Among other reasons I canceled my subscription last night, Netflix's current data-driven culture is driving:
• Good shows to shut down,
• Terrible, Awful, No Good, Very Bad concepts ("The Goop Lab") to be approved—actually, this was the named reason for why I canceled; I actually wrote "The Goop Lab" in the Other cancellation box. https://globalnews.ca/news/6488433/goop-uk-health-warning-gw...
• Blockbusters to lapse,
• Fillers to be licensed.
It's just not worth the 15.99/mo I've been paying them anymore, which is unfortunate. Five years ago, originals had serious promise.
I would have shut down my Netflix subscription two months ago, but since I'm sharing it with my 70+ mom who's still enjoying it for some reason, I'm keeping it going for now.
Otherwise, for me (~40 yo male in Sweden), Netflix isn't very interesting at all. I think its data-driven culture is awesome at creating shows that are fascinating to its California-based execs.
Also: I wish they'd tone down the politics. I'm with Bill Burr on this: Not every single fxxing thing has to be about politics. We get it. We're onboard. We don't need to be preached at in every singly fxxking show though. Remember, we're paying for a service here. We expect being entertained. Not getting preached at.
The voting system on HN is a joke. To some degree it does work for an audience of intellectuals, but it wouldn't work at all with a general audience. Everyone just downvotes what offends their sensibilities, but because messages get greyed out, moved down the page, and eventually hidden with relatively few downvotes, they're effectively saying "nobody should hear your opinion", no matter how civil your language.
Just take the downvotes as a badge of pride. I expect this very comment to get downvoted and those same voters won't even bother to tell me why I'm wrong.
I've always felt that as a general rule across all platforms, downvotes should be required to come with a hand typed, not selected from a drop-down, comment of at least 50 characters. Sure, I could just hold down 'r' and be done with it, but I feel like the mods could easily clean that up.
Comments about downvotes are among the lowest-quality comments that get posted here. Requiring more of them would be a big mistake. If a user has something meaningful to say about how they disagree with another comment, they already can—and do—reply. If they don't have anything substantial to say, and downvoting prevents them from saying it, that's a feature not a bug.
It's tempting to imagine that placing hurdles in front of users could solve the quality problem, but IMO that's a fantasy. There are no easy ways to do that and no technical fixes for it.
I am reading the comment as more of a "reasons must be explained to the moderators for a downvote," without those reasons being posted to the thread proper.
I meant for the comments to be public. If someone is wrong, misguided, or simply thinks differently than you do, it's better for the group as a whole to have a discussion about that than it is to censor someone.
Complaining about how people vote is explicitly against the Hacker News guidelines. That’s likely why people downvote comments that are only complaining about downvotes.
This happens all the time here and to be honest, HN is one of the best sites regarding censorship. It is pretty scary how in the last 5 or so years the policing of online discourse has ramped up and it is accelerating. I know, I know if you don't like it, spin up your own mastodon instance. If you don't want to seat back on the bus, create your own bus service and so on.
I had Netflix for a brief moment and all their original series felt really dull, I couldn't find one that would hook me for longer than several episodes, I was almost forcing myself to watch them - I much prefer old stuff, maybe not so stunning visually, but with much more substance, that's why I switched to HBO GO.
Funny. I can't stand most of the stuff on HBO. I had it for a few months to watch GoT, but I couldn't find anything else I wanted to watch. Although recently Watchmen was really good.
I love a ton of stuff from Netflix: Ozark, Unbelievable, Witcher, Lost In Space, Altered Carbon, and a lot more stuff I can't think of at the moment.
I moved back to DVD.com, 9.99 for one disc at a time and you can get Blurays (with 7.1 sound, something no one seems to stream) of the stuff Netflix can't stream because it went to Disney+, Hulu, etc. They also still have a reasonably priced 3 disc program if you trend more toward TV binge watching than movies.
Plus add in MakeMKV and Plex and there is a nice little ecosystem. Not as convenient as the golden age of Netflix, but now that everyone wants their own streaming service, I'd rather just cycle through a couple discs a week than do the whole lets get Disney+ for the Mandalorian, okay bingd watched that now lets get Netflix for Witcher, oh now Season 2 of the Mandalorian is out, back to Disney, oh look HBO has a new thing, etc.
DVD.com is owned by Netflix. And honestly, if you're hooked on the availability of content and don't want to ditch the Netflix pipeline completely, switching to DVD.com probably makes sense. The revenue shift from Netflix to DVD.com will have the same net impact on spending decisions.
Yeah, they even have a bundle deal to have DVDs and some level of streaming. It is interesting because at one point Netflix was trying to sell of the disc shipping business because physical media was dead and the whole service felt neglected.
Now that mailing you a disc is the only way they can get you certain content, the service is back closer to the level it was when they were killing Blockbuster.
I don’t think that everyone “wants” their own subscription service, it’s that it’s become the only sustainable business model to meet the demands of operating.
Sometimes I wonder why Netflix doesn't produce more content with small creators. What I'm imagining...
1. Produce some fitness content. Yoga, stretching, meditation, calisthenics, etc. I get the impression there are countless talented fitness trainers that would love to produce regular content while being cheap to hire. Look at Peloton, they charge $40/mo to live stream classes after people spend thousands on a bike. I imagine a lot of people would watch live or prerecorded fitness classes on Netflix, become loyal to the trainers and stay subscribed for their content.
2. Hire some YouTubers. I spend more time on YouTube than Netflix. Lots of great comedy, educational, travel, and tech content there. Most of them are also struggling for money and would jump on an exclusive Netflix partnership for a fraction of what Netflix pays for other content.
3. Daily news. Find a few entertaining personalities and journalists that can report on the daily news. Why can't I switch on Netflix today to get the latest on coronavirus?
Lastly... let me search the content. Why can't I just browse comedy movies released in the last few years, or horror movies sorted by release date? I find Netflix such a terrible and frustrating interface and I have to scroll past the same movie or series a dozen times as I go through the content. I've had Netflix for years, and I still feel like I have no idea what is actually on there because it's so annoying to browse. I think I'll likely cancel next year.
