netflix or tv license subsidised. But that is also what they compete against so they can't have too many ads.
I remember whenever I am in the states that I am shocked at how much commercials there are during the shows on US network tv channels. And when visiting family in Norway at Christmas the financially struggling TV2 seemed to have extended their ad breaks so much that none of us watched their channels any more.
I have no idea how to do that.
Google at least had something of a workaround with their various efforts to provide access, but I don't see how they are going to circumvent the tollbooths which are popping up on the last mile.
Sounds good! <goes to Google>
> "HBO GO. It's HBO. Anywhere."
Awesome!
> "To access HBO GO℠, you must reside within the fifty states of the United States of America."
Oh. That anywhere.
Fortunately they finally came to their senses and now offer HBO "Now", which is a separate, online-only, offering that doesn't require cable.
I wouldn't be surprised if Now is still geo-blocked though.
My biggest pet peeve is that everything has to be graphical though. I'd much prefer a list of filterable shows like the steam games list.
Anyhow, they're killing it on every front, and it costs what, $10/month? I'd pay much more. Anyhow good job Netflix.
"tl;dr: Advertising ruins everything, which is why netflix originals are better than cable TV shows."
https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/5ou7px/netflixs_...
Which amazingly we don't do.
Why cancel a cushy $10 Netflix subscription when 1 ad pops up every session?
A year later
Why cancel a cushy $12 Netflix subscription when 5 ads pop up every session?
5 years later
Why cancel a cushy $20 Netflix subscription when 10 ads pop up every session?
Do you see where this is going?
Ad and subscription creep is a very real thing, and consumer will not "protest" because behaving is so easy when they betray your trust an inch at a time.
Oh you don't like google and facebook eventually abusing what they know about you? Don't use their services.
Think about what your local cable company charges for HBO. They have no advertising and programming is pretty good. Back in the day it was $20/month, now it's something close to $10/mo, right?
What would your cable bill look like if every single channel was $10/month?
Of course, Netflix is well worth the subscription and if you don't watch a lot of TV, it has enough content to keep you entertained for a while. But I've noticed that I discuss HBO shows more with my friends/family than Netflix ones.
A former Netflix tech guy once told me that "People get Netflix for the movies and stay for the TV shows." Though that's probably less true than it used to be given Netflix Originals and a pretty wide recognition that their streaming movie catalog is limited. Today it's probably the Originals that drive the purchasing (as with HBO).
Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, Sex and the City, Entourage, etc., all well before Netflix did originals.
Netflix has obviously run with the idea though. I'd love to see Netflix and HBO merge actually.
HBO was doing that long before Netflix had original programming and Netflix, fairly overtly -- as in, I'm pretty sure I remember Netflix execs saying this -- was following HBO's arc rather than vice versa.
It happened.
Lately I'd agree, but a few years ago that didn't have much and it was mostly high quality. So many of netflixs originals seem to fall into the super hero category that I'm not interested in.
Which ones were those? Are you sure they were Netflix originals?
It is true that, if you start slicing out ESPN, A&E, etc. it would theoretically be possible to subscribe to an overall lower cable bill but the cable cos would almost certainly raise per-channel (or mini-bundle) pricing to compensate.
Everyone passed on Mad Men except this little movie-rerun channel called AMC. Would Walking Dead have happened without it?
The secret is that there's no "whole amount", because that would imply the concept of "enough money". There's no such thing as "enough money".
I mean that entirely non-sarcastically; to the extent it doesn't go to cover their costs, it goes to increase their profit, which has no upper bound. If they've found a way to extract more money, they'll do it. They question then becomes "to what extent have they found a larger revenue stream, and to what extent have they obtained more money now by alienating customers and driving them to other services".
Losing subscribers is fine if they don't go anywhere else (because they can't), but losing subscribers to a competitor is a risky move.
