Definitely a part of it for some.

Me, I cancelled due to the low quality of their catalog. A decade or so ago, they had a really strong library of media. Now they don't. What they spend their money on, I find to be severely lacking.

They published some shareholder statement years back saying "The quality of the programming does not seem to correlate with how much most users consume".

So there you go. I found the same, 10 years back I would read about something amazing and critically acclaimed -- and they'd have it!

Now rarely do they. But, my wife and I still watch a lot of Netflix. It is the service which seems to have many things she wants to watch and a good amount of things we both want to watch.

Things only I want to watch I mostly find on Hulu and HBOMax. Or I have to watch them the old fashioned way because they are too obscure to be on a streaming platform.

> They published some shareholder statement years back saying "The quality of the programming does not seem to correlate with how much most users consume".

That's not particularly informative, though. It could be true right now. "Users" is not a group with a fixed population.

If they drive their content quality into the ground and hemorrhage users as a direct result, it would still be true that the quality of the content was uncorrelated with the amount that users consumed. Instead, quality of the content would correlate with number of users. But the users are always people who are willing to deal with whatever the current content is!

What's weird is that, as a flat-rate subscription service, they're already aware that increasing number of users is good, while increasing the amount of content that users consume is bad.

It is same situation at our home. My wife finds plenty of things to watch on Netflix. I rarely do.

When we want to watch something together, we are renting on demand movies or even driving to redbox and picking up some snacks at the same time.

I noticed yesterday that nine of the top ten shows on US Netflix were squarely aimed at women; Better Call Saul was the exception and it was in last place.

Netflix is slowly turning into a weird mix of "high production quality Lifetime + HGTV" and imported dramas from places with strong media like Korea.

+1 here. My wife loves their romantic reality shows and the Asian dramas. I on the other hand haven’t watched anything on Netflix by myself in years

Same symptom happens with addiction: just because you see short term engagement because the product is designed to get users hooked, does not mean that they will not switch once better options are available. You can't retain long term loyalty with bad quality products - same thing happened with Facebook.

Social media is cyclical, like fashion. When your parents start wearing bell bottoms they stop being cool so you stop doing it.

Yet another example of 'engagement' metrics ruining everything.

Lowering tye quality may not change viewership, hut it radically increases your likelihood to realise it's a pile of garbage one day and go climb a tree.

Seems like a short term vs long term thing.

Short term that makes sense... long term i dont know if its true.

All this makes me realize that we have Netflix and haven't really watched or enjoyed it since, I think, the Expanse. I guess we watched the Squid Game, too, but I thought that was terrible. Like a low grade ripoff of an old (and much more intelligent) manga called The Liar Game.

Ironic that you complain about Squid Game being a rip off of Liar Game, when it's also derivative of another series, Kaiji.

Reminds me of that classic Steve Jobs line where he complains about Bill Gates ripping off his idea of creating a GUI for OSes, with Bill pointing out that they were both really just ripping off Xerox.

I've never heard of Kaiji before now.

Now you know.

There's a fantastic anime version with a very unique art style

The art looks a lot like Akagi.

Same mangaka.

The expanse was sci-fi then Prime Video though?

When it was on scifi the funding was done by splitting syndication rights with scifi, amazon and netflix

Scifi dropped out because they didn’t think enough people watched it, their inferior cable model has no way of collecting data on what actual humans do, and when they would do it especially by being limited in airings things at a set time

This effectively cancelled the show since it didn’t have funding

And then amazon/jeff bezos picked it up completely after a major fan campaign

SyFy?

Yes them

I think maybe it was on Netflix outside the US?

It's also possible that I'm simply confused and forgot which service I watched it on because it was a while ago.

Few months ago I rage quit Netflix because their shows would start autoplaying and nothing I did could disable that. I couldn't read one synopsis distraction free or browse without having to constantly click my GTV remote just to stop the friggin thing from playing. WTF! I'd like to think there were more like me who voted by cancelling their subscriptions. I hope PMs at Netflix who forced this onto their users lost their jobs.

Sign in to Netflix.

Click the down arrow next to the Profile box. Choose Manage Profiles and select a profile.

Under Autoplay controls, uncheck Autoplay next episode in a series on all devices.

Also uncheck Autoplay previews while browsing on all devices. Choose Save.

