Man, Netflix is really going down hill. I get that the entire landscape has changed but they dont seem to be innovating. Why not try to give small budgets to UCLA students or something like that. Prefect the dubbing of all their content to make it more appealing in other markets. Have some conviction in their shows on a longer timeline and stop cancelling things after 1-2 seasons effectively making the IP worthless. They can improve their search so people have a better experience finding content and don't churn. License their own content to othet studios.
They can definitely keep making money, but in my exoerience Netflix has not been #1 or even #2 when I go to watch media now. Which is a big change from a few years ago. I dont pay for it myself or I would have cancelled.
Here is the problem: What you're doing is describing ways that Netflix can be a good media company. Netflix is valued as a tech company and pays tech workers like a top tier tech company. At some point they either have to do some innovative new tech that separates them from the competition, or they have to become an excellent media company- and that probably starts with firing all the fat and happy tech workers.
Netflix is very unique in that they put significantly more stock (and subsequently, capex) in making data driven content decisions than other studios do.
I don't know how the gamble will play out, but if it works well for them, I imagine they'll continue to pay top tier.
So while we may hate all their weird reality tv shows or wonder why good stuff gets cancelled why other things continue, it may have a lot less to do with a single individual's decision.
Also note, Netflix is known to pay significantly more than the rest of FAANG at this point, though they hire much less frequently.
And for anybody who is keeping score Amazon who is often not data driven, but rather driven by random opinion of random empowered employees. The result are worse not better.
> Netflix is very unique in that they put significantly more stock (and subsequently, capex) in making data driven content decisions than other studios do.
> I don't know how the gamble will play out, but if it works well for them, I imagine they'll continue to pay top tier.
This would've made sense a little under a decade ago. The last few years have shown how badly the idea works or Netflix's models are.
Who’s to say the proposed $300M in cuts won’t touch tech? They may be still trading as a tech company, but it looks like they may be firing some of those engineers anyways.
Describing engineers as "fat and happy" is really derogatory. Their spend on tech employees is a tiny fraction of total content spend. Also, an even tinier fraction of what they spend on services like AWS. If they want to cut costs, there's a ton more low hanging fruit than letting people go. In fact, revenue per employee is the highest compared to other FAANG
If you look at the complaints about Netflix, most of them relate to content, not tech. This suggests that they've under-invested in content, and over-invested in tech.
Disagree, total content spend the last 4 years has been ~18bn/year compared to ~500m/yr on all employee R&D. That's shows there's a content quality problem not a content underinvestment.
According to their latest annual statement (2022), they spent 2.7 billion USD on "Technology & Development". Where are you getting the 500 million figure?
I think the tech side of Netflix is great, they do a great job. But it’s simply not what makes money for Netflix anymore and they are extra-ordinarily well paid.
I think that the budget cut means starting fewer high-end series. They've been saying for a year or so that they realize it's not a good look to cancel so many shows. But I suspect that manifests less as "finish shows they start with" as "commit less".
I'd like to see them do more shows as one-season limited series. I understand why they want to have cliffhangers that encourage you to stay subscribed for months waiting for the rest, but obviously that doesn't work if they cancel it.
I'm watching 1899 right now, and I'm enjoying it despite knowing that it was canceled prematurely. It's pretty and fun to watch. But it moves at a glacial pace and could just as well be compressed into one season.
(For that matter... it's clearly "Lost, But On A Boat", and whatever ending they actually had in mind was gonna suck. Shows like that never end well. I'll probably be just as happy not to have to watch whatever unsatisfactory solution they were going to throw at me.)
> Its pretty and fun to watch. But it moves at a glacial pace and could just be compressed into one season.
I feel this captures most streaming series. 10 years ago a season could consist of 24 separate stories with one continuous background plot. Now you have one story spanning 10 episodes and ending on a cliffhanger. I'm not against the format. Parts of Terror was great. But most are excruciating slow with next to no character development and detours that doesn't matter.
The good dubbing would also help me with learning Spanish. I remember trying to watch The Office when it was still on Netflix and it didn't have Spanish dubs or subs!!
I was floored. Peacock has both for The Office and the dubs are pretty good.
I understand Netflix not wasting the time on content that isn't theirs, like The Office. But still - its crazy their content library hasn't at least added language support for the next 1 or 2 most popular languages. They can overlap those languages with their top 50 or so shows?
I don't know if they've already looked into this and it just isn't profitable.
Yup, but I can also re-watch shows like The Office or Seinfeld where I know or understand the context and jokes
And so I need not turn on subs like I may have to with Spanish originals. Also I recognize jokes or bits and realize what they're trying to say.
I feel like when I go into a new series blind, I end up turning on subtitles. But I didn't for the two shows mentioned above, I tried to force myself to hear the words rather than read the subs, because I already knew kind of what the episode(s) and conversations in them were about.
I find that that's a slightly different reasoning process.
Netflix is probably the platform with most foreign film and matching captions. Including production. I highly recommend you to look at their hidden language categories.