I've never been so upset about a product like this. I think I paid ~70GBP for the Fire TV and 20 each for two Fire TV sticks and then they sneak advertising in with a software update after the fact. It's particularly egregious because they've recognised the equivalence of ads and charging you money on their tablet range which I think you can buy at a discount if you agree to have ads shown to you on the home screen.
Cable was originally advert-free. It was slipped in gradually over time. They got away with it because people put up with it and didn't call foul and stop subscribing. Expect Amazon, Netflix, everyone to do it. Precedent was set with cable subscriptions. The bar is set very low, and our resistance is known to be pitiful.
I don't think that's true, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13460306
> Bin them. Bin Amazon Prime too.
That would be altruistic but I don't think that enough people will do it with me (and I have no interest in organising them to do so). I'm tempted to return the device since they've changed the fundamental functionality, IMO.
But why would I ever be interested in watching a season in progress when I can watch backlog until it finishes, then watch the entire season on my own schedule?
If you keep up to date you can discuss the EP on various forums right after it airs. Then it's something to talk about with your co-workers who are also fans.
The first problem goes away after the initial transition, and the second goes away when everyone you know also uses Netflix and/or Amazon Prime. But don't underestimate the value in getting people to switch.
Really? So why don't they show more commercials, or charge more for the service?
The reason there are commercials is it allows them to offer the service for less money and most people don't care.
Because there's a balance where doing more would lead to much more immediate revenue loss. Few people would watch a channel with 20 minutes of commercials for every 10 minutes of show, but network TV has already demonstrated that people will watch shows with 8 minutes of commercials for every 22 minutes of show, especially if they don't have a good alternative. The loss of customers from such a move takes longer to show up in the bottom line, and it started before alternatives like Netflix existed.
> The reason there are commercials is it allows them to offer the service for less money and most people don't care.
They're not in the business of offering a specific fixed service for as little money as it takes to cover their costs; that logic would apply to a non-profit or co-op, not a for-profit company. For a for-profit company, lowering prices isn't an end, it's a means.
Of course. There's nothing nefarious going on here. They're constrained by competition, the amount of advertising people will tolerate, and what their customers are willing to pay, but within those constraints they'll set up the business so that between commercials and the monthly fee they make the most money.
> Why can't they just charge tv subscribers the whole amount and get rid of ads on tv?
It's because doing that would mean artificially constraining their own business when they don't have to do that. So why would they?
As the article itself notes, few people buy a subscription service for one or two shows.
If Netflix can continue to bid high enough to starve its competitors of high-quality content (because it can amortize its costs over a larger subscriber base), then no competitor can grow large enough to compete without running substantial initial deficits (which Netflix can make temporarily worse if they choose to, by overpaying for content and driving prices up).
So essentially, lack of competition.
Somewhere is the optimal balance, where they have lots of subscribers, and show just the right amount of commercials to prevent people from leaving, and thus maximize the value of the ad slots.
Personally, I don't pay for anything with commercials. I just don't want to pay to be fed ads. Instead I pay for streaming services and movies. But if they want to sell me premium channels without commercials, I'll consider it.
As for "native advertisements": it really depends on genuineness, and disclosure.
To pay the bills.
> Why can't they just charge tv subscribers the whole amount and get rid of ads on tv?
That's what premium channels (HBO, Cinemax, etc.) do, and they appeal to a different audience than non-premium cable, because most people are more willing to accept the cost of advertising than the cost of paying for premium channels.
However it turned out that by paying for TV they were signaling to advertisers that they were better off (and willing to spend money for things) than regular free-to-air TV watching people, and therefore their eyeballs were worth more. So now pay/cable TV in Australia has more ads per hour than free to air TV.
Look at the bottom line. Netflix lost 126 million dollars in 3 months. Revenue per user is negative and going down. Needless to say, this can't last. Either price more than doubles, or ads come.
And how could revenue per user be negative? Even if Netflix were burning cash they wouldn't have negative revenue.
