I've always wondered whether VOD is an inherently unsustainable business model. The big daddy in the space charges $8-12 per month yet people regularly watch upwards of 10 movies per month on the service. That's less than $1 per movie?! Also, this forces anyone doing a similar business to charge even less than that to break into the market, so there reaches a point where we're talking fractions of pennies per movie on some services. How is any of this sustainable given the massive cost of acquiring the content in the first place, and is there any VOD service with healthy profits that you can point me to?
I imagine that one could do well if you break into a niche that isn't really represented in other platforms. If you could make an indie VOD you may be able to get content cheaper and then you can market to those who like indie films.
Spotify provides access to a huge back catalogue and although it probably reduces the value of some content it monetises other old content that was basically dead.
Currently Netflix has a tiny library, when you take into account 50 years of film ripe for rediscovery.
The blockers are that old content that people are willing to pay for is more expensive than you think (tons of competition right now), and that rights management is incredibly expensive and Byzantine even for the big companies. To take the simplest example, what do you do when an attractive property is owned by a company that went out of business, or that can't be reached? And that's just the easiest scenario.
Once you've acquired the content, the marginal cost of a view is very low. So it makes sense to get as many customers as possible even if that means charging a lot less per view. And the stability of subscription income is nice too. I'm sure there are lots of people who have a $10/mo subscription going for years who hardly use the service at all.
I haven't seen any data for video content, but I imagine some content is pay $$$ to steam to as many users for a limited time, but much of it is probably pay $$$ to be able to stream it, plus $ each time it is streamed. And I imagine some deals are based on a share of revenue. I wouldn't be surprised if content was significantly more expensive than bandwidth.
It's expensive to do VOD right, because videos are such huge pieces of data. Plus, the "user experience bar" that Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube have set are pretty high and actually require a fair bit of engineering. There's no "15 minute blog demo" for VOD. The last company I worked for started out in that space, but had to pivot to doing linear television because the market just wasn't there. They built some of the same infrastructure that cable companies now use to do their on-demand services.
The only VOD services with healthy profits are actually content creators themselves. All of the services I just mentioned in the other paragraph have their own original content, and at least Hulu & Netflix are pretty successful at that. This original content keeps people on their service, generating more ad revenue, which is how they make money. Basically, if you're a major studio and have billions of dollars to throw away, VOD is pretty easy ;-)
Source: I worked for a failing VOD/broadcast video company for a couple years.
what is the kind of infrastructure that needs to be built ? Very curious to know what are the big tech challenges if someone wants to build a VOD startup in a niche.
Here are some tech challenges, this is strictly my opinion and shouldn’t be read too deeply, just a casual observation during lunch.
My background is (as a hobby) I’ve built medium-sized >700m PV/m esports analytics apps targetted for Asia, covering CN/most of SEA, and have had to get local connectivity and local hosting as an "outsider"
These countries are fairly insular.
China: GFW (we all know about this), ICP license, network pricing (China Telecom, Unicom, CN2, etc) for international traffic. It’s extremely difficult or impossible to serve Chinese customers from outside of China, especially if you need stable high bandwidth transport (and STUPIDLY EXPENSIVE). Almost all network peering ports in Los Angeles for CN/CU are oversubscribed to death, and CN2 traffic is disgustingly expensive internationally. It’s generally not possible to do anything at all without a “local partnership” type arrangement.
Korea: GFW (Korean censorship is heavy and extreme; there is really no other way putting this, people think SK is very “western”, it is not even close)[0]. You might see news about how Korea has fastest home internet - Korean connectivity is crap as soon as it leaves the country; the country is effectively a LAN, hosting outside of Korea is awful to inside, not possible to compete like that when all your assets are outside the country, and getting hosting is a bitch, and cost is hilarious.
Korea has KYC/“real name verification” laws like China, things like needing to get KSSN via a credit bureau via iPIN/mobile phone verification (since mobile phones also require KSSN to get; and <18s mobile phones are keylogged anyway) collected at registration if you want to do anything social for the most part.
The smaller countries in SEA tended to be a "if you don't speak the language, if you aren't from here, then fuck you, enjoy your highway robbery" to me. I paid bribes or else hardware would "go missing" or things "were impossible to do unfortunately", I paid prices significantly higher than any domestic purchasers would, the companies that had English sites you could literally see the prices have an extra decimal place just switching between the two versions.
I had to do a bunch of logic wrt balancing traffic. I had a server that had multiple physical NICs, each connecting to a different ISP. They don't necessarily like each other, so if I served a PLDT end-user from a Globe connection instead of PLDT, traffic may get forced intentionally through another country. There are incumbent ISPs that control a majority and charge far more that intentionally refuse to peer with any other ISP, and force domestic traffic out of the country to punish those users for not using them.
My site showed user profiles, which obviously includes their usernames. I had physical hardware shut down and removed by police in Thailand because someone had a username mocking the royalty there.