The downward slide has been happening for a long while, but it was still better than a lot of what was being broadcast on TV in a lot of countries and was cheaper than cable.
Related, I will pay whenever I can, because I'm done with ads. A quick google search says Pluto averages 10 minutes of ads per hour. That means over 15 percent of each of my viewing sessions would be watching ads.
For a short while I knew I was going to be in bed recovering from a medical procedure and thought it was a good time to use YouTube Premium since I'd be watching so much. I (maybe sadly, maybe not), cannot fathom the idea now of going back to using it without it. Which is something I would have before then totally ridiculed someone for say!
Premium plus an addon to block sponsors (https://sponsor.ajay.app/) has been great for me. I hate watching youtube on the tv now, because that still has sponsor blocks
I would pay for youtube premium to remove ads if Youtube made it clear they intended to be good to non-mega sized youtubers and be a helpful and supportive platform for their needs.
Instead they have consistently taken a strategy of ignoring anyone as much as physically possible, punishing even "big" youtubers for asking innocent questions, making creator's content worse without their permission and actively against their will, and siding with large external businesses over the needs of the majority of their content creators.
A youtube that I would spend money to support would do things like provide dedicated support channels to medium sized creators that could actually do things instead of just being a sounding board, be VERY clear about what advertisers do not want in content you want to make money from, create high quality sponsor and/or merch integration, reward creators for effort and polish over simply filling the space with as much as possible, get rid of clickbait in general, build a robust content licensing system so it would be easier and more reliable for content creators to sample video content in legitimate ways for a reasonable cost (creators are not afraid to spend hundreds of dollars on stock footage for a valuable video and would be willing to license content), and other ways to make content creators more effective and not encourage them to work themselves to death in a content machine and antagonistic treadmill system.
So yeah, fuck giving them a dime for actively harming the people who actually make the stuff that brings me to the platform.
I use the Brave Browser and never see ads on YouTube.
Only ads in podcast shows where the podcaster is advertising it, but even for those I have the SponsorBlock plugin that skips those portions of the videos.
$100 is a lot to pay for streaming services. And to list prices over 20 years is also strange. Netflix can cost $6.99/mo. Is it worth $6.99/mo, or $83.88/year? I don't know, maybe, but it is certainly more realistic than answering if a bundle of services are worth $24000 per 20 years.
I didn't read the article but the headline is hilarious. For a company that has been so outward about hiring "all star talent" I'm amazed they're needing to cut back. Just from the outside it appears that things are pretty broken there...
The password sharing thing really annoyed me. We were sharing a password between two households, so, fair is fair, we tried to pay the extra fee for an additional household.
However, the profile transfers don't work properly. We couldn't transfer the right profile to the second household. I think it has something to do with it being the first / primary profile. It's still broken. They said they'd give us a refund, but didn't. Now we're paying more for a worse, broken product.
I spent 45m with support that did not give a single fuck.
It's not on my credit card or it would have been cancelled months ago. I don't care if they want to change pricing or crack down on password sharing, but when they're asking for more money I expect things to work. They deserve to get out-competed IMO.
It's just gonna be the same as HBO Max and D+. They'll remove shows with low views from the platforms has a cost saving method on residuals.
Increase prices, again.
And finally decrease the budget of newer shows, as well as increase the amount of newer shows to try and capture a new audience that won't subscribe, while pissing off the pre-existing one.
Wouldn't be surprised if they also try to save on bandwidth by increasing compression, removing a few servers...
I wonder if they find a sweet spot of relatively cheap shows with a small target audience. It may not matter if only a few people watch, say, Filipino soap operas, if they can get it for not much money.
That stuff strikes a lot of people as "crap", and it's a problem that Netflix will recommend it to you when they've run out of other things you actually want. A good recommendation engine helps, but in the end Netflix is always going to have mostly stuff that doesn't interest you.
Yup. Their prices are just too high for occasional content. It's simpler and cheap to just pay directly through Amazon Video. Unless Netflix has three or four shows that you can't miss, it's just too expensive.
netflix is just trash, half the shows or more push the woke agenda, whenever two males get near each other i just know they'll some how magically both be gay. there is nothing creative and are falling into the disney problem.
now i think netflix shines with the foreign films, i've been enjoying those more then the american films, but that doesnt justify paying the monthly fee.
I must be the only one here that loves Netflix. I probably have a 100+ TV shows and Movies in my to watch list. Anyways, $300million is a drop in the bucket compared to their yearly expense. Why is this news again?
The biggest mistake Netflix made was thinking that they are a tech company instead of being a media company. All the extremely high paid software devs creating this massive mangle of microservices. What they should have realized is that porn sites have been supporting far more users around the world without doing any of this microservices nonsense.
Netflix still has a strong app and a great interface. But quietly other streaming services are starting to have much better overall content than Netflix. You just wouldn't realize it because the apps themselves aren't quite as good yet.