[1 (xlsx)] http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/NFLX/3717249512x0x924...
Personally I'm not too bothered by it as long as it's subtle, and so far it has been.
But generally I find I notice the product placement spots because they seem out of the flow of the program, I guess they work best when the brand is more hands-off and lets the creator do it subtly.
No, he likes playing video games on his PLAYSTATION(TM) to relax, and it feels like this bit of character detail was kludged in purely to satisfy the product placement requirement.
It's obvious that with a different sponsor the character would have had different behaviours.
I can see why you'd consider it heavy handed. Had I watched that in the episode proper, it would have set off the 'placement ad!' bell in my head.
However, as stated elsewhere, that's orders of magnitude less invasive than a real ad., and it would not break the flow of the show, for me, at all.
It's really the same kind of exchange I have actually been involved with many times in real life.
http://neuro.me.uk/bitsnbobs/matrixphone/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_7110
Slow, ugly, poor UX.
Netflix on the same device is excellent.
Every time I use Hulu, I say "I wish this UI was half as good as Amazon's."
For players: Amazon's interface is much better than it used to be when Prime TV firt began but it has a lot of gimmicks too that take time to understand. Hulu's still buffers or gets stuck on an ad or does something dumb.
Finding stuff: Hulu isn't great for that and I hate my queue/watchlist. I think it was following in the footsteps of Netflix, switching to the big pictures, which I'm assuming is meant for swipe-y screens/tvs more so than the computer browser these days. The findability of items on Amazon is appalling, despite having a generally good selection.
To actually browse, on Prime and Netflix at least, I use instantwatcher.com.
However, that works surprisingly well. And it has a bonus feature: While the episode is playing, you get annotations on the phone about what actors are on the screen and what music is playing, with the ability to click on them to get bios etc.
(I'm sure this isn't offered on every show streaming on Prime; the last example I remember was Goliath.)
Also why I don't bother streaming from UK's other commercial channels e.g. ITV and Channel 4 as they are riddled with ads. And you have to log into them which is annoying, not helped by rubbish players especially on Linux. May also be that their programming is mostly irrelevant, e.g. reality show and singing contests etc.
I do endure some ads when streaming sports channels. (Sky sports, BT Sports, Eurosport). But at least then they are limited to before and after the events.
No third-party ads. Prime pre-roll advertises its shows in its own show.
Viewers/subscribers are a zero sum game, as they're not growing as a total in places like the US.
Traditional content was designed in a content-scarce environment (from the few broadcast channels, to a few more cable channels, to VHS, to DVD).
That's not the world we live in anymore: now it's a time-scarce environment.
There's more content (both legacy and new) than I could hope to consume, so I'm only interested in the best content for me. Traditional content providers aren't optimized for micro-targeting.
For some odd reason they cut out the ads although you have to create an account and give them a Scottish address and postcode.
Caveat/ the app sucks btw so you have to use the web version.
There are occasional gems worth the effort, but not many.
I tried to watch Friends on comedy central, which is 20 minutes per episode... each episode had 3 ad slots... 3!!! ad!!! slots... and I was paying £70 a month for that thing, they were trying to milk me out... I've quit sky and I don't miss it at all, and am very glad I quit it.
Still, while some of their original content is good I am not subscribing to their service just for that, let alone I don't need six semi super hero shows. If they keep pairing down their catalog I am going to lose interest real fast
If Netflix has found a worldwide market for content, that's good news for the studios they're hiring to produce that content.
I'm curious if the additional revenue from Netflix, and presumably Amazon, Hulu, and a nervous HBO will be enough to offset the declining revenue from broadcast TV.
I used to be a Netflix subscriber via VPN, before they officially opened here, but it just became cumbersome and risky to connect (remember the controversy surrounding sketchy Chrome VPN plugins?). Unfortunately, right now I don't have an active subscription at the moment, sadly, because I finished watching most of the things that interested me from their catalogue in 4 months. Kind of a shame because the company that cracks international expansion first is usually the one to stay in those markets.
