This is poignant as even the shittiest streaming service can dominate with the right IP. Content is king, engineering quality is not a differentiator.

Because of this, Netflix is ripe for disruption, which we've been witnessing creep up slowly over the last decade.

Netflix is easily the first of my several subscriptions to hit the chopping block, should it come to that.

If netflix keeps producing content at the rate it is, it won't be long until it has a fairly large back catalogue itself. At the end of the day it's Netflix's core business, whereas for most of the other streaming services it's a side gig.

The reasons the networks cared about the Nielsens so much was that they directly translated into how much they could charge for a 30 second ad block.

Netflix obviously does care about how many people are watching its shows. If no one is watching licensed content they won't renew licenses on it or similar content. If a new show isn't doing well and doesn't have passionate fans, they'll cancel it. (Possibly faster than a network would have.)

But they only care about how many people are watching something to the degree it increases the number of people subscribing which is a correlation that is harder to measure.

Everyone else have been learning, slowly, the lessons Netflix learned years ago.

Is anyone else even doing a program like OpenConnect? https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/

That's the sort of stuff that really sets netflix apart from the competition.

All that said, IMO, the average consumer doesn't really care about technical quality of the content, they care about the catalog.

And the first month pains were very clearly because it was rushed out to time it with the release of certain IPs during the pandemic.

I believe there are loads of production companies from all over the world willing to sell their productions to Netflix after those successes.

Producers in non English speaking countries will usually not have enough funding to promote all over the world or even in US.

I think Disney and HBO are quite stuck in approach where they sell rights and shows to other countries.

The thing is, they now pump out their own content quickly enough that they don't need anyone else's anymore, and as I understand it, that was always their goal. I imagine most of the TV-watching population (myself included) is okay with mediocre shows/movies, and Netflix has enough content that you're unlikely to completely run out of stuff to watch on their platform.

What Netflix is currently lacking is big blockbuster movies with well-known actors, but even that is changing. (See: Red Notice, Army of the Dead, Bird Box, etc.)

Presumably it also means that there's no reason for Netflix to be paying absolute top of the heap salaries for engineering talent. And I assume companies like Disney mostly don't and won't.

I'm not sure what you're comparing. Netflix's Jessica Jones, Daredevil, and Luke Cage were standouts. WandaVision and Loki are certainly flashier, but are they really better shows?

4 out for the top 5 grossing movies of all time for Disney (adjusted for inflation) are Marvel IP. By comparison none of the Marvel shows on Netflix have been a commercial hit for Netflix. Looking at the list of most watched Netflix shows none of those make the cut.

Basically Disney is well suited to turn Marvel IP into dollars and Netflix just wasn’t.

Oh. Well, I can't argue with that, especially since Netflix almost certainly never had the necessary rights to develop a revenue stream from merchandising. There is probably no other company on Earth better suited to turning IP into dollars than Disney, especially since they've acquired Pixar, Lucasfilm, Jim Henson, Marvel, etc. Netflix has only started trying to make tentpole 'blockbuster' (irony intended) movies in the past few years.

Probably not and that is why they didn’t bid, and the Netflix execs are in a better position to know than us… but I think the comparison is a little tilted against Netflix at least.

I imagine they had to pay for the IP for The Witcher and Altered Carbon.

I suspect that's WAI in their eyes, they're optimizing for eyeballs, not so much for quality.

As an example: the original Police Academy movie had both quality and a large audience. The rest of the franchise was increasingly cringy and saw, I assume, declining viewership.

The reason why Netflix should care about quality and not just eyeballs is that it's a leading indicator: Police Academy II may well have had a larger audience, surfing on the coattails of the first installment. But that's not a sustainable strategy, and unlike the producers of Police Academy XI, Netflix can't just leave the husk and find a new home if it ruins its brand.

So for Netflix, it's not just important to get many people to watch something. They also need to come away from the experience with a wish to repeat it. There may well be more to the experience than mere enjoyment, as well: I feel like there is a sense of "quality" I get when watching something that is distinct from my enjoyment, and that I am more likely to remember it, and fondly so, if I find that quality.

All that suggests a few ideas that mere viewership wouldn't: Netflix would try, for example, to keep me from watching something that I end up despising, and especially if I do so because I consider it "low-quality". You can do reality TV even if your audience has more Ivy League credentials than a New England Hospital, but you better make sure it has a chance to become a pop-cultural phenomenon, like, say, a show about interior decorating that neatly fits into a wider trend of minimalism.

This requires some combination of quality (whatever that means exactly), pop culture relevance (Squid Games), and good enough filler so that less selective viewers don't run out of stuff to watch. Of course, they can program for niches more than traditional broadcast TV did too.