News specifically would be fantastic. I currently struggle to find good news sources. The sites I used to go to now all lock up after X articles and I'm not willing to sign up for every single one of them while there's not one that deliver all the news I want. I used to have youtubeTV just for the news channels, but ended up cancelling because I felt I was way overpaying since sports HAD to be baked in.
I’m not sure why any popular YouTuber would go to Netflix. I doubt it could ever make financial sense. The distribution must be so much lower on Netflix. I would be worried if any of my favorite YouTubers went to Netflix because I would be afraid that’s where their content would go to die. Netflix discovery is absolutely terrible.
Netflix's discovery may be terrible but YouTube's discovery is non-existent. It's common knowledge that in order to get views on your YouTube videos, you submit them to Reddit or another platform, because the algorithm will not push your content if you have less than a thousand or so subscribers.
They could, but discovery is a challenge as they gain more contents. Imagine if there's a million things you could watch on Netflix, surely you can search for things you know and then they can recommend the rest to you based on your viewing habit. There's going to be a large set of things that won't be recommended to you. How do you discover those? Either you never do or they start recommending things that you don't know and are outside of your interest which will only annoy you.
My wild speculation is that the longer time people spend in the menu the more likely they are to close the app, and the more likely they are to cancel a subscription next month. The streaming services are all about reducing churn.
So for daily content. Show ends, you go back to the menu. Do you pick the next thing to watch? I don't know - but they've tried a number of "daily" or "weekly" shows before, and they haven't appeared to be successful. I suspect it's because they didn't improve metrics. Versus say releasing a show all at once - people binge for 3-4 hours and come back the next night to do the same thing.
I think going with amateur youtubers who produce lots of cheap, short content would be smart for like, Snap or Instagram but very bad for Netflix. Netflix's original content hit it off in terms of quality, long form narratives with dramas like House of Cards, while syndicating shows after air gave them second life (Breaking Bad, the Office, Friends) and absolutely crushing it with "must see" films (recently, the Irishman, Marriage Story, but also in the past stuff like Beasts of No Nation).
Conversely, their cheap shows from nobodies tend to die in the womb, and I don't think Netflix does that without good data to make such a decision.
Netflix is definitely pursuing the quantity over quality strategy, which doesn’t appeal to me.
That said, there are some really strong offerings hidden in the noise. The shift to originals over licensed is hurting the average quality level... but it definitely makes sense as a long term play.
It still makes sense for me and I am happy support the many gambles they take with content... even if most are lackluster.
One half watching YouTube at 1.5 speed and skipping the first Wadsworth constant minutes of it, reading Wikipedia and looking for more ways to get directly at the essence of things.
The other half who wants to pay a fixed monthly price for somebody (Netflix today) to keep them "entertained" for hours while filling up their non-working hours.
It's always been like that, since when television was mostly free and you watched the same four channels every day unless you preferred the library because you could browse encyclopediae and find one or two specialized books about a topic you were interested in. The 'Net just made us more aware of the latter category.
I feel like the odd man out, with everyone shitting on Netflix and it's original content. I love my Netflix subscription. There's tons for my (young) daughter to watch. There's tons for my wife and I to watch (Sabrina, Daybreak, Magicions, Badlands). There's tons for me to watch without my wife (mostly anime, etc). Sure, some of the shows are cheesy, but some aren't, and I like the mix.
They don't have every movie I want to see, but they're also not my only source for entertainment. As one source of multiple, I think they're great. I can't think of any service that would be good for a single source of entertainment.
The Magicians is such an amazing show. Modern gritty, but awesomely fun adult fantasy series. It is one of a few recent shows from ScyFy that they got right (Magicians, The Expanse, Killjoys)...etc.
Yep, Magicians made a connection with me that few shows have in a long time. There’s just something so human about every season, but still out there and fun/funny. I hope if they end this batch of storylines that they start up a new sequel to the show.
But back on topic, Magicians isn’t a Netflix show. But they’d be smart to purchase it from SyFy if that were to become possible.
I watched the first couple seasons of it on Netflix. I only figured out it wasn't a Netflix show after that. Same thing happened with The Good Place (which is amazing).
I did the same for the good place. Good point. Netflix can and does act as a springboard to that kind of stuff - some could miss out on the magicians or the good place and other such shows if they didn’t find them first on Netflix.
I certainly don't hate Netflix, but I've discovered that, possibly unsurprisingly given the streaming landscape, the shows that I want to watch are increasingly scattered across other services. Currently I'm watching a few shows on HBO, a couple on Hulu, a couple on Disney+, a couple on CBS All Access (no, not just Star Trek, it turns out), and even a couple on Apple TV+. This leaves me with these problems regarding Netflix:
- Their "drop everything at once and binge" model means that I don't have to go back there regularly to check out new stuff, especially since there is always "new stuff" coming in just from the shows I'm watching elsewhere;
- Because they won't play with Apple TV's "Up Next" (and I presume they don't with other systems' equivalents), they don't even get to push ads in front of me when I search for new things unless I specifically go to their application to search;
- I hate hate hate going to their application to search because of their insistence on playing previews with sound constantly;
- Last but not least, Netflix is the second-most expensive service I subscribe to behind HBO, and that's without paying extra for the 4K that every other 4K-capable streaming service includes as part of their standard plan.
I know a lot of people cancel streaming subscriptions and then sign up when they have something specific to watch. So far I haven't done that -- but if I start, I'm very likely to start with Netflix.
Netflix focusing hard on original content while simultaneously fighting against the discovery services built into my Apple TV is mind-boggling.
I have shows I’m watching on Hulu, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, as well as ones I’ve purchased from the iTunes Store; all of which show up nicely in my Up Next list. It’s the first thing I go to when I fire up my Apple TV to watch something, and as a result unless I have been binging something recently anything on Netflix gets put on the back burner because I have to go elsewhere to look for it.
The Apple TV app already shows results for Netflix content, but without better integration I have to remember to go back to pick a show up. I actually cancelled Netflix at the end of December because discovery was such a chore, I just resubscribed last week to check out The Witcher and watch Altered Carbon when it returns, after which I’ll likely drop it again.