I feel ya. You have no idea how much I've paid in bribes to do even basic things in Thailand.
And a company I used to work for frequently had the same problem with Mexico. Traveling two and from on business led to frequent searches and impounding of very expensive equipment unless a bribe was paid. We started writing it off as an "airport tax."
The mission behind a company like this is admirable, but I can't help but feel like it is the wrong approach to diversity. It reminds me of BET... why would we want to segregate content to one specific channel or network? It feels backwards to me. True diversity would be having this content everywhere.
A service like this is almost like a specialty kitchen item. My fiancée is a stickler for this stuff and it is something I really love about her. She hates speciality, single-use items. Take the cherry-pitter[1]. It's obnoxiously large, like a beefy can opener, and the only thing it does is remove pits from cherries (and, apparently Olives). She doesn't want stuff like that in our kitchen, and I don't blame her.
Regardless of your cultural background, why might you want to buy a standalone TV/streaming package for one vertical of content? I think we'd all agree the future would might involve a-la cart purchases like this... but we aren't there yet. Once you combine your Basic TV via Sling or Playstation Vue, Netflix for the riff-raff, and an add-on luxury package like HBO GO - you don't have any more room for speciality items. They need to be REALLY special in order to work. Just like the cherry pitter – there just isn't any room left in my drawers for a single purpose item.
All the reasons why we can't have unfettered legal access to The Pirate Bay are also reasons why your utopian approach to "true diversity" is wrong-headed.
Nothing to do with an approach to diversity. Just another startup that didn't get traction in its desired vertical.
Look at Viki, a really popular VOD site, acquired by Rakuten for $200 million or so. Focuses heavily on South Korean, Chinese, and Japanese dramas. Segregation? More like making it easy for people who want to watch the shows to find and follow them regularly. Successful? Yep. This sort of media consumption is here now.
AfroStream did the same thing as Viki but instead of Asian countries used the African diaspora. Didn't follow them so don't know what the business reasons are for their failure, but relating it to diversity and segregation seems unwarranted.
It's more like they were targeting the long tail of media consumption, even if unsuccessfully.
As an african from the diaspora I couldn't agree more. I think that one reason they did not succeed is that the people really sensible to the shows they had actually live in Africa instead of in the Diaspora. I know a lot of people in my country that do not watch anymore any movies from the US or from Bollywood. While my friends that are in the diaspora enjoy mainly watching popular shows or movies. The majority of people that did not go to school or cannot read or understand english don't relate to your typical american movie. It is just too far from their reality.
We are all citizen of the world, but it is very difficult for the vast majority of africans to relate to movies about american's daily life or politics. Their reality is simply very different.
IMO Afrostream targeted the wrong audience. Now, one can argue that it would be a very hard sell $12 subscription to the audience that would have consumed it. That's just too much money for a lot of people.
It's remarkably simplistic to draw analogies between small kitchen appliances and cultural-diversity in a way that suggests that the latter is even remotely as "clean" as the former. Diversity is intensely emotional for those in minority populations, and it cuts to the heart. A cherry pitter merely cuts to the pit of a piece of fruit.
So, from a business model perspective, an emotionally-connected underserved niche can represent a viable opportunity.
>why would we want to segregate content to one specific channel or network...
>True diversity would be having this content everywhere.
Yes, that would be true diversity. But, it's not what we have. Hence, the opportunity for what you referred to as "segregation".
It's kind of a wishful world vs. the real world thing. Consider that, for those in a majority population, content that is specific to them is segregated as well...to all channels/networks.
But, populations that are underserved in media don't just go away because the content is not dispersed as one might wish. So, they represent a niche that is ripe to have their needs served via a medium that is exclusive to them. In that way, they are no different from any other underserved economic niche, on which a business might do well to focus.
> It reminds me of BET... why would we want to segregate content to one specific channel or network? It feels backwards to me. True diversity would be having this content everywhere.
Not exactly. Cartoon Network was created as a place to show old Hannah Barbera cartoons before branching into their own content. In that same sense, BET was originally conceived as a hub for black sitcoms and shows that had come and gone over the years before branching into their own content. That's what cable was in the 80s and 90s: niche programming. Segregating content made sense when a-la cart programming was infeasible. Like what were they going to do? Cable networks were already sharing signals (BET began as 2hrs of block programming on Nickelodeon for instance) before digital receivers gave them hundreds of channels to exist on.
I agree that we're still a long way from a-la cart programming. Hell paying for Playstation Vue's Spanish package doesn't get you Univision and in some US markets Telemundo isn't included in the Elite package. However I think its a little narrow minded to throw shade on any niche channel without considering the environment that channel was founded in.
Also as an aside: BET was not created with diversity in mind. It was created to target programming at African Americans and it has been a resounding success because its first mission is to show programming like hip-hop/r&b videos and reruns of The Game (though that does not come without criticism). The channel execs probably couldn't care less about catering to other people of color.