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[ 7.1 ms ] story [ 106 ms ] threadThey can definitely keep making money, but in my exoerience Netflix has not been #1 or even #2 when I go to watch media now. Which is a big change from a few years ago. I dont pay for it myself or I would have cancelled.
I don't know how the gamble will play out, but if it works well for them, I imagine they'll continue to pay top tier.
So while we may hate all their weird reality tv shows or wonder why good stuff gets cancelled why other things continue, it may have a lot less to do with a single individual's decision.
Also note, Netflix is known to pay significantly more than the rest of FAANG at this point, though they hire much less frequently.
> I don't know how the gamble will play out, but if it works well for them, I imagine they'll continue to pay top tier.
This would've made sense a little under a decade ago. The last few years have shown how badly the idea works or Netflix's models are.
So worst of both worlds?
https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/2022/ar... page 23
I'd like to see them do more shows as one-season limited series. I understand why they want to have cliffhangers that encourage you to stay subscribed for months waiting for the rest, but obviously that doesn't work if they cancel it.
I'm watching 1899 right now, and I'm enjoying it despite knowing that it was canceled prematurely. It's pretty and fun to watch. But it moves at a glacial pace and could just as well be compressed into one season.
(For that matter... it's clearly "Lost, But On A Boat", and whatever ending they actually had in mind was gonna suck. Shows like that never end well. I'll probably be just as happy not to have to watch whatever unsatisfactory solution they were going to throw at me.)
I feel this captures most streaming series. 10 years ago a season could consist of 24 separate stories with one continuous background plot. Now you have one story spanning 10 episodes and ending on a cliffhanger. I'm not against the format. Parts of Terror was great. But most are excruciating slow with next to no character development and detours that doesn't matter.
I was floored. Peacock has both for The Office and the dubs are pretty good.
I understand Netflix not wasting the time on content that isn't theirs, like The Office. But still - its crazy their content library hasn't at least added language support for the next 1 or 2 most popular languages. They can overlap those languages with their top 50 or so shows?
I don't know if they've already looked into this and it just isn't profitable.
And so I need not turn on subs like I may have to with Spanish originals. Also I recognize jokes or bits and realize what they're trying to say.
I feel like when I go into a new series blind, I end up turning on subtitles. But I didn't for the two shows mentioned above, I tried to force myself to hear the words rather than read the subs, because I already knew kind of what the episode(s) and conversations in them were about.
I find that that's a slightly different reasoning process.
$100 per month times 12 for 20 years = $24000
now do you want the $24,000 for the next 20 years or do you think the entertainment will give you $24000 worth
Related, I will pay whenever I can, because I'm done with ads. A quick google search says Pluto averages 10 minutes of ads per hour. That means over 15 percent of each of my viewing sessions would be watching ads.
Instead they have consistently taken a strategy of ignoring anyone as much as physically possible, punishing even "big" youtubers for asking innocent questions, making creator's content worse without their permission and actively against their will, and siding with large external businesses over the needs of the majority of their content creators.
A youtube that I would spend money to support would do things like provide dedicated support channels to medium sized creators that could actually do things instead of just being a sounding board, be VERY clear about what advertisers do not want in content you want to make money from, create high quality sponsor and/or merch integration, reward creators for effort and polish over simply filling the space with as much as possible, get rid of clickbait in general, build a robust content licensing system so it would be easier and more reliable for content creators to sample video content in legitimate ways for a reasonable cost (creators are not afraid to spend hundreds of dollars on stock footage for a valuable video and would be willing to license content), and other ways to make content creators more effective and not encourage them to work themselves to death in a content machine and antagonistic treadmill system.
So yeah, fuck giving them a dime for actively harming the people who actually make the stuff that brings me to the platform.
I use the Brave Browser and never see ads on YouTube.
Only ads in podcast shows where the podcaster is advertising it, but even for those I have the SponsorBlock plugin that skips those portions of the videos.
However, the profile transfers don't work properly. We couldn't transfer the right profile to the second household. I think it has something to do with it being the first / primary profile. It's still broken. They said they'd give us a refund, but didn't. Now we're paying more for a worse, broken product.
I spent 45m with support that did not give a single fuck.
It's not on my credit card or it would have been cancelled months ago. I don't care if they want to change pricing or crack down on password sharing, but when they're asking for more money I expect things to work. They deserve to get out-competed IMO.
Increase prices, again.
And finally decrease the budget of newer shows, as well as increase the amount of newer shows to try and capture a new audience that won't subscribe, while pissing off the pre-existing one.
Wouldn't be surprised if they also try to save on bandwidth by increasing compression, removing a few servers...
Arrr matey! We'll still get them.
That stuff strikes a lot of people as "crap", and it's a problem that Netflix will recommend it to you when they've run out of other things you actually want. A good recommendation engine helps, but in the end Netflix is always going to have mostly stuff that doesn't interest you.
now i think netflix shines with the foreign films, i've been enjoying those more then the american films, but that doesnt justify paying the monthly fee.
But generally I'm not going to sub past one month for it.