On the streaming music front, aside from some sketchier ones, Apple Music was one of the first to open up shop here, and I'm still using it with no plans to ever abandon it because it's a great service -- not only that, but Apple decided to offer regionalised pricing, so their is priced very fairly (to compare and contrast, their subscription costs a little more than twice the amount than here, but the country I live in being a poorer one, I think it's perfectly acceptable). On top of that, they have their original content. Even if Spotify managed to come to this market, I wouldn't switch. There was a time when I desperately tried to pay for their service but they did not let me, now I wouldn't, because I already have superior service.
Edit: I can't stand advertising on services, the ads on most American TV channels and services are so bad that I have to stop using them from time to time. It's not exactly the norm in my country, but there was a time when I thought our ads were crazy annoying! Some of it is extra annoying, like YouTube's, I would love to get YouTube Red, but it's not available here, even tho Google introduced some really crappy business practices to try and steer users towards it.
In that entire article, there's not a single mention of HBO Go. Looks like Netflix succeeded.
0: http://gizmodo.com/5980103/netflix-the-goal-is-to-become-hbo...
It occurs to me that it's a lot easier for Netflix to become HBO, than for HBO to become Netflix - You don't need to build up a tech base, or a talent pool, to make an amazing show - it's all rented or hired per thing, so if you can pay for the talent, it's available, and can start making magic immediately.
Not trying to imply the creation of amazing content is easy, more that the lead time is waaay less than for the creation of tech like Netflix's.
Netflix comes along and starts ordering shows where they know the target audience is going to be very limited, say only 10% of all college graduates from big metro areas. That's enough for a show to be Netflix success. Some of them they contract with US production companies (House of Cards, OIT New Black etc.), others they source from non-US TV networks (Sherlock, Black Mirror etc.)
If they have enough of these shows, they can cover most of their target audience and make sure that most people have at least a few original shows keeping them hooked to the $10/month subscription. There's no limit on airtime since Netflix is all on-demand. So now there are dozens (or who knows, even hundreds) of these shows and all they need for you is to get hooked on one or two of those. And a few of them have been legitimate breakout hits like House of Cards, Stranger Things, OITNB etc. Maybe individually none of those shows is as big as Game of Thrones, but combined, they're obviously doing a great job for Netflix.
For HBO to truly compete with Netflix, they'll have to break their "Cable first" model and truly start thinking in terms of unlimited online hours. We'll see when they release their first online only show.
When HBO launches a new series, they market to their entire viewer base and arrange/hope for more attention.
When Netflix launches a new series, they know exactly what is similar to it and who watched those things, so they target those viewers first. Odds are, those viewers talk about it in their circles and word/attention spreads. If it blows up further, great! But since they knew exactly how big their starting niche was, they probably (a guess) had their ROI planning based on those.
As noted in the article of the top 10 shows googled last year, 5 were Netflix Originals. They're not just winning, they're blowing away everyone else.
Diversity is really good, and both of these methods bring something special to the table.
Specifically - You're spot on with Netflix's limited audience appeal per show, and making the work. What HBO really brings to the table is a show that EVERYONE talks about - and by releasing it on a TV-style schedule, we all have time to talk about it. GoT was as much about all the hubub (re: watching twitter when readers knew Red Wedding was coming, and viewers didn't...) as the show itself.
As much as I love Netflix shows, you don't "bond at the watercooler" over them nearly as much, since you have to worry about where someone is in the plot progression, and by the time we've both seen it, the moment has passed. I tell people to go watch Netflix shows, but I talk with people about HBO.
After all, if you're making $10 per customer per month, it's bound to be an uphill battle to convince people you should change to a business model that makes you $5 per customer per month.
This is my theory for why so many companies have outdated business models.
That's something I just didn't get. Netflix has already set the bar by pricing their content at $10/month; why can't HBO do the same?