Had done that (obviously), didn't work on Chromecast with GTV. Had called customer support and filed a technical ticket. Nothing happened. Too late now.

And to combine your observations with the parent of this sub thread: Netflix raised an insane amount of debt to fund all the projects a lot of people didn’t ever end up watching, and continued to keep raising subscription costs to cover the payments on that debt they raised. I don’t really know if it could’ve turned out differently after other media outlets decided they wanted to make their own exclusive streaming services.

Same here. There is literally nothing I want to see on Netflix since The Witcher season 2 ended. Same with Disney+. Oddly enough Amazon has the most compelling content, and I'd pay for Prime even if they didn't offer streaming, so it's essentially free for me.

Seems like most content is dubbed foreign stuff now days, which I’m not at all into watching. The only thing they have at the moment I watch is Ozark and that’s ending on the 29th.

Subtitled (not dubbed; dubbing is a sin) is the best. Then again, for me all Hollywood cinema is subtitled. I wouldn't have it any other way, I love hearing the original actors speaking.

I hear in some countries like Spain, dubbing is the norm. And they are quite proud of it. I find that puzzling.

In France the dubbing is very well done and some movies are even better when dubbed. I still watch movies in the original language with subtitles but some 90's movies like Back to the Future are even better dubbed in French. There are even YouTube channels dedicated to dubbed movies where they invite dubbing actors, etc.

9 of 10 times dubbing doesn't fit with natural situational space(echo, reverb, any time based post processing in general). It's almost always out of space, stands out for me annoyingly which I find breaking the immersion. I wonder french dubbing is different.

I found that as a result, dialog was clearer. I really hate how loud everything other than dialog is in most movies for the sake of 'immersion'. I eventually gave up and settled on using subtitles when I don't want to miss any parts of a conversation.

FWIW, I'm way more fluent in English than French.

Probably not, but he's used to it since childhood.

Movies cannot be better dubbed. I want to watch and hear the original actors act. Voice is an essential part of acting.

What you're saying is effectively "our voice actors are better than the original actors", which I simply cannot stand behind.

Isn't there a lot of Dubbing / ADR in movies by the original actors? Such as when the original audio recording wasn't that great?

Movies can absolutely be better dubbed. It's incredibly rare in live action, but not so much with animation

I will agree with you animation is a special case where it can happen. But in general and in my experience, it's not common even in this case.

Spanish dubs of animé are sometimes good. All English dubs I've heard are atrocious. I remember one of the first dubs that was lauded was the English dub of Princess Mononoke... and it's hilariously bad, even if it has big names doing the voices. The Japanese version is the best, but even the Spanish dub is better.

Doesn't this happen all the time though? How many cover songs out there are better than the originals?

I think this both misses the point and is incredibly insightiful at the same time. A cover of a known song may be better (it happens!), but you'd never claim you heard the original song if all you listened to is the cover.

A dub is like a cover, agreed. Almost always, a terrible cover. I can always tell when I incorrectly set the language on Netflix to something other than the original -- you can immediately tell it's a dub because of the drop in voice acting quality. English dubs are particularly terrible, it's like the voice actors are emotionless drones, and when they try emotion, they use it in all the wrong places.

Besides, it's disrespectful. An actor/actress is not just their face and mannerisms. It's their voices, too. The voices are an essential part of their acting (if you are deaf, you can't help missing them, but if you are not, unless it's a scene without speech, you're missing a key ingredient). Saying "ok, I'll replace his voice with this other voice, and his face with with this other face I like better.. you know what? I'll just edit him out of the movie and replace him with this other actor I like better!" is way too scifi and post-cyberpunk dystopia for me. It's just disrespectful.

I cannot honestly say I watched a movie if I watched it dubbed. I watched a cover instead.

>but some 90's movies like Back to the Future are even better dubbed in French.

what do you mean by this, that the French language is so much better that it renders the movie better by using it? Or is it that the writers translating the English to French are better and make the movies more interesting by their choices?

>There are even YouTube channels dedicated to dubbed movies where they invite dubbing actors, etc.

Or is it that the dubbing actors are better speakers than the original actors, for example most actors when they do voiceovers suck because they aren't trained for it I guess, and maybe a dubbed actor is trained for it or... I guess I am just confused by how a dubbing could improve a really good movie although I might suppose it would be possible to improve a really bad movie in this way.