As an aside, I got a year of Apple TV+ free when I activated my replacement iPhone XS. I am rather surprised at the quality of content Apple has put out and the rate they are expanding their library. I may we’ll keep this one around if they keep it up.
At this point I view Netflix as a basic cable (minus sports) substitute. Tons of mediocre but relatively engaging content, with old movies and some reruns. The fact that there are (almost) no commercials and the price is far lower than a cable package makes it worth it for a lot of consumers.
There is also a good amount of foreign shows that I would never have given a chance that are really great.
Black Spot, Dark, Nobel, etc.
British shows like Peaky Blinders, Doc Martin, Bodyguard, Sherlock, The Inbetweeners, and especially Broad Church.
Before netflix I would never have given these shows a chance and indeed I cannot think of a time I have watched a foreign show before this besides Luther. Netflix has done a great job of surfacing these at least to me. No idea if I represent the normal TV viewer.
One fascinating thing that I appreciate about foreign tv is that the main actors for many of them don't look like models like in the US but just regular people, flaws and all.
I disagree pretty strongly. It has felt like Netflix is deliberately pushing more foreign language content with bad dubbing and often the structure and execution is pretty amateur (eg Ares). They seem to rely on the mere fact it is foreign for it to be bought into as indie or cultural, but the shows are just bad.
It strikes me as s deliberate marketing tactic. Instead of investing in creating nice, acclaimed dramas, they put that money into relatively more garbage shows that cater to mass audiences and try to find shortcuts to repurpose that content and repackage it to “kill two birds with one stone” and cater to the indie niche with it.
But the tactic doesn’t work, and now my Netflix menus are filled with super frustrating noise of these foreign shows, often which you can’t tell are foreign until you press play. It has made the platform nearly unusable to me.
The crazy thing is that I love a lot of foreign movies and shows. Amour, You Are the Apple of my Eye, Burning are some of my favorite films. But the things Netflix is pushing on me are more like network-level crap dramas with a clear attempt to make you feel like they are fancy merely by being foreign.
I think that's just a side effect of them becoming a more global company and producing content for different markets but just throwing it all up worldwide.
Would agree their dubbing is universally horrendous. Even for something well reviewed like Dark.
One reason why I’d still disagree is that Netflix heavily engineers personalization into their recommendations and listings. You’re not accidentally seeing those foreign titles, you are being targeted with them... which means you’re not being targeted with similar English language shows that would be as good a match in their system (because they would rather save that production money and try to get you to watch the already-made foreign show), or even less good shows in your language of choice.
For me it’s very nearly at a level of canceling the service. Their original content hasn’t been compelling for me personally in many years, and now it feels deliberately manipulative.
I recently feel like I’ve watched all the good shows on Netflix already. I sometimes browse the online rankings or Netflix home page for half an hour and then, due to lack of interesting content decide to re-watch the show I’ve already finished. I’ll probably switch to HBO Go, or just torrents.
This is isn't just about Netflix, though I'm sure there were some people who saw Netflix as a bastion for good TV. At this point, entertainment is all about quantity of mediocrity and CGI spectacle. They have the formula to keep most people watching while putting in the least amount of effort in terms of storytelling. If you can psychoanalyze your audience, you can keep them hooked and feed them whatever messages you want. All Netflix needed was to set up people's expectations and then gradually reduce their excellence so the audience continues to watch despite the mediocre quality.
If more people besides those on HN cancel their Netflix subscriptions, that will be a good thing because maybe they'll stop "binge watching" with pride and start doing other things with their time. I'm pessimistic on both fronts because I don't think the average person is going to cancel their Netflix, and even if they did I think they'll continue to vegetate while watching Amazon Prime, Disney+, Hulu, CBS All Access, etc.
I'm actually surprised that anyone thought that Netflix would ever end up as anything but a "TV Network", albeit with a nice interface. The business model is what it is.
All the hype, the stratospheric share price, the prognostications of "disruption" (which they certainly did) don't change the fact that it's all about the content. And in that sense, Netflix doesn't really have any advantages. Creators will go where the pay is best, which leaves less for the distributor; winner's curse and all that.
Netflix is bigger than any TV Network, the only thing missing is live shows but not all TV networks carry live shows. If Netflix decided to push content instead of allowing it to be pulled, they have enough content to have 50+ channels.
I had hoped Netflix would usher in another golden age of film: throwing small budgets at innovative content creators (like Binging with Babish), up-and-coming auteurs (think like early 80s David Lynch). That didn’t happen. The data driven approach regresses content to the mean and I worry stifles creativity.
Netflix doesn’t seem to get that I’m not going to invest my time in a show that likely won’t get a second season, and if it doe almost certainly never a third. I find it mildly heartbreaking when I get invested in characters just enough and then I never get to see their archs finished. I’m still so sad they canceled The OA.
> Netflix doesn’t seem to get that I’m not going to invest my time in a show that likely won’t get a second season, and if it doe almost certainly never a third.
Do you think that they don't get this, or that it's not true for most of their audience and thus not relevant? Ie, they don't need to cater to your specific individual preference unless it's shared relatively widely, and I'm not convinced that it is. A lot of people just watch TV to have something "good enough" on while they vegetate. Netflix has always fit that niche a lot more than it's fit the "deep connection with prestige show" niche.
Ok well I went through a period of intense depression a while back and then I guess I wanted things to vegetate in front of, but normally if I have had a hard day at work I want something that I can still think about and something that won't be renewed seems like something that thinking about isn't worth the time.
I'm the opposit. What can be so detailed that it needs more than a 90 mins film?
Some super complicated thing where every detail count and that lasted several decades in real life? Ok, make it one season, and let say 5 or 6 episodes max.
What in the world could be so intersting that it needs to be several season? By the time you're done you could have done a PhD and know absolutely everything about a particular subject!
The problem is not shows designed for, say, six episodes only being six episodes long, that's perfectly fine, just like 90 minutes is perfectly fine.
The "limited series" format is a very good match for flatrate streaming and there are lots of very good examples, mostly from the UK.