We're a long way from a la carte programming because there's no point to it. You watch 5 shows now, and pay $100 for it, which means you've proven to Comcast that you're willing to pay $100 to watch those 5 shows; they will price accordingly.
As a black person, sometimes I just want to watch a sitcom about regular black people, doing regular things.
You'd think I'd be able to find this on streaming services. We have Atlanta and Insecure and Blackish now, but those are all tokens of their networks.
BET and other Afro-centric networks/streaming services cater to that need for black people to escape from the constant bombardment of white lives and white issues on television.
Question from non-american: do you perceive there being difference between show about regular black people doing regular things and show about regular white people doing things? What is different? Besides skin color and hair style.
Sometimes nothing. Sister Sister and That's So Raven starring white people bould have been the exact same show.
Sometimes small things. Bharlie Murphy's true Hollywood stories (particularly the episode about Rick James) might've resonated more with people who were his fans in the 80s or grew up with their parents playing his music on the radio.
Sometimes big things. Insecure has a recurring bharacter that ban't use the letter 'c' in a word because he's a member of the blood gang. If you grew up around gang members -- or wannabes -- you'll laugh at the pointed jab at their taboos.
Oftentimes its not about wanting to see your race, its about wanting to see your bulture.
Its not so much a thing that all bloods do. Its just those of us uninitiated into gangs sometimes hear about their esoteric rituals and it can get ridiculous. For instance, some gang members where I grew up put glasses of water under their bed each night and threw it out the next morning because the devil used it. The practice has a lot in common with other rituals around the world, but I heard about it on a school bus and didn't get it.
Thank you again. This gives whole new dimension to gangs. I thought they are mostly about criminal activity and belonging, but this give then spiritual or religious shade I did not expected. Then again, I guess that when you do something highly dangerous, superficions emerge naturally.
I can see how one would appreciate having these cultural bit in a show while different ethnicity won't get them at all.
Our have cheaper production and pretty much everything to be honest. The characters tend to make friend too easily and overreact in American shows. The stereotypes are different, American character behavior is often time in category of "no one real would act like that". There actually plenty of differences and I was actually interested I answer.
There is no "black culture" or "white culture" there are many cultures and thanks to historical reasons people mostly still segregate themselves racially. The culture of inner city black Chicago and the culture of rural black Florida have very little in common. Both are predominately black but you will find that the culture of inner city white Chicago to be closer to the culture of inner city Black Chicago than rural Florida black culture is.
> The culture of inner city black Chicago and the culture of rural black Florida have very little in common.
I went to an HBCU and honestly the biggest cultural difference was accent and tolerance for the southern heat. Sure you got skaters who showed up in skinny jeans or gamers who came in with their arcade sticks, but nobody ever grouped off like --say-- minority students usually do at majority institutions. My two best friends were from Atlanta and St. Louis and we bonded through late night Street Fighter sessions and DBZ reruns.
As an african from the diaspora I couldn't agree more. I think that one reason they did not succeed is that the people really sensible to the shows they had actually live in Africa instead of in the Diaspora. I know a lot of people in my country that do not watch anymore any movies from the US or from Bollywood. While my friends that are in the diaspora enjoy mainly watching popular shows or movies. The majority of people that did not go to school or cannot read or understand english don't relate to your typical american movie. It is just too far from their reality.
We are all citizen of the world, but it is very difficult for the vast majority of africans to relate to movies about american's daily life or politics. Their reality is simply very different.
IMO Afrostream targeted the wrong audience. Now, one can argue that it would be a very hard sell $12 subscription to the audience that would have consumed it. That's just too much money for a lot of people.
BET is a horror agglomeration of MTV, E! news, and crude commentary so prevalent on the internet today. Show after show features a display infantile and disgraceful behavior, which I am sure that most rational, educated people would not enjoy. I'm black and I'm not even going to pretend that I enjoy the portrayals on TV as a stunted, emotionally-challenged stooge that is ever pervading on cable TV today.
Why marginalize us to an ethnocentric echo chamber free from exchange of values, aspirations, and customs? Content creators can just keep hitting repeat on the same political, depressive drama from the 20th century (which we have not progressed from). What I dream is for popular TV shows to have a black lead, where not every character has to be black, nor words spoken in a "black" vernacular, nor a need for the show to be transmuted into a platform for social justice or black values. We need shows with black leads that rival enterprises like Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Game of Thrones, Simpsons, etc. I want something that everyone can get behind and imagine themselves as being.
As an individual of African descent, I stand against the attitude of viewing the world through a bitter lens of color, where issues are "white" or "black". Their issues are our issues and vice versa. That is that. We all live in the same society, we are all entangled, exposed to the negatives and pressures of prevalent problems. There's no need for anymore juvenile "us vs them" dialogue in this society.
> BET is a horror agglomeration of MTV, E! news, and crude commentary so prevalent on the internet today.