So how does this work?

If it is a replicable aesthetic phenomenon you might expect people to aesthetically choose to make movies in this way, to make better movies.

I despise subtitles, I watch films for the visual medium when I turn on subtitles they distract me from watching the actual film. I know I’m uncultured etc but I can’t help the way I feel about it.

I'm ok with turning off subtitles, but then I can only watch English language (or Spanish) films. Only subtitles let me watch French, Japanese, Korean, Italian, etc.

Dubbing is out of the question because I do not hate actors and cinema.

> not dubbed; dubbing is a sin

People without enough usable vision to read subtitles would disagree.

Well, obviously it was a generalization and there are special conditions. People who are deaf can only watch with close captions, so...

Sure. Normally I find quibbling annoying, but I hope you can understand why I want to highlight accessibility on a site that many of the world’s best software engineers frequent. I care about accessibility on all dimensions not just visual. At the end of the day accessible design is good design.

Actually dubbed content is one of the few areas where I would say Netflix has stolen a march on its competitors with some innovative practices.

Through Netflix I've been exposed to a huge back catalog of great content just because they were the first ones to invest in having it dubbed (I assume). Even though the dubbing is often pretty crude it's surprisingly watchable still and definitely better watching first tier dubbed content than second or third tier native language content.

You're not interested because of the dubbing? Then just switch to subtitles. Or do you not have the patience to put up with subtitles?

Despite what Hollywood would have you believe, there's considerable high-quality content coming out of other countries. I love that Netflix brings that to the U.S., otherwise I'd never know of it or be able to watch it.

It's funny because I used to sound just like you. But now I am much more sympathetic to the above comment. I spent a lot of my youth enjoying films by a bunch of foreign filmmakers including:

Ozu Bergman Fellini Suzuki Clouzot Bresson Kurosawa Mizoguchi Costa-Gavras Herzog Renoir and on and on

I especially loved the films of Jean Pierre Melville, Masaki Kobayashi and Anrei Tarkovsky. And yet, when I am done with a long day of work and chores, I cannot stomach anything with subtitles. Exhaustion plays a part in it. It just feels like work after a long day. And I wouldn't want to have that experience of any of the movies I loved back then, seeing them as a chore to be tolerated.

As someone not from an English-speaking country, most of the things I watch anywhere are subtitled.

I'm really puzzled by people with no stomach for subtitles or who would only watch stuff in their native language. Subtitles + original language of other cultures is so much better.

It's not tiring at all, either.

Yeah this is it. At the end of the day I just want some background noise that’s entertaining not to have to focus entirely on what I’m watching. It’s rare that I have the time and energy to sit down and watch a show or movie just to take in the plot. That is usually reserved for the theater where I’m forced to not distract myself.

I have wached a bunch of stuff with subtitles, mostly anime. But more recently even movies, esp. recent movies(I find the sound balance off, effects are too loud and voices too soft).

That said, subtitles can be very distracting. You end up focusing on the word and missing things in the scene/shot as well as the background.

Also the subtitles are not always faithful to the dialog. A good example of this is watching One Piece in English w/ Subs on Netflix. The spoken dialog will be one thing, the written will be another. I have some Japanese knowledge and can tell you that the subs(and the dubs) definitely do not reflect the feeling in some scenes.

My barely literate 75 year old grandma could watch soaps with Romanian subtitles in the evening :-))

It's just a matter of practice. And of watching on a big screen, I'd say.

I agree neither dubs nor subtitles are 100% faithful to the original. By necessity, they cannot be. There's no such thing as a perfect translation even with books, but with TV/cinema you also have to keep the pace, which makes things doubly difficult.

Even then, just hearing the original language, even if you don't understand the words, conveys essential emotion. I like to hear the original voice actors, which are essential for the cartoon/anime (even more with live action movies, of course).

I was referring less to films and more to TV.

At the end of a long day of work and chores I cannot stomach a 90-120 minute film, regardless of what language it's in. I much prefer 30-60 minute content. At that length subtitles are much more digestible.

When I turn on subtitles I spend the whole time reading, so I’m not a fan of doing it that way. I’ve no doubt that the quality of the plot acting etc is great (I did watch squid games) but I only really watch TV at the end of the day and I’m usually browsing on my tablet as well.