The problem is shows designed for >30 episodes being cut short. Do that too often and you'll see massive reluctance to start watching any new show that isn't a limited series. When was the last time you considered using the Google chat system du jour?
Fargo is a perfect example. Lots of interconnected chaos, that lasts one season. Then a new story, with new characters in the same universe. I look forward to more creative storytelling that is both familiar and fresh (fresh in that each season has some tonal shifts despite commonalities.)
It's also not a documentary, despite saying it is, so Im not "learning." That said, something like the history of the Ottoman Empire probably takes more than 5 episodes to cover.
I liked the OA but it doesn’t surprise me at all that they had a hard time finding a large enough audience.
While not strictly a Netflix show (international distribution only I think) it is unfortunate that Travelers got canceled which I think should have been able to find a decent sized audience.
> Cindy Holland, Netflix’s VP of content, said in 2019 that critical acclaim is important, “but we’re really about trying to stretch our investment dollars as far as we can and make good on our investors’ money — it’s theirs, not ours.”
This is a huge red flag signal to me. A VP of content should be focused on the quality of shows and the editorial philosophy of a platform. That's not to say that Netflix shouldn't care about money, but that pressure should not be felt so strongly in that specific department IMO.
While some cancellations make sense (Sense8, as much as I love it, the budget was a real reason), others are completely nonsensical (The OA, Tuca and Bertie, Santa Clarita Diet to name a few). It really is a shame that Netflix simply doesn't seem to have a philosophy anymore. They make good content still, but only because they do enough things that not everything can be a miss.
I think we all know we are exiting the golden era of streaming, but I think when we look back, Netflix straying from its original principles may be seen as a notable part of that downfall. The sudden growth of separated streaming services was probably unavoidable, but I can't help but wonder that if Netflix stuck to its philosophy, the quality of the service may have kept other potential competitors around longer.
> A VP of content should be focused on the quality of shows
The sole purpose of Netflix is to make money. That’s all it’s there for. So that the owners (which includes thousands of normal working class employees) can buy food for their families.
No, that's the capitalist investors view. The problem is that Netflix now sees it as theirs. I'd bet quite a good sum of money that was not the goal when it started. I'd be surprised if that was the goal in 2010-2015 even.
> So that the owners (which includes thousands of normal working class employees) can buy food for their families.
If that were true, they would not be trying so hard to turn these excess profits. With how Netflix pays I don't think you can really call their employees "normal working class" either. Netflix is a classic case of greed and profit corrupting art. In some ways inevitable, but it's sad to see there's not even an internal tension between finance and content. That should be a battle that is waged daily in order to balance multiple purposes: both making money to support its employees and investors, and the art of shows and movies, among others.
Related, I keep noticing that the people who make the psychopath-investor argument seem to forget the company exists to make money by actually doing something.
Doing the something well enough that someone else wants to pay you for it (or keep paying you for it) is a pretty important part of that.
From their 2000 S-1 filing: “Our goal is to be the definitive online intermediary for choosing movies and other video entertainment”. Why would they want to become that if not for the money?
People should be working on making their area of work as awesome as it can be. P&L is important. But so are things like long-term opinion of Netflix's content brand.
Equity valuations assume distant future returns. Yes, there's strategic decisions to be made at both the department and overall level about how much one tries to maximize current cash output vs. invests in the brand and infrastructure.
Not to mention: it works better when you have different parties advocating for different parts of this picture and arguing. Let finance try and squeeze out every nickel that can be squeezed, today. Let content seek after a vision of success. And let creatives and finance argue and advocate and figure out a compromise that works and fits in as much of what each wants as possible.
Good content creates long term value. Focusing on money often leads to short term thinking. Focus on money often means investments are more likely to be seen as losses. Because the review is going to ask "What is the ROI?" & for long term things you're going to say "I'm not sure" because there's more unknowns. But you can know that you're making good content, so that should translate to good things
Same goes for Research & Development. Quarterly profits are not the correct KPI for every department. Where will those quarterly profits be ten years from now?
I'm rather sick of the idea that corporations exist solely to make money. It is a relatively new idea, but is now stated and repeated without justification. Corporations are legal entities, and exist within the framework that is allowed for them. Where that framework promotes poor behavior, it should be changed.
Ethics? Nope, money.
Good art? Nope, money.
Public benefit? Nope, money.
It is a reductive view that assumes that the legal framework is static, unchanging, and aligned towards morally good benefit.
Fair enough. But corporations don't look too dissimilar from any power authority throughout time that's profited disproportionality from labour. Different name, same game.
Weren't the original corporations basically perishes that had independent assets that were supposed to go to the officeholder instead of normal inheritence-sort of as a legal system hack?
While there is a long history of corprate charters being to make money for the shareholders, i think there is a long history of other goals as well.
Though Experiment: Should a customer service rep to rush you off the phone because your problem is difficult and therefore not a good use of time for them to try to solve? Even from a purely economic standpoint this is a complex question to answer. They need to take into account how many others are experiencing the problem, how likely they are to cancel their subscription, and how the situation is likely to evolve over time.
A similar, but infinitely harder problem exists for content production. You simply can't know with any certainty what a given strategy is going to do to long-term demand. If the VP of Content is too focused on the bottom line it will lead to a strategy of pruning production based on short-term viewership. This will decrease the viability of show-runners to do anything risky, ahead-of-its-time or with a longer-term payoff. Potentially even worse is killing cult classics (eg. The OA) which could lead to negative word of mouth both on the customer and on content maker side creating a long-term impact the bean counters can't see until it's too late.
So while Netflix overall has fiduciary responsibility, it is not the best strategy for every single person to be focused directly on revenue and ROI. I'd expect Content to have a slightly more abstract objective that allows room for creative judgement. I think Hollywood and HBO understand this dichotomy and how to operate within it, but judging by the overall bland feel of their catalog, Netflix doesn't.
As a customer or potential customer I am utterly indifferent if not hostile to that goal. In my world, the purpose of Netflix is to provide me with good stuff to watch. Preferably for free, so I can buy food for my working-class family. If the content is no good, Netflix can cease existing for all I care. And since I and millions of others like me are the ones who continue to allow Netflix to exist, I would say your list of "purposes of Netflix" maybe needs to be expanded to at least two items. Otherwise you've just defined the goal/purpose of a thief, not a commercial entity.