HBO Go/Now (that's another thing; why two different apps?) is $15/month, but with less content, albeit most of it better than the average Netflix title. So...it's not exactly a losing proposition for them. Why is it such an uphill battle for HBO to do this exactly?
This isn't a DVD that you physically own and can make a strong case for format shifting to watch on other devices.
Why wouldn't they want to do that? When they were pushing EME garbage into HTML standard, their main excuse was that it's not because they want DRM, but because without it, major film studios won't release anything through them. That was before they started making their own stuff. And now that they do, where is it DRM-free?
> You're not buying their content.
What stops them from selling it? It's theirs, they can do whatever they want.
Who needs obsolete physical media these days? Where are they selling files?
I'd enjoy a way _to buy_ not DRMed, high quality digital movies. But I don't have any illusions that a subscription model is feasible without DRM.
They've also been pumping out animated kids shows quite heavily. Those are almost certainly less expensive per hour than a lot of their blockbuster hits, and would easily allow for a 66% increase in content-hours with only a 20% budget increase. And, anecdotally, are the types of shows that keep subscriptions active long after parents stop actively watching things. Kids get attached to characters easily, can watch the same season repeat dozens and dozens of times, and benefit from consistency (i.e. not app hopping between Amazon Video, Netflix, Hulu, etc). And the value of Netflix during times like extended traveling and running errands is not to be underestimated.
My subscription would have gone long ago if my daughter weren't so attached to some of their Originals. They're really good at making spinoffs of popular movies (like the Puss in Boots spinoff from Shrek) and popular toys (like Ever After High, based on the Monster High dolls).
- existing shows which reduce set/CG/marketing costs;
- lower production costs as shortage of sets and filming equipment is lessened by new supply entering market;
- less need to higher huge stars to sell the idea that the programming is high quality, and with more huge stars willing to do TV, paying not quite as many million dollars to get them;
- expanding into lower cost TV (similar to the Tesla strategy to move downmarket.) Sadly, this means people who enjoy a lot of the existing shows won't have twice as many shows targeted towards them, but it shouldn't affect their perception of Netflix.
Moana has been in theatres for a while, so Netflix offers "Lilo and Stich" as a poor-mans Moana. Who do they think I am? Old Netflix could have you watching a big-hit movie in a couple days if you waited for the DVD in the mail.
Netflix has a long way to go.
If they're smart, none. You can't just go out and buy quality. Stranger Things for example was a pretty low budget show and most people really quite liked it. Marco Polo on the other hand cost a fuck ton and I've yet to meet anyone who really liked it.
My wife's pitch to try to get me to watch that was "it's pretty good when Marco Polo's not in the scene". Didn't work.
As a developer, I want to make something as beautiful as a Netflix original. I'm not really sure how, tho...
* As opposed to, eh, merely aesthetic beauty - that code looks good.
Tools like Processing[0] are very accessible even to those with minimal programming experience, and can be very powerful and fluid environments if you have any familiarity with Java or similar languages (or clojure[1]). It's very easy to iterate rapidly (even some live-coding elements) and have a lot of visual feedback, such that it almost feels more like sculpting than a normal programming workflow.
[0]https://processing.org/
[1]https://github.com/quil/quil
(Unless you think the codebases of these projects are themselves beautiful? Then they might be a The Thing)
Obviously, because it would cost too much. However with enough customers paying monthly for the full service maybe they will start thinking about video on demand. I'd pay 1 Euro (not more) per episode.
When I first signed up, Netflix Original meant high quality shows produced/funded by Netflix itself, like House Of Cards & Orange Is The New Black & Daredevil. Netflix Original meant the best TV you've ever watched.