Watch it with subtitles instead then—most non-English content has English subtitles in my experience. Many of many favorite shows of recent years have been non-English Netflix shows that I watch with subtitles: Fauda, Dogs of Berlin, A Very Secret Service, Lupin, etc.

> they raised their prices - significantly

Yeah, and I was right on the edge, not really watching it enough to justify the previous, cheaper, price. When they raised the price it served as a motivation to cancel it. In a 6 months I might join for a bit to watch some newer shows, then probably cancel again.

Raising prices works well perhaps if people are in love with the product or there is just no other alternative. But people have been auto paying and not really thinking much or using it, raising the prices is a decision point to re-evaluate the value of the service.

Yeah I’m surprised at how little I’m seeing about this. I canceled last month because of the price increase, and I would not have canceled if they hadn’t raised prices. At $9-$14 it’s fine if I only watch it once a month. But at $20 it’s no longer worth it.

I'm now hopping between streaming subscriptions. Round robin style.

eg When Apple TV accumulates enough new binge worthy stuff, I'll sign up for a month. So probably once a year. Ditto all the other streamers.

It's now pretty rare that I'm compelled to see new OC apon release. Excepting The Orville, natch.

I recently got a new monitor, and new internet, so I’m finally able to watch 4K Netflix, I upgraded at right about the time the price rise went through, and must have glazed over the announcement, so I just went “oh right, that’s just got much 4K costs, ok”.

Given the subsequent lack of actual 4K content, general lack of content, and the fact that I’ll be finishing the shows I’m watching means that I’ll likely join the lost-subscriber group in a week or 2.

If you were paying $9 or $14, your new price would have been $10 or $15.50. The people paying $20 were previously paying $18.

They've lost 200K subscribes... so far.

The full effect of price increases will take time to fully play out, plus the effects of implementing commercials have yet to be seen. Also, it remains to be seen how other streaming services will respond. Will they raise prices and add commercials too?

If Netflix becomes the one streaming brand most associated with actions hostile to their viewers, this could be the beginning of a long decline.

This 200k subscribers number is missing the elephant in the room. They expected 2.5 million new subscribers. They didn't get those 2.5 million new subscribers and actually lost 200k, so they're technically -2.7 million subscribers.

This may have also triggered an exodus of subscribers too, even if Netflix doesn't do anything additionally stupid to turnoff consumers.

I know it’s commonly used logic, because announcements and expectations and whatnot, but I find the logic of:

> They didn't get those 2.5 million new subscribers and actually lost 200k, so they're technically -2.7 million subscribers

To be extremely questionable, if not outright incorrect. They didn’t lose something they didn’t have. 2.5m people didn’t leave, 200k did. Sure, they didn’t reach a target of 2.5m new users, but that’s not the same as losing them.

I know, shareholder announcements/analysts predictions etc, I know I’m not going to change that logic, but I still think it’s bad logic.

They didn't "lose" 2.7m subscribers. but they did miss their goal by 2.7m.

The important thing to note is that stock prices aren't tanking because of 200k. If they had gained 200k subscribers, the stock would have tanked still. and the headlines would have been "netflix misses subscriber goal by 2.3m" instead and only investors would care

They actually lost 700K subs to Russia, when they stopped the service there, and some around EMEA too. They actually added 500K subs net minus Russia impact.

I mean, pedantically, you’re correct but you’re missing a very substantive point - we regularly deal with metrics which are rates (or vectors) of change. Velocity is change in distance over time, for example - what Netflix had is a reversal of their growth. They had expected all inputs to yield at positive 2.5 mil. change in members. Instead, the lost 200k members. It is completely sensible to talk about their loss of velocity of growth. Moreover, if you want to be get into technicalities, they lost many more customers than 200k - but they gained enough new customers to net -200k - so why not object to that technically imprecise language too? Why? Because while technically incorrect, it still communicates something useful, just as it does to talk about the lost growth vs. expectations.

For all your points about technical and substantive arguments, I think you have skipped over the crux -

> They had expected all inputs to yield at positive 2.5 mil

The crucial word here is expected. I can model all the things and expect that I’ll get a million dollars next week, but I haven’t lost a million when I inevitably don’t get it the next week.

If you make a prediction of +2.5m new subscriptions, during a pandemic and associated economic flux, and the prediction doesn’t pan out, the only thing that’s happened is that you made a bad prediction.