1. I don't believe a show is defined by its widespread popularity. I don't think someone on the content side should believe that either. TV and movies are forms of art, and good art is good art. If Netflix doesn't value that, it deserves to lose every bit of market share it's about to over the next decade.
2. We don't actually know how the popularity looks because we don't have the numbers. Even with the numbers, show popularity is a function of marketing and time allowed to grow, which is exactly what the article highlights.
Netflix is a business. They need to be profitable, not just make art for the sake of making art. If they go broke, they won't live to make another art. It's a balancing art ;-)
I never said it wasn't a balancing act (in fact I explicitly noted they should care about money) but the content team is exactly the team that should be fighting tooth and nail internally against those constraints. That quote makes it sound like they have rolled over, and their content decisions of the past 3 years tell a similar story.
A fair point, but the actions of the past few years align with that PR statement as well. There are also completely ways for the content team to say better things that would fit that unified front. Or perhaps that would worry investors that the company isn't singularly focused on them, which is 100% a part of this issue as well. The problem is that the company caved to that pressure from Wall Street.
The best companies, with true vision, balance their philosophy with the interests of investors and are okay if not everyone is behind their short term moves. The statement IMO either has its original meaning in my first post, or it means Netflix overvalues its short term stock outlook, and that is affecting content. No matter how you slice it, content at Netflix will continue to suffer so long as that holds true / Netflix continues to make similar statements.
Content is hard, a good story could be poorly executed and turned into a not so great show. It could be many things that were not obvious until the show is cut. What can the content team do then? Dump it and lose out on all the money spent or release it and learn from it? I believe they are doing the latter
Very true, but the balancing act is not as simple as a lot of people seem to think.
Obviously you can't spend a lot on shows that are losing money and stay solvent. But beyond that it's complicated
If you optimize only return-per-unit or viewers-per-unit (unit being movie, series, whatever) you could easily end up being a place that only makes a small number of "big" mass market appeal shows and movies.
That's a business model, but it's not the only one that makes sense. If you want to be a "big tent" sort of content place (very much where netflix started) you need to make some narrower appeal stuff. You have to make sure it still makes you money, but with a subscription service (rather than rental) this isn't actually easy to evaluate.
You also have to thing about time line. If you optimize for ROI on a short time (e.g. initial release) vs long burn, you'll make different decisions.
So part of this isn't just "you have to be a viable business", it's also "what sort of viable business".
>I don't believe a show is defined by its widespread popularity. I don't think someone on the content side should believe that either. TV and movies are forms of art, and good art is good art.
You are alone in that, since it seems that everyone on the content creation site is stubbornly insistent on getting a paycheck. So if for actors, writers, camera men, set builders etc both great art and money go together, why should be different for the corporate overlords.
You point out that Netflix has usage data as if you have access to that data. Some people like ten-hour reality TV binges and some people like thoughtful content. Netflix is just mirroring cable TV. Since Netflix uses product placement, especially in its age-targeted content, quantity of viewing time is more profitable than quality.
I didn’t know Tuca & Bertie existed until hearing it was cancelled on Twitter. Netflix’s marketing (including on their own site) was nil. As someone who’s watched every other Netflix adult animated series I definitely should have seen something if they were promoting the show at all. They were not. Self-fulfilling prophesy.
This is the first I've heard of it, ive seen all of bojack but Netflix has instead been trying to force bigmouth down my throat and I don't want it. :(
Seinfield wasn't a hit in it's first season either. The whole premise of the article is that Netflix is no longer giving shows a chance to come into their own like they once did.
> A VP of content should be focused on the quality of shows
There are many definitions of quality. For Netflix's purpose, quality is probably defined in terms of viewership and stickiness. They have to build a content library from scratch. Ensuring it appeals to the most amount of people per dollar is the most efficient way to do it.
The thing is, they built the library from scratch already! That was explicitly done in the "Bojack era" referenced, by doing exactly what they are not doing now.
We're now at the point where a library exists, and they are now going for easy wins quickly instead of continuing to invest in quality content that would actually grow that library. I suspect in an effort to keep their profit growth rate up for Wall Street.
They also have to account for tastes, I didn't care for any of your examples:
The OA, Tuca and Bertie, Santa Clarita Diet.
Making more that may stick or keep a larger audience makes sense. But this winter has been meh, I really wanted October Faction to be good, but they cast some guy that is basically the Mike's dad from Stranger Things. The guy isn't a bad ass alien hunter, more like a zero energy guy that just wants to nap in his recliner.
>This is a huge red flag signal to me. A VP of content should be focused on the quality of shows and the editorial philosophy of a platform.
Some of the greatest TV shows and movies were made on very tight budgets. If your show is big budget, but not prestige drama groomed for the emmys then it has to have good audience asap.
For me this is a good thing - it will push showrunners to be creative. After all the whole blackadder second season is literally 3 rooms and 4 suits budget wise - and it blows off season 1 out of the water which was with a bigger budget.
fwiw, I never even heard of BoJack. I did read Netflix recently inked a 275 million deal with Adam Sandler for four movies [0]. I am not sure if that includes movies released to theaters as well.
My first issue with Netflix is that that damn auto run of previews you get when trying to sort through the available content. My second issue is compared to D+ they are grossly over charging.
To be fair, a couple of the Adam Sandler movies haven't been half bad (at least for Adam Sandler), like Murder Mystery. Uncut Gems is also supposed to be pretty good, but I've not seen it yet.
I don't think Uncut Gems counts as a Sandler movie, he was just an actor in it.
Netflix is shooting for lowest common denominator television, TV that keeps engagement and attention. They shoot for just enough to get nominated for some awards, for the press. They are not Anapoura or A24esque.
My roommate has D+ and there's almost nothing on it that's interesting to me. I like Marvel movies, too, but it feels like half the time I try to play one it says "Sorry, this won't be available until x date". I started watching the new Star Wars show and didn't find it that entertaining. I'd much rather spend the money on Netflix or ad-free Hulu (also owned by Disney).