Now Netflix Original often means terrible unfunny stand-up comedy, or made-for-TV movies by big name stars phoning it in. Much of the new Netflix Original content is rated one-star - on my account I see Wet Hot American Summer, XOXO, Easy, Chelsea, A Very Murray Christmas, The Ranch, Mascots, Chewing Gum, Richie Rich, Lost & Found, all with one star. And there's a ton more. Worse is that it keeps pushing those as recommendations to me, even though it thinks I'll only rate them 1 star.
I can't see myself cancelling my Netflix yet, but there have been times when I've been tempted to pause it for a month or so.
Daredevil never really did it for me. I thought their Wet Hot American Summer reboot was really entertaining. Go figure.
It started on A&E 2012 to 2014; it's produced by Warner Horizon -- how is this original to Netflix?
Lots of the Netflix Originals aren't by Netflix at all. In Australia, The Expanse is a "Netflix Original", even though in America it's on Amazon Prime Video and was made by SyFy. Glitch is a "Netflix Original" in the US, but it was made by ABC Australia. And we have Designated Survivor as a Netflix Original in Australia, even though it's made by ABC Studios and currently airing on ABC in the US.
It seems Netflix Original now just means "currently Netflix holds exclusive rights to this show in your country".
Netflix is on the production team for the second season.
> It seems Netflix Original now just means "currently Netflix holds exclusive rights to this show in your country".
That's not really out-of-line with current industry norms though. Larger production companies buy the rights to films made by smaller production companies and put their names on them all the time. For example, Moon comes to mind. Sony didn't produce it but it's a "Sony Picture". Or Primer, StudioCanal had nothing to do with the production but is currently listed as the production company.
Daredevil S1 was 7-8 episodes of content stretched over 13 episodes, with clear front-loading of the good stuff (where did the decent fight choreography and good direction/camera work go after the first few episodes?!). If they'd hit that same level of overall quality again I'd have stopped watching, but fortunately S2 and Jessica Jones were quite a bit better overall, though not perfect—haven't seen Luke Cage yet, can't vouch for it.
My wife is not into superheroes and SF at all, but she loved Jessica Jones. She doesn't like Daredevil or Luke Cage at all.
There's plenty of other stuff to watch, though. We recently discovered a new season of Doctor Who, which I thought was supposed to be disappearing from Netflix. But for everything I could watch on regular TV, watching it on Netflix is simply more convenient, because we get to control exactly when and how to watch it, and Netflix keeps track of where we are.
Stranger Things and Wet Hot American Summer were absolutely perfect in that regard.
(As regards Daredevil season 2, it was unfocused, full of ninjas and superfluous side characters. They completely lost the plot.)
It perhaps speaks to how mediocre-bordering-on-bad season 1 was that I agree with all of that and still think it was quite a bit better.
The Punisher was an attempt at a similarly complex figure, but it failed miserably, particularly because, for all of the Daredevil group's shenanigans, we know he's a protagonist, not a classic bad guy. The central dilemma that the series tried to elevate to a theme was Daredevil's non-lethal approach vs. the Punisher's lethal one, which makes for weak TV indeed. Especially since all of Daredevil's enemies were ineffectual McGuffins that only existed to be mowed down.
It was also bogged down by the fact that the character (or his portrayal, at least) was humourless, dour and unpleasant, adding to the existing roster of humourless, dour and unpleasant characters (including Daredevil himself, who must be one of the most boring superheroes of all time, as portrayed by the show). Karen Page could have contributed some heart to the proceedings, but as in S1 her role was merely being constantly on the verge of tears in every single scene.
Oh, and the ninjas. Apparently the comic is all about ninjas, but still. Ninjas, really?
In the end, I felt the show only come alive around Foggy, especially when he was being a brilliant lawyer. I'd personally like to see Daredevil replaced with a courtroom comedy/drama around Foggy Nelson.
And their half-assed effort to have that one Special ninja, but that never went anywhere. So strange.
The portrayal of Kingpin was the only reason I didn't stop watching Season 1 about half way through.