> If you make a prediction of +2.5m new subscriptions, during a pandemic and associated economic flux, and the prediction doesn’t pan out, the only thing that’s happened is that you made a bad prediction.

I mean, that’s demonstrably false. The world works by individuals taking action based on expected outcomes. That crosses species and pervades every waking moment of life. It is involved in things as simple as walking and as complex as mate selection, migration or habitation choices among thousands of others.

To treat this instance of variance between expected outcomes and reality as somehow different makes little sense.

I think it's still very much relevant within the context of the stock dive though - no-one invests in what you've done, they invest in what they think you're going to do next. So they've disappointed their investors, and their investors have disappointed them right back.

I think it’s that the logic only matters to shareholders who are willing to pay a premium price for the shares based on trajectory. Mess up the trajectory, mess up the share price.

They also guided that they expect to lose another 2 million subscriptions in the next quarter. The stock price collapsed because it appears the growth story may be over.

My understanding is the commercials will only be on the lowest tier plan. Similar Hulu.

> The there is definitely a question whether, now that they have moved so solidly into content production, Netflix is actually a scalable / viable company any more. When they were just sending other people's content around and doing it much cheaper and better that was innovative and different.

to borrow cliched terms, big companies protect their position by either building a monopoly (Bell, your traditional telco) or building a moat (Apple). Netflix started with an effective monopoly on film distribution/streaming. at some point Disney & friends extended their moat vertically (Disney+), eating into the distribution layer that Netflix previously monopolized. perhaps leadership understood the monopoly would only ever be temporary and decided to build out their internal production house as such. whatever the case, Netflix still has the possibility of transforming this into a moat that stands alongside the other players in this space. maybe it can exist as this, but it will surely be less profitable than its monopoly days.

I completely agree. I was only lightly using Netflix so when they last raised prices it was the push I needed to actually cancel. The recent content they've rolled out doesn't justify the heftier price tag compared to competitors. I love the UX of Netflix, but content rules and they're losing that battle. I don't even want to try new shows because of their reputation for cancelling things unceremoniously.

> I don't even want to try new shows because of their reputation for cancelling things unceremoniously

Ah, so I’m not alone in this! Nowadays, I typically only consider shows that have at least a few seasons, I will never ever try one with just one season. The chances of them killing it off are just too high, and that would ruin it completely for me.

I like to binge watch, I can’t enjoy that when they keep killing off shows. It feels like a restaurant with only starters.

It's an unfortunate self-fulfilling prophecy of the modern data-driven mindset. Sometimes the very act of collecting and acting on that data materially affects the data itself by creating perverse incentives.

The two parent posters are far from alone in my experience. Lots of people are getting turned off by the variable quality and uncertain future of the home-made productions, which means lots of people are holding off starting to watch a show until it's somewhat established and had some positive reviews. If your management strategy is to measure early engagement with your own shows and viciously kill off anything that doesn't make the cut, and if your viewers know this, then you have defeated yourself no matter how good the show is or how popular it would naturally have become.

A few years ago there was almost a trend for shows that weren't getting the numbers to get wrapped up with some sort of mini-series or TV movie so at least there was a chance for the production team to finish telling their story and give some closure for the fans (who might be fiercely loyal in sentiment even if too few in number to sustain the show). It's a little ironic Netflix would probably have been in a better position than anyone to adopt this kind of strategy and establish a reputation for being trustworthy and loyal to fans. Now it has the opposite reputation and we're openly speculating about whether it will ever recover.

It’s classic modern fuckery where analysts focus on data without understanding the information it contains.

I sold my Netflix a few years ago when they started talking about how they are an attention sink vs an entertainment company.

A/B tests and manipulative apps have a hard time accounting for external competition.

The CEO’s reaction confirmed the cluelessness - pulling some bullshit non-plan about ads out of his ass is like ripping out the IV. If I was on the fence about Netflix, having the company accuse me of being a thief for allowing my family to use it and announcing ads will certainly get me off the fence.

It feels like a restaurant where the chef loves creating new dishes and has ADHD and rearranges the menu every time you go. Oh, the prosciutto eggs benny? Yeah, we don't do that anymore, but I can get you a tofu scramble!