Agreed - she should be fighting for quality content that she believes in, in meetings, while some moustache-twirling villain in a top hat patronizingly says to her that shit she just said (but occasionally is convinced/won over). That's the dynamic that keeps a film studio (or hell even a record label, back in the day) vibrant, relevant, and yes oddly enough, making money for years.
The focus on ROI explains why most of the shows are commercials in disguise these days. Time to start converting all of those captive eyeballs into cash, just like Youtube.
For those griping about quality... Emmy wins and nominations would refute your personal bias. Content doesn’t appeal to everyone but critics have been very impressed with some of the content on Netflix.
It's super weird that there isn't a single result when I Ctrl+F this page for the word "union". Bojack's animators unionized, and four months later their show was canceled.
AMC on the other hand seems to take the opposite approach, at times stretching a series out for seasons after it has run out of energy and material. Wonder if the difference in the approaches is due to differences in the subscription versus advertising revenue models.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 191 ms ] thread• Good shows to shut down,
• Terrible, Awful, No Good, Very Bad concepts ("The Goop Lab") to be approved—actually, this was the named reason for why I canceled; I actually wrote "The Goop Lab" in the Other cancellation box. https://globalnews.ca/news/6488433/goop-uk-health-warning-gw...
• Blockbusters to lapse,
• Fillers to be licensed.
It's just not worth the 15.99/mo I've been paying them anymore, which is unfortunate. Five years ago, originals had serious promise.
Works on phones/smaller screens for sure.
Otherwise, for me (~40 yo male in Sweden), Netflix isn't very interesting at all. I think its data-driven culture is awesome at creating shows that are fascinating to its California-based execs.
Also: I wish they'd tone down the politics. I'm with Bill Burr on this: Not every single fxxing thing has to be about politics. We get it. We're onboard. We don't need to be preached at in every singly fxxking show though. Remember, we're paying for a service here. We expect being entertained. Not getting preached at.
Just take the downvotes as a badge of pride. I expect this very comment to get downvoted and those same voters won't even bother to tell me why I'm wrong.
It's tempting to imagine that placing hurdles in front of users could solve the quality problem, but IMO that's a fantasy. There are no easy ways to do that and no technical fixes for it.
See, this is the problem. I'd many of the downvoted posts I see are simply contrarian, not something insubstantial.
I love a ton of stuff from Netflix: Ozark, Unbelievable, Witcher, Lost In Space, Altered Carbon, and a lot more stuff I can't think of at the moment.
Plus add in MakeMKV and Plex and there is a nice little ecosystem. Not as convenient as the golden age of Netflix, but now that everyone wants their own streaming service, I'd rather just cycle through a couple discs a week than do the whole lets get Disney+ for the Mandalorian, okay bingd watched that now lets get Netflix for Witcher, oh now Season 2 of the Mandalorian is out, back to Disney, oh look HBO has a new thing, etc.
DVD.com is owned by Netflix. And honestly, if you're hooked on the availability of content and don't want to ditch the Netflix pipeline completely, switching to DVD.com probably makes sense. The revenue shift from Netflix to DVD.com will have the same net impact on spending decisions.
Now that mailing you a disc is the only way they can get you certain content, the service is back closer to the level it was when they were killing Blockbuster.
Well, everyone wants their own subscription service, whether it be video-on-demand or a calendar app.
1. Produce some fitness content. Yoga, stretching, meditation, calisthenics, etc. I get the impression there are countless talented fitness trainers that would love to produce regular content while being cheap to hire. Look at Peloton, they charge $40/mo to live stream classes after people spend thousands on a bike. I imagine a lot of people would watch live or prerecorded fitness classes on Netflix, become loyal to the trainers and stay subscribed for their content.
2. Hire some YouTubers. I spend more time on YouTube than Netflix. Lots of great comedy, educational, travel, and tech content there. Most of them are also struggling for money and would jump on an exclusive Netflix partnership for a fraction of what Netflix pays for other content.
3. Daily news. Find a few entertaining personalities and journalists that can report on the daily news. Why can't I switch on Netflix today to get the latest on coronavirus?
Lastly... let me search the content. Why can't I just browse comedy movies released in the last few years, or horror movies sorted by release date? I find Netflix such a terrible and frustrating interface and I have to scroll past the same movie or series a dozen times as I go through the content. I've had Netflix for years, and I still feel like I have no idea what is actually on there because it's so annoying to browse. I think I'll likely cancel next year.
Making more money than an ad-based monetization model can provide?
So for daily content. Show ends, you go back to the menu. Do you pick the next thing to watch? I don't know - but they've tried a number of "daily" or "weekly" shows before, and they haven't appeared to be successful. I suspect it's because they didn't improve metrics. Versus say releasing a show all at once - people binge for 3-4 hours and come back the next night to do the same thing.
I think going with amateur youtubers who produce lots of cheap, short content would be smart for like, Snap or Instagram but very bad for Netflix. Netflix's original content hit it off in terms of quality, long form narratives with dramas like House of Cards, while syndicating shows after air gave them second life (Breaking Bad, the Office, Friends) and absolutely crushing it with "must see" films (recently, the Irishman, Marriage Story, but also in the past stuff like Beasts of No Nation).
Conversely, their cheap shows from nobodies tend to die in the womb, and I don't think Netflix does that without good data to make such a decision.
That said, there are some really strong offerings hidden in the noise. The shift to originals over licensed is hurting the average quality level... but it definitely makes sense as a long term play.
It still makes sense for me and I am happy support the many gambles they take with content... even if most are lackluster.
One half watching YouTube at 1.5 speed and skipping the first Wadsworth constant minutes of it, reading Wikipedia and looking for more ways to get directly at the essence of things.
The other half who wants to pay a fixed monthly price for somebody (Netflix today) to keep them "entertained" for hours while filling up their non-working hours.
They don't have every movie I want to see, but they're also not my only source for entertainment. As one source of multiple, I think they're great. I can't think of any service that would be good for a single source of entertainment.
I honestly just don't understand the hate.
But back on topic, Magicians isn’t a Netflix show. But they’d be smart to purchase it from SyFy if that were to become possible.