Its almost like the corporations that own those channels are trying to repeat their success except by targeting a niche group.
> What I dream is for popular TV shows to have a black lead, where not every character has to be black, nor words spoken in a "black" vernacular, nor a need for the show to be transmuted into a platform for social justice or black values.
Scandal.
> We need shows with black leads that rival enterprises like Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Game of Thrones, Simpsons, etc. I want something that everyone can get behind and imagine themselves as being.
They tried with M.A.N.T.I.S, Spawn: The Animation, Blade: The Series, and Cleopatra 2525. They succeeded with Star Trek: Deep Space 9.
Not only that but the middle class has pretty much been hollowed out in Hollywood. Its hard to make a movie or television show unless its supposed to garner awards (for which message movies/shows are generally shoe ins) or is meant to appeal to the widest audience possible.
> It reminds me of BET... why would we want to segregate content to one specific channel or network? It feels backwards to me. True diversity would be having this content everywhere.
But the content isn't everywhere. There are only 24 hours of programming possible per day per traditional channel but too many diverse interests/cultures/etc to cram them all in during primetime, hence the need for specialty channels.
> I can't help but feel like it is the wrong approach to diversity.
No it's not, few people care about what skin colour the characters in a work of entertainment have, unless it is fundamental to the plot or an aspect of the source material. At very least, they do not care enough to self-segregate and bear separately the cost of producing an entirely different set of works of entertainment which are of competitive quality.
No untainted mind watches Game of Thrones and thinks "You know, it's weird that this fiction styled after old Europe is full of white people.". Nobody watches Narcos and thinks "You know, it's weird that this fiction set in Colombia is full of Mestizos and white latins". Nobody watches Big Brother Africa and thinks "You know, it's weird that this reality game show set in sub-Saharan Africa is full of sub-Saharan Africans".
I remember an LA Times story where they compared the top 10 shows black people watched versus ones white people watched, and they were very different (60 Minutes and Friends, not so much). So there might be opportunity in a better-curated VOD service.
Yeah, I just figure having completely separate streaming services and content for separate ethnic groups is probably lower return than the equivalent for different genders; and neither sounds like it would have all that much to offer.
It would also be supremely easy to compete them out of existence for any establish VOD provider, because all they have to do is add some categories or a survey; and put some tags on their content. If they have a lot of customers in a demographic and they know they want stratified content, they can just commission it.
> Said like someone who sees people that look like them in damn-near 100% of the media they consume
What media do you assume I consume? Can you contain yourself for a moment instead of attempting to assassinate and beat down what I'm saying with an off-handed remark?
> No it's not, few people care about what skin colour the characters in a work of entertainment have, unless it is fundamental to the plot or an aspect of the source material. At very least, they do not care enough to self-segregate and bear separately the cost of producing an entirely different set of works of entertainment which are of competitive quality.
Do you have any evidence to support this ridiculous claim? Two of the largest movies of the year (Get Out and Girls Trip) are predominantly black produced. The issue is getting Hollywood to fund such ventures, not demand for them.
> No untainted mind watches Game of Thrones and thinks "You know, it's weird that this fiction styled after old Europe is full of white people.".
Actually, people do say this. It's a completely fictional universe, and even if it wasn't written into the source material, the show creators could have made an effort to ensure that it wasn't so eurocentric, at least by casting. No such luck. The main representations of people of color that I remember—the sand vipers—were hands down the worst part of the entire show so far. You think people don't notice this shit? What kind of bubble do you live in? People care that they see people who look and talk like them on TV. Everyone else in game of thrones speaks with out of place ethnic accents; way to screw over everyone but the danes and the brits.
Finally, I'd just like to point out that diversity increases the strength of TV shows. If you watch Friends, it's like they were living in this tiny bubble that only existed in NYC coffee shops. Their world is nearly unrecognizable to me despite having lived in the same city about the same age. Had they had any diversity on the show, maybe it would stand the test of time better. Now it just looks dated and white as fuck—way whiter than you'll ever find in NYC.
> Do you have any evidence to support this ridiculous claim? Two of the largest movies of the year (Get Out and Girls Trip) are predominantly black produced.
It's a bit silly to say that Get Out was successful because it was "black produced"; it was clearly well written and produced, it stands on its own merits.
> Had they had any diversity on the show, maybe it would stand the test of time better. Now it just looks dated and white as fuck—way whiter than you'll ever find in NYC.
Who cares? I live in Toronto, and my Panjabi, Mumbaikar, and southeast Chinese flatmates are thoroughly entertained when they put on Friends.
They're of clear mind, so they're not thinking "what's with all these white people?", they're thinking "LoL, that definitely wouldn't cure a hangover, so it's funny that they depict it as doing so; LoL, Joey is factually oblivious but really has his finger to the pulse when it comes to people, how charming!".