S2 had much better work on the action scenes (except The Hallway Fight near the beginning of S1, which remains the best in either season and had to be the work of someone they only brought in for that one episode) until the very end when S1's filmed-by-enthusiastic-amateurs-with-a-love-for-flat-medium-shots-and-one-camcorder-in-a-warehouse aesthetic came back with a vengeance.
Agreed about Foggy. Side characters and villains save the show, really.
^ is the thing. My dad was really into this teenage Battle Royale type series, even though I thought it was absolute crap. Netflix is an international company, aggressively expanded everywhere. What one person considers crap and shovelware is someone else's favorite series.
Compare it to idk, games. There's a load of very weird games that just don't sell at all in the US, but catch on like crazy in Japan (for example). I hear rumours of this bad-looking brick video game that's objectively bad, but kids love it. Same with Runescape for example. And there's probably loads more similar things.
tl;dr, someone will like it, and I'm sure that Netflix is well-aware of this. They probably have lots of statistics that roughly estimate how many subscribers they get (or retain) for what show in what demographic.
Negative reviews don't matter if a show still gets them 100K subscribers.
I would prefer a lot better if it's displayed the average rating on Netflix or from IMDB for example.
Whether powered by algos or people, any rating system is "letting a machine do the thinking for you". Take the ten(?) minutes you spend researching the thing to watch ten minutes of the thing, and I bet you more often than not you'll know whether you want to watch it.
[I'm glad someone got a higher rating for Very Murray Christmas, I like some of his movies. Perhaps I'll give it a try.]
On the broader topic, I'm not sure anyone has really figured out how to do recommendations well whether film, music, TV, restaurants, or other products. And the more "clever" and personalized a system tries to be, the more likely it is to throw out some really bizarre recommendations.
https://movielens.org/home
Someone I know did a lot of work on music recommendation and gave some presentations on it (including at SXSW as I recall). It's a harder problem than one might naively expect.
Honestly, if you browse Netflix originals and choose one with 5 stars, and give it 3 episodes, you're most likely going to be hooked and start binge watching into the wee morning hours.
I speak from very recent experience -- first with Stranger Things, then Travelers (it's fantastic), and now Lovesick (possibly the funniest comedy I have ever seen and also my wife's new favorite show).
Netflix quickly changed the name
Also I don't think Netflix has won the streaming wars, already. I use both Netflix and Amazon (with two more competitors I don't use, in my country). And they are actually different enough to both survive together. Netflix is the everybody solution: cheap, broad, but certainly not covering all corners. Amazon is the "rich" solution: You can have nearly everything there is, but for some of it you need to pay premium (i.e., buy/rent the movie despite paying for prime already).
Meanwhile, HBO Now and other cable fossils still show "We refuse to accept your 15EUR/month" screens to most EU and world countries. Serves them right.
Netflix still suffers from a fragmented back catalogue though, where non-Netflix Original content can only be viewed in certain geographic regions.
I still hope they can go even further and offer globally their back catalogue of kids shows in Norwegian language currently only available in Netflix Norway. I noticed some UK shows are available with Norwegian subtitles but for the smallest it would be good to have the audio track as well.
This is probably all down to what ever rights agreements they have signed with the local publishers. And would apply to every countries catalogue and agreements, so not an easy negotiation.
”killing it” is not a positive statement for foreigners! It looks like they are dismissing their content creation department!.
Netflix's execs have some serious cajones to go where Hollywood went almost a century ago. They're going to need to be very careful in order to avoid government interference. Showing even a hint of favoritism towards their own content could land them in heaps of trouble. Maybe online distribution will be viewed differently than cinemas were, or maybe it won't.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....
Let's put it this way, we are finding that we are recording dozens of movies shown on the FX channel an end-up watching these recordings, even though FX is great about ruining the experience with pointless commentary and tons of commercials (thankfully fast-forward on the DVR takes care of that).
FX (and others) have had better content for at least a year. Not sure why we keep paying Netflix. I need to have a serious look at Amazon video and other options.