- Their "drop everything at once and binge" model means that I don't have to go back there regularly to check out new stuff, especially since there is always "new stuff" coming in just from the shows I'm watching elsewhere;
- Because they won't play with Apple TV's "Up Next" (and I presume they don't with other systems' equivalents), they don't even get to push ads in front of me when I search for new things unless I specifically go to their application to search;
- I hate hate hate going to their application to search because of their insistence on playing previews with sound constantly;
- Last but not least, Netflix is the second-most expensive service I subscribe to behind HBO, and that's without paying extra for the 4K that every other 4K-capable streaming service includes as part of their standard plan.
I know a lot of people cancel streaming subscriptions and then sign up when they have something specific to watch. So far I haven't done that -- but if I start, I'm very likely to start with Netflix.
I have shows I’m watching on Hulu, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, as well as ones I’ve purchased from the iTunes Store; all of which show up nicely in my Up Next list. It’s the first thing I go to when I fire up my Apple TV to watch something, and as a result unless I have been binging something recently anything on Netflix gets put on the back burner because I have to go elsewhere to look for it.
The Apple TV app already shows results for Netflix content, but without better integration I have to remember to go back to pick a show up. I actually cancelled Netflix at the end of December because discovery was such a chore, I just resubscribed last week to check out The Witcher and watch Altered Carbon when it returns, after which I’ll likely drop it again.
As an aside, I got a year of Apple TV+ free when I activated my replacement iPhone XS. I am rather surprised at the quality of content Apple has put out and the rate they are expanding their library. I may we’ll keep this one around if they keep it up.
Black Spot, Dark, Nobel, etc. British shows like Peaky Blinders, Doc Martin, Bodyguard, Sherlock, The Inbetweeners, and especially Broad Church.
Before netflix I would never have given these shows a chance and indeed I cannot think of a time I have watched a foreign show before this besides Luther. Netflix has done a great job of surfacing these at least to me. No idea if I represent the normal TV viewer.
One fascinating thing that I appreciate about foreign tv is that the main actors for many of them don't look like models like in the US but just regular people, flaws and all.
It strikes me as s deliberate marketing tactic. Instead of investing in creating nice, acclaimed dramas, they put that money into relatively more garbage shows that cater to mass audiences and try to find shortcuts to repurpose that content and repackage it to “kill two birds with one stone” and cater to the indie niche with it.
But the tactic doesn’t work, and now my Netflix menus are filled with super frustrating noise of these foreign shows, often which you can’t tell are foreign until you press play. It has made the platform nearly unusable to me.
The crazy thing is that I love a lot of foreign movies and shows. Amour, You Are the Apple of my Eye, Burning are some of my favorite films. But the things Netflix is pushing on me are more like network-level crap dramas with a clear attempt to make you feel like they are fancy merely by being foreign.
Would agree their dubbing is universally horrendous. Even for something well reviewed like Dark.
For me it’s very nearly at a level of canceling the service. Their original content hasn’t been compelling for me personally in many years, and now it feels deliberately manipulative.
If more people besides those on HN cancel their Netflix subscriptions, that will be a good thing because maybe they'll stop "binge watching" with pride and start doing other things with their time. I'm pessimistic on both fronts because I don't think the average person is going to cancel their Netflix, and even if they did I think they'll continue to vegetate while watching Amazon Prime, Disney+, Hulu, CBS All Access, etc.
All the hype, the stratospheric share price, the prognostications of "disruption" (which they certainly did) don't change the fact that it's all about the content. And in that sense, Netflix doesn't really have any advantages. Creators will go where the pay is best, which leaves less for the distributor; winner's curse and all that.
Netflix doesn’t seem to get that I’m not going to invest my time in a show that likely won’t get a second season, and if it doe almost certainly never a third. I find it mildly heartbreaking when I get invested in characters just enough and then I never get to see their archs finished. I’m still so sad they canceled The OA.
Do you think that they don't get this, or that it's not true for most of their audience and thus not relevant? Ie, they don't need to cater to your specific individual preference unless it's shared relatively widely, and I'm not convinced that it is. A lot of people just watch TV to have something "good enough" on while they vegetate. Netflix has always fit that niche a lot more than it's fit the "deep connection with prestige show" niche.
Some super complicated thing where every detail count and that lasted several decades in real life? Ok, make it one season, and let say 5 or 6 episodes max.
What in the world could be so intersting that it needs to be several season? By the time you're done you could have done a PhD and know absolutely everything about a particular subject!
The "limited series" format is a very good match for flatrate streaming and there are lots of very good examples, mostly from the UK.
The problem is shows designed for >30 episodes being cut short. Do that too often and you'll see massive reluctance to start watching any new show that isn't a limited series. When was the last time you considered using the Google chat system du jour?
It's also not a documentary, despite saying it is, so Im not "learning." That said, something like the history of the Ottoman Empire probably takes more than 5 episodes to cover.
While not strictly a Netflix show (international distribution only I think) it is unfortunate that Travelers got canceled which I think should have been able to find a decent sized audience.
This is a huge red flag signal to me. A VP of content should be focused on the quality of shows and the editorial philosophy of a platform. That's not to say that Netflix shouldn't care about money, but that pressure should not be felt so strongly in that specific department IMO.
While some cancellations make sense (Sense8, as much as I love it, the budget was a real reason), others are completely nonsensical (The OA, Tuca and Bertie, Santa Clarita Diet to name a few). It really is a shame that Netflix simply doesn't seem to have a philosophy anymore. They make good content still, but only because they do enough things that not everything can be a miss.
I think we all know we are exiting the golden era of streaming, but I think when we look back, Netflix straying from its original principles may be seen as a notable part of that downfall. The sudden growth of separated streaming services was probably unavoidable, but I can't help but wonder that if Netflix stuck to its philosophy, the quality of the service may have kept other potential competitors around longer.
The sole purpose of Netflix is to make money. That’s all it’s there for. So that the owners (which includes thousands of normal working class employees) can buy food for their families.
Everyone should be focused on that goal, surely?