When I watch a Japanese or Korean drama with a friend, or a Hindi movie with my flatmates, I'm not thinking "what's with all these coloureds on my TV?".
>Do you have any evidence to support this ridiculous claim? Two of the largest movies of the year (Get Out and Girls Trip) are predominantly black produced. The issue is getting Hollywood to fund such ventures, not demand for them.
Do you have any proof he's wrong? I can't say I've ever given two thoughts to the race of the producer/writer/director of movies I've enjoyed. I assume there's a laundry list of independent blockbusters that simply didn't make it in mainstream hollywood due to the race of their producers that you can point to.
>Actually, people do say this.
I've literally never heard anyone say this in real life. Once.
> No it's not, few people care about what skin colour the characters in a work of entertainment have, unless it is fundamental to the plot or an aspect of the source material.
I guess I'm one of the few, but I actively look for diversity in my entertainment. I'm not looking for diversity within a particular show, I'm looking for stories about other cultures, and entertainment from the perspective of other cultures than my own. So the point about race vs source material is irrelevant.
> At very least, they do not care enough to self-segregate and bear separately the cost of producing an entirely different set of works of entertainment which are of competitive quality.
They who? You are speaking for the Afrostream subscribers who did exactly that?
> Nobody watches Big Brother Africa and thinks "You know, it's weird that this reality game show set in sub-Saharan Africa is full of sub-Saharan Africans".
I think you're constructing a straw man argument here. The issue isn't that specific shows have an odd race balance. The issue is that our media as a whole is lacking stories of Africa and Asia and Latin America, among other places. We lack stories from the perspective of women and old people too. It's getting better, in part due to market demand, but there are still too many new shows being made that are mostly full of young male LA B-actors.
I've never heard of this product but it's sad to see it not work out. There is a huge gap when it comes to black media representation in the United States specifically and I believe it will be a huge opportunity to whoever can tap into it's potential. Black millennials in particular are such a driver of culture in America it's surprising to see how little they are catered to in terms of product. Especially in regards to social media, the impact of Black Twitter is well documented. Also, for anyone who used Vine it seemed like Black creators were really the base of the content that Vine was known for.
Yes agreed. I'd also argue that black millennials (and younger) aren't just drivers of culture, they're also tech early adopters! Vine is a great example, Worldstar is a somewhat notorious example, BlackPlanet... those are just off the top of my head.
> Let’s take the example of an African-American independent or Nigerian film (Nollywood) at € 3,000 per year of use.
What about giving away shares for content? I mean, if Afrostream gave away X% of the shares, in return for the rights to content outside the home country, the cost of content reduces to close to zero, and the money spent on operations and marketing starts to approach 100%.
This is a far less than ideal model, to be sure, but then, the company closing is a lot worse! Shares are worth nothing until there is a liquidation event, so maybe the play is to get the content providers to become shareholders?
I could see a play where content providers that have content worth essentially nothing (unless there is a marketplace for streaming Nollywood in the west I am unaware of {which is indeed extremely possible}) but for which they may be able to grow a market that, over time, has value. That seems like a win-win, or at least a no-lose-no-lose, situation.
Maybe don't make an etnocentric streaming site. Why would you even think that is a sane idea? Where is the white mans streaming service? This is borderline retarded.
Dang. I think I asked a sensible question. What is the purpose of an etnocentric streaming service? Do you genuinely think this is a good idea? Poltiical affiliation aside this is just a horrible idea.
I guess you are in your good right to ban me, having a free market and all. Its just kind of perplexing to be honest. You add this makeshift appendum to the rules, yet I still see you enforce only one side.
Also I thought that worldstar was the number one afro video site.
As some comments imply it was strength of or "approach to diversity" in the market that caused the failure, it should be noted the post outlined: What caused Afrostream to close is not lack of traction or market demand but lack of capital. The more subscribers gained, the more content thus, more funding required. The VOD industry has high operating costs (content acquisition, marketing, localization, tech, etc) and a longer breakeven timeline (note cited examples of other much bigger but not yet profitable companies including Netflix). Afrostream addressed a sizable but ignored niche with demand demonstrated in user growth and it is unfortunate that they couldn't get more funding.
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[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 98.8 ms ] threadSpotify provides access to a huge back catalogue and although it probably reduces the value of some content it monetises other old content that was basically dead.
Currently Netflix has a tiny library, when you take into account 50 years of film ripe for rediscovery.
Anyone know what the blocker is?
The only VOD services with healthy profits are actually content creators themselves. All of the services I just mentioned in the other paragraph have their own original content, and at least Hulu & Netflix are pretty successful at that. This original content keeps people on their service, generating more ad revenue, which is how they make money. Basically, if you're a major studio and have billions of dollars to throw away, VOD is pretty easy ;-)
Source: I worked for a failing VOD/broadcast video company for a couple years.
How did Viki make it ?