I'm rapidly running out of things on Netflix I actually want to see but haven't gotten around to. Once I run out, I'm not sure why I would keep the service around.

Tapas 4 life!

I think many single-season Netflix shows would have been movies 15 years ago. But many types of films just don't get made anymore, and many directors and performers would rather work on series.

I’d still watch a show with one season, just like I’d watch a film without a sequel. I don’t tend to watch Netflix shows because they just aren’t that good.

i agree, as long as it has a clear finale. cancelling series which were meant to have more seasons is what troubles me.

I absolutely agree where i’d rather watch an entire season than a movie, tho. i really enjoy the depth that can be exlores from doing an entire season. but like i said above, if a show requires further seasons to finish the story, it’s very frustrating when it’s canceled.

to me it feels like reading a third of a novel and having it yanked away.

I've watched some great shows that were one-season-and-done. Unfortunately in the Netflix era you might instead instead get half-and-dropped or one-and-unresolved-cliffhanger. A lot of us find those endings very disappointing and so don't engage with new shows at all even if they look like we might enjoy them. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me seven times since the start of COVID binge-watching...

I prefer the long form, it gives more time to flesh out the world and characters, but it has to be done right there shouldn’t be a minimum episode count on a streaming services. If you only have 6 episodes worth of story please don’t add 6 episodes worth of filler so you have 12.

> I think many single-season Netflix shows would have been movies 15 years ago.

There would be one big change there I believe, in a movie they make sure to kill off arcs terminally pretty often, in series they make sure not to do that in order to be able to spin on it perpetually if demand be.

Yeah it feels like the binge watch mindset kind of papers over and enables this.

Shows like a lot of their lower-tier Marvel ones can have significant pacing/padding issues but it's such easy watching and you can just burn through it in a weekend while doing something else anyway.

Cancelling and putting on pause for no reason, such as Mindhunter.

You focused on price and I think that's a significant factor. Where once Netflix was $8 not really that long ago, it's now $15.50, which is more expensive than HBO (and HBO Max with the merger has an even deeper catalog than it did in the HBO Now time, even though the HBO Now software and website was IMHO much better).

What these media companies seem to want is for us to pay $100/month in various streaming services rather than the $80/month we were paying for cable because, hey, we should pay for the privilege of unbundling right? I refuse. Netflix is no longer an automatic renewal. I'll sign up for it 1-2 months a year to binge watch on certain shows.

But you glossed over a really important point I haven't seen given much attention: the pandemic. The pandemic was a huge boost for subscriber numbers for obvious reasons and we're now pretty much at the end of the pandemic (as far as staying indoors goes, anyway). That has to have an impact.

Additionaly, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has cut off hundreds of thousands of subscribers due to the sanctions. IIRC I heard this was 700,000. If so, isn't down 200K still a net increase?

The stock market routinely overbuys and oversells on good and bad news. It's the fear and greed cycle. And this honestly feels like an overreaction that'll be corrected as soon as Netflix spends some time controlling costs.

When everything was bundled together, we complained about paying for things we didn't use. Unbundling was initially cheaper because it was just extra profit on the side.

Now, it's becoming the primary business model and has to stand on its own.

It turns out economy of scale is real, and we've lost it. Other people were paying for our content before, but not watching it. How does real public educational content get funded in this new world? Most of us probably agree that there should be quality, unbiased content.

Cashflow consistency has a value as well, so subscribing and unsubscribing creates a cost that needs to get covered by someone. Currently, the loyal subscribers.

I'm not saying things can't improve, just that many unrealistic, entitled attitudes exist. Content is better now than before as providers have to compete more to get subscribers, so the value is greater.

> a cost that needs to get covered by someone. Currently, the loyal subscribers.

Those loyal subscribers don't get anything in return for that loyalty. the nash equilibrium is therefore to not be a loyal subscriber, but only subscribe for the shortest period of time and consume the maximum possible.

Hence, eventually the service would lose all loyal subscribers.

There's time, effort, and cognitive load in switching. Potential self-image impacts. Some people will think past their immediate needs and want to support Netflix, because that's how they fund good content. The most price-conscious people leave. Many people don't optimize.

Fairness here would be putting the externalities of switchers on themselves, but that doesn't usually work well in the market. We'll probably just tolerate a certain amount of these 'switch freeloaders'.