No, that's the capitalist investors view. The problem is that Netflix now sees it as theirs. I'd bet quite a good sum of money that was not the goal when it started. I'd be surprised if that was the goal in 2010-2015 even.
> So that the owners (which includes thousands of normal working class employees) can buy food for their families.
If that were true, they would not be trying so hard to turn these excess profits. With how Netflix pays I don't think you can really call their employees "normal working class" either. Netflix is a classic case of greed and profit corrupting art. In some ways inevitable, but it's sad to see there's not even an internal tension between finance and content. That should be a battle that is waged daily in order to balance multiple purposes: both making money to support its employees and investors, and the art of shows and movies, among others.
Doing the something well enough that someone else wants to pay you for it (or keep paying you for it) is a pretty important part of that.
- To reduce the number of product/political commercials
- To spread the best media from every country to everyone
There are legitimate reasons besides money.
Equity valuations assume distant future returns. Yes, there's strategic decisions to be made at both the department and overall level about how much one tries to maximize current cash output vs. invests in the brand and infrastructure.
Not to mention: it works better when you have different parties advocating for different parts of this picture and arguing. Let finance try and squeeze out every nickel that can be squeezed, today. Let content seek after a vision of success. And let creatives and finance argue and advocate and figure out a compromise that works and fits in as much of what each wants as possible.
Same goes for Research & Development. Quarterly profits are not the correct KPI for every department. Where will those quarterly profits be ten years from now?
Ethics? Nope, money.
Good art? Nope, money.
Public benefit? Nope, money.
It is a reductive view that assumes that the legal framework is static, unchanging, and aligned towards morally good benefit.
It's been around for thousands of years. Can find examples throughout history as far back as Silk Road and probably further.
What is a relatively new idea is doing things for non-profitable reasons.
While there is a long history of corprate charters being to make money for the shareholders, i think there is a long history of other goals as well.
A similar, but infinitely harder problem exists for content production. You simply can't know with any certainty what a given strategy is going to do to long-term demand. If the VP of Content is too focused on the bottom line it will lead to a strategy of pruning production based on short-term viewership. This will decrease the viability of show-runners to do anything risky, ahead-of-its-time or with a longer-term payoff. Potentially even worse is killing cult classics (eg. The OA) which could lead to negative word of mouth both on the customer and on content maker side creating a long-term impact the bean counters can't see until it's too late.
So while Netflix overall has fiduciary responsibility, it is not the best strategy for every single person to be focused directly on revenue and ROI. I'd expect Content to have a slightly more abstract objective that allows room for creative judgement. I think Hollywood and HBO understand this dichotomy and how to operate within it, but judging by the overall bland feel of their catalog, Netflix doesn't.
2. We don't actually know how the popularity looks because we don't have the numbers. Even with the numbers, show popularity is a function of marketing and time allowed to grow, which is exactly what the article highlights.
The lack of an external signal doesn't mean that everything is fine inside.
The best companies, with true vision, balance their philosophy with the interests of investors and are okay if not everyone is behind their short term moves. The statement IMO either has its original meaning in my first post, or it means Netflix overvalues its short term stock outlook, and that is affecting content. No matter how you slice it, content at Netflix will continue to suffer so long as that holds true / Netflix continues to make similar statements.
Obviously you can't spend a lot on shows that are losing money and stay solvent. But beyond that it's complicated
If you optimize only return-per-unit or viewers-per-unit (unit being movie, series, whatever) you could easily end up being a place that only makes a small number of "big" mass market appeal shows and movies.
That's a business model, but it's not the only one that makes sense. If you want to be a "big tent" sort of content place (very much where netflix started) you need to make some narrower appeal stuff. You have to make sure it still makes you money, but with a subscription service (rather than rental) this isn't actually easy to evaluate.
You also have to thing about time line. If you optimize for ROI on a short time (e.g. initial release) vs long burn, you'll make different decisions.
So part of this isn't just "you have to be a viable business", it's also "what sort of viable business".
You are alone in that, since it seems that everyone on the content creation site is stubbornly insistent on getting a paycheck. So if for actors, writers, camera men, set builders etc both great art and money go together, why should be different for the corporate overlords.
There are many definitions of quality. For Netflix's purpose, quality is probably defined in terms of viewership and stickiness. They have to build a content library from scratch. Ensuring it appeals to the most amount of people per dollar is the most efficient way to do it.
We're now at the point where a library exists, and they are now going for easy wins quickly instead of continuing to invest in quality content that would actually grow that library. I suspect in an effort to keep their profit growth rate up for Wall Street.
Making more that may stick or keep a larger audience makes sense. But this winter has been meh, I really wanted October Faction to be good, but they cast some guy that is basically the Mike's dad from Stranger Things. The guy isn't a bad ass alien hunter, more like a zero energy guy that just wants to nap in his recliner.
Some of the greatest TV shows and movies were made on very tight budgets. If your show is big budget, but not prestige drama groomed for the emmys then it has to have good audience asap.
For me this is a good thing - it will push showrunners to be creative. After all the whole blackadder second season is literally 3 rooms and 4 suits budget wise - and it blows off season 1 out of the water which was with a bigger budget.
My first issue with Netflix is that that damn auto run of previews you get when trying to sort through the available content. My second issue is compared to D+ they are grossly over charging.
[0] https://apnews.com/d52fbcbd99b9506efdf06eb9bc8540ec
Taking a page out of Sony's playbook, I see.
Netflix is shooting for lowest common denominator television, TV that keeps engagement and attention. They shoot for just enough to get nominated for some awards, for the press. They are not Anapoura or A24esque.
He's one of the greatest content geniuses in American history.
He did more for film art than anybody, and made money while doing it.
I worked at Netflix, and their business model didn't make any sense then, and makes even less sense now that Disney is a goliath.
Anybody can build and operate a CDN these days if they access to content that people want to pay for.
https://deadline.com/2019/09/2019-emmys-wins-network-shows-s...
Source: the Emmy and NAACP award sitting on my shelf.
A story in two headlines:
https://www.vulture.com/2019/06/bojack-horsemans-animators-h...
https://www.vulture.com/2019/10/raphael-bob-waksberg-bojack-...