My background is (as a hobby) I’ve built medium-sized >700m PV/m esports analytics apps targetted for Asia, covering CN/most of SEA, and have had to get local connectivity and local hosting as an "outsider"
These countries are fairly insular.
China: GFW (we all know about this), ICP license, network pricing (China Telecom, Unicom, CN2, etc) for international traffic. It’s extremely difficult or impossible to serve Chinese customers from outside of China, especially if you need stable high bandwidth transport (and STUPIDLY EXPENSIVE). Almost all network peering ports in Los Angeles for CN/CU are oversubscribed to death, and CN2 traffic is disgustingly expensive internationally. It’s generally not possible to do anything at all without a “local partnership” type arrangement.
Korea: GFW (Korean censorship is heavy and extreme; there is really no other way putting this, people think SK is very “western”, it is not even close)[0]. You might see news about how Korea has fastest home internet - Korean connectivity is crap as soon as it leaves the country; the country is effectively a LAN, hosting outside of Korea is awful to inside, not possible to compete like that when all your assets are outside the country, and getting hosting is a bitch, and cost is hilarious.
Korea has KYC/“real name verification” laws like China, things like needing to get KSSN via a credit bureau via iPIN/mobile phone verification (since mobile phones also require KSSN to get; and <18s mobile phones are keylogged anyway) collected at registration if you want to do anything social for the most part.
The smaller countries in SEA tended to be a "if you don't speak the language, if you aren't from here, then fuck you, enjoy your highway robbery" to me. I paid bribes or else hardware would "go missing" or things "were impossible to do unfortunately", I paid prices significantly higher than any domestic purchasers would, the companies that had English sites you could literally see the prices have an extra decimal place just switching between the two versions.
I had to do a bunch of logic wrt balancing traffic. I had a server that had multiple physical NICs, each connecting to a different ISP. They don't necessarily like each other, so if I served a PLDT end-user from a Globe connection instead of PLDT, traffic may get forced intentionally through another country. There are incumbent ISPs that control a majority and charge far more that intentionally refuse to peer with any other ISP, and force domestic traffic out of the country to punish those users for not using them.
My site showed user profiles, which obviously includes their usernames. I had physical hardware shut down and removed by police in Thailand because someone had a username mocking the royalty there.
edit: I forgot my [0] - https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/08/south-korea-only-thing... - the person involved is actually on the censorship board
And a company I used to work for frequently had the same problem with Mexico. Traveling two and from on business led to frequent searches and impounding of very expensive equipment unless a bribe was paid. We started writing it off as an "airport tax."
Especially because this is such an alien concept in India.
A service like this is almost like a specialty kitchen item. My fiancée is a stickler for this stuff and it is something I really love about her. She hates speciality, single-use items. Take the cherry-pitter[1]. It's obnoxiously large, like a beefy can opener, and the only thing it does is remove pits from cherries (and, apparently Olives). She doesn't want stuff like that in our kitchen, and I don't blame her.
Regardless of your cultural background, why might you want to buy a standalone TV/streaming package for one vertical of content? I think we'd all agree the future would might involve a-la cart purchases like this... but we aren't there yet. Once you combine your Basic TV via Sling or Playstation Vue, Netflix for the riff-raff, and an add-on luxury package like HBO GO - you don't have any more room for speciality items. They need to be REALLY special in order to work. Just like the cherry pitter – there just isn't any room left in my drawers for a single purpose item.
[1] https://www.oxo.com/products/preparing/fruit-vegetable-tools...
All the reasons why we can't have unfettered legal access to The Pirate Bay are also reasons why your utopian approach to "true diversity" is wrong-headed.
Look at Viki, a really popular VOD site, acquired by Rakuten for $200 million or so. Focuses heavily on South Korean, Chinese, and Japanese dramas. Segregation? More like making it easy for people who want to watch the shows to find and follow them regularly. Successful? Yep. This sort of media consumption is here now.
AfroStream did the same thing as Viki but instead of Asian countries used the African diaspora. Didn't follow them so don't know what the business reasons are for their failure, but relating it to diversity and segregation seems unwarranted.
It's more like they were targeting the long tail of media consumption, even if unsuccessfully.
IMO Afrostream targeted the wrong audience. Now, one can argue that it would be a very hard sell $12 subscription to the audience that would have consumed it. That's just too much money for a lot of people.
So, from a business model perspective, an emotionally-connected underserved niche can represent a viable opportunity.
>why would we want to segregate content to one specific channel or network... >True diversity would be having this content everywhere.
Yes, that would be true diversity. But, it's not what we have. Hence, the opportunity for what you referred to as "segregation".
It's kind of a wishful world vs. the real world thing. Consider that, for those in a majority population, content that is specific to them is segregated as well...to all channels/networks.
But, populations that are underserved in media don't just go away because the content is not dispersed as one might wish. So, they represent a niche that is ripe to have their needs served via a medium that is exclusive to them. In that way, they are no different from any other underserved economic niche, on which a business might do well to focus.
Not exactly. Cartoon Network was created as a place to show old Hannah Barbera cartoons before branching into their own content. In that same sense, BET was originally conceived as a hub for black sitcoms and shows that had come and gone over the years before branching into their own content. That's what cable was in the 80s and 90s: niche programming. Segregating content made sense when a-la cart programming was infeasible. Like what were they going to do? Cable networks were already sharing signals (BET began as 2hrs of block programming on Nickelodeon for instance) before digital receivers gave them hundreds of channels to exist on.
I agree that we're still a long way from a-la cart programming. Hell paying for Playstation Vue's Spanish package doesn't get you Univision and in some US markets Telemundo isn't included in the Elite package. However I think its a little narrow minded to throw shade on any niche channel without considering the environment that channel was founded in.
Also as an aside: BET was not created with diversity in mind. It was created to target programming at African Americans and it has been a resounding success because its first mission is to show programming like hip-hop/r&b videos and reruns of The Game (though that does not come without criticism). The channel execs probably couldn't care less about catering to other people of color.
You'd think I'd be able to find this on streaming services. We have Atlanta and Insecure and Blackish now, but those are all tokens of their networks.
BET and other Afro-centric networks/streaming services cater to that need for black people to escape from the constant bombardment of white lives and white issues on television.
Sometimes small things. Bharlie Murphy's true Hollywood stories (particularly the episode about Rick James) might've resonated more with people who were his fans in the 80s or grew up with their parents playing his music on the radio.
Sometimes big things. Insecure has a recurring bharacter that ban't use the letter 'c' in a word because he's a member of the blood gang. If you grew up around gang members -- or wannabes -- you'll laugh at the pointed jab at their taboos.
Oftentimes its not about wanting to see your race, its about wanting to see your bulture.
I did not knew about c letter being taboo.
I can see how one would appreciate having these cultural bit in a show while different ethnicity won't get them at all.
I went to an HBCU and honestly the biggest cultural difference was accent and tolerance for the southern heat. Sure you got skaters who showed up in skinny jeans or gamers who came in with their arcade sticks, but nobody ever grouped off like --say-- minority students usually do at majority institutions. My two best friends were from Atlanta and St. Louis and we bonded through late night Street Fighter sessions and DBZ reruns.
Black people and people of color experience the world differently from white people. Sometimes it's nice to see those struggles shared on TV.
That's not to say I don't like watching Girls or Friends, but it's great to see people of color living their lives on TV too.
IMO Afrostream targeted the wrong audience. Now, one can argue that it would be a very hard sell $12 subscription to the audience that would have consumed it. That's just too much money for a lot of people.
Why marginalize us to an ethnocentric echo chamber free from exchange of values, aspirations, and customs? Content creators can just keep hitting repeat on the same political, depressive drama from the 20th century (which we have not progressed from). What I dream is for popular TV shows to have a black lead, where not every character has to be black, nor words spoken in a "black" vernacular, nor a need for the show to be transmuted into a platform for social justice or black values. We need shows with black leads that rival enterprises like Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Game of Thrones, Simpsons, etc. I want something that everyone can get behind and imagine themselves as being.
As an individual of African descent, I stand against the attitude of viewing the world through a bitter lens of color, where issues are "white" or "black". Their issues are our issues and vice versa. That is that. We all live in the same society, we are all entangled, exposed to the negatives and pressures of prevalent problems. There's no need for anymore juvenile "us vs them" dialogue in this society.
Its almost like the corporations that own those channels are trying to repeat their success except by targeting a niche group.
> What I dream is for popular TV shows to have a black lead, where not every character has to be black, nor words spoken in a "black" vernacular, nor a need for the show to be transmuted into a platform for social justice or black values.
Scandal.
> We need shows with black leads that rival enterprises like Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Game of Thrones, Simpsons, etc. I want something that everyone can get behind and imagine themselves as being.
They tried with M.A.N.T.I.S, Spawn: The Animation, Blade: The Series, and Cleopatra 2525. They succeeded with Star Trek: Deep Space 9.
Not only that but the middle class has pretty much been hollowed out in Hollywood. Its hard to make a movie or television show unless its supposed to garner awards (for which message movies/shows are generally shoe ins) or is meant to appeal to the widest audience possible.
But the content isn't everywhere. There are only 24 hours of programming possible per day per traditional channel but too many diverse interests/cultures/etc to cram them all in during primetime, hence the need for specialty channels.
> I can't help but feel like it is the wrong approach to diversity.
How would you approach it?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
No it's not, few people care about what skin colour the characters in a work of entertainment have, unless it is fundamental to the plot or an aspect of the source material. At very least, they do not care enough to self-segregate and bear separately the cost of producing an entirely different set of works of entertainment which are of competitive quality.
No untainted mind watches Game of Thrones and thinks "You know, it's weird that this fiction styled after old Europe is full of white people.". Nobody watches Narcos and thinks "You know, it's weird that this fiction set in Colombia is full of Mestizos and white latins". Nobody watches Big Brother Africa and thinks "You know, it's weird that this reality game show set in sub-Saharan Africa is full of sub-Saharan Africans".
It would also be supremely easy to compete them out of existence for any establish VOD provider, because all they have to do is add some categories or a survey; and put some tags on their content. If they have a lot of customers in a demographic and they know they want stratified content, they can just commission it.
Said like someone who sees people that look like them in damn-near 100% of the media they consume
What media do you assume I consume? Can you contain yourself for a moment instead of attempting to assassinate and beat down what I'm saying with an off-handed remark?
Do you have any evidence to support this ridiculous claim? Two of the largest movies of the year (Get Out and Girls Trip) are predominantly black produced. The issue is getting Hollywood to fund such ventures, not demand for them.
> No untainted mind watches Game of Thrones and thinks "You know, it's weird that this fiction styled after old Europe is full of white people.".
Actually, people do say this. It's a completely fictional universe, and even if it wasn't written into the source material, the show creators could have made an effort to ensure that it wasn't so eurocentric, at least by casting. No such luck. The main representations of people of color that I remember—the sand vipers—were hands down the worst part of the entire show so far. You think people don't notice this shit? What kind of bubble do you live in? People care that they see people who look and talk like them on TV. Everyone else in game of thrones speaks with out of place ethnic accents; way to screw over everyone but the danes and the brits.
Finally, I'd just like to point out that diversity increases the strength of TV shows. If you watch Friends, it's like they were living in this tiny bubble that only existed in NYC coffee shops. Their world is nearly unrecognizable to me despite having lived in the same city about the same age. Had they had any diversity on the show, maybe it would stand the test of time better. Now it just looks dated and white as fuck—way whiter than you'll ever find in NYC.
It's a bit silly to say that Get Out was successful because it was "black produced"; it was clearly well written and produced, it stands on its own merits.
> Had they had any diversity on the show, maybe it would stand the test of time better. Now it just looks dated and white as fuck—way whiter than you'll ever find in NYC.
Who cares? I live in Toronto, and my Panjabi, Mumbaikar, and southeast Chinese flatmates are thoroughly entertained when they put on Friends.
They're of clear mind, so they're not thinking "what's with all these white people?", they're thinking "LoL, that definitely wouldn't cure a hangover, so it's funny that they depict it as doing so; LoL, Joey is factually oblivious but really has his finger to the pulse when it comes to people, how charming!".
When I watch a Japanese or Korean drama with a friend, or a Hindi movie with my flatmates, I'm not thinking "what's with all these coloureds on my TV?".
Your comment is quite funny since Dorne is inspired by Spain :)
Do you have any proof he's wrong? I can't say I've ever given two thoughts to the race of the producer/writer/director of movies I've enjoyed. I assume there's a laundry list of independent blockbusters that simply didn't make it in mainstream hollywood due to the race of their producers that you can point to.
>Actually, people do say this.
I've literally never heard anyone say this in real life. Once.
I guess I'm one of the few, but I actively look for diversity in my entertainment. I'm not looking for diversity within a particular show, I'm looking for stories about other cultures, and entertainment from the perspective of other cultures than my own. So the point about race vs source material is irrelevant.
> At very least, they do not care enough to self-segregate and bear separately the cost of producing an entirely different set of works of entertainment which are of competitive quality.
They who? You are speaking for the Afrostream subscribers who did exactly that?
> Nobody watches Big Brother Africa and thinks "You know, it's weird that this reality game show set in sub-Saharan Africa is full of sub-Saharan Africans".
I think you're constructing a straw man argument here. The issue isn't that specific shows have an odd race balance. The issue is that our media as a whole is lacking stories of Africa and Asia and Latin America, among other places. We lack stories from the perspective of women and old people too. It's getting better, in part due to market demand, but there are still too many new shows being made that are mostly full of young male LA B-actors.
What about giving away shares for content? I mean, if Afrostream gave away X% of the shares, in return for the rights to content outside the home country, the cost of content reduces to close to zero, and the money spent on operations and marketing starts to approach 100%.
This is a far less than ideal model, to be sure, but then, the company closing is a lot worse! Shares are worth nothing until there is a liquidation event, so maybe the play is to get the content providers to become shareholders?
I could see a play where content providers that have content worth essentially nothing (unless there is a marketplace for streaming Nollywood in the west I am unaware of {which is indeed extremely possible}) but for which they may be able to grow a market that, over time, has value. That seems like a win-win, or at least a no-lose-no-lose, situation.
Is that not worth pursuing?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I guess you are in your good right to ban me, having a free market and all. Its just kind of perplexing to be honest. You add this makeshift appendum to the rules, yet I still see you enforce only one side.
Also I thought that worldstar was the number one afro video site.