Given the number of services, the cognitive load of switching will become normal. I'll be cancelling Netflix at the same time I resubscribe to Stan. And consumers will demand it becomes easier, or they won't bother signing up in the first place. We are already seeing articles in the popular media about how expensive it is to subscribe to everything, so the market is well aware. Over here, if I want to subscribe to Paramount+ (and a few others) I just select it in the Prime app and start watching in the Prime app. All that is missing is easy cancellation, or being able to purchase a single month rather than a subscription. I'm reasonably confident that Amazon will provide a way to make this easier once they have the second tier streamers by the short and curlies. But just having one spot to 'manage my subscriptions' like it is now makes it pretty easy right now for anyone who pays attention to their credit card statement. Heck, even a bank may decide to differentiate themselves by identifying recurring subscriptions and sending service cancellation notifications on your behalf.

actually Nash Equilibrium would suggest loyal subscribers to be loyal unless the rules of the Game change for the service to exist at all i.e. someone has to keep not watching and paying for someone to keep watching in short busts and not pay for rest of the time to avoid catastrophic changes.

This is looking back at cable with some serious rose tinted glasses. It’s nothing like you describe. Also nothing forces people to sub to all streaming services. We switch them up and pay a small fraction of the $150/mo our parents paid for cable.

Agreed with the author of this news, the content killed netflix. In the last two years of pandemic and WFH, more people paid attention to the online streaming and willing to spend more. It didn't take long before you'd learn who's content hold the better quality. Netflix has been relying on foreign contents approximately 70% if not 50% in the recent years. I wouldn't say netflix is completely out of favor at this point but definitely lost its edge comparing to others. It has occurred to me I could go on by weeks on HBOmax, Hulu and Amazon without missing Netflix, among which two are bundled with wireless plan and Prime membership, Hulu is cheaper with commercial. If it comes to paying full price I'd probably cut Netflix without a blink.

Netflix has good points: best ui. Good library. Their bad points is what worries me for the service: poor quality of new content.

I have not seen anything that wows me for quite some time at least for my preferences (SciFi).

So maybe it is for Netflix (the sky falling) things that start as a trickle might end as a flood.

I feel like Netflix has been declining for years. A decade ago, their recommendation algorithm was phenomenal. Today, both their library and their recommendations are severely lacking. I'm not sure how much longer I'll bother to subscribe.

This is it for me. Maybe they have decent content but I can’t seem to find it easily anymore. Netflix was a necessity once upon a time, but now I am on the edge of canceling.

Check out "Dark". I can't explain it without spoiling things but there's a significant twist a few episodes in and it goes down a wild sci fi path.

The first season of Dark was released in 2017. I believe the "shit content" phase got really strong in 2020. Which is also when Dark's last season was released, and it's the weakest (IMO).

Thanks for the suggestion! I'll give it a look!

Funny as paramount+ has done a better job of adding new content than netflix these past few months. The Halo TV show and Picard while C to B- are still miles better than much of the newer netflix content.

This is certainly part of it.

There are also those who are not happy with woke content and "Anything Silicon Valley/Tech" and are walking away.

Disney has the same thing going.

Indeed, this is the same reason I cancelled my subscription.

Racist homophobic bigots hate "woke" content, but so what? Who wants those snowflakes as customers anyway, who are so terrified of being exposed to cartoons of Mickey Mouse and Pluto having steamy hot gay sex? Let them try to cancel culture and walk away from scary cartoon animal sex all they want. How's Trump's "unwoke" social network working out?

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/ted-cruz-mickey-plut...

>TED CRUZ WARNS DISNEY PROGRAMMING WILL SOON DEPICT MICKEY AND PLUTO F--KING

>The senator from Texas thinks the company’s opposition to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law means it’s going to introduce X-rated content featuring animated characters “going at it.”

Without being a "racist homophobic bigot", you can be tired of seing that every single TV show they produce seems to absolutely need to play the race/gender/sexual orientation bingo.

To me, it feels like the "diversity" of the characters included in a script is one of the factor that is taken into account when deciding to finance a show or not. It really shouldn't be: either a script is good enough and you should finance it, or it isn't and you should reject it. But adding artificial additional criteria just means that good scripts will be rejected and less good one will be accepted. And the logical consequence is that sometimes it feels like perfectly good stories are altered in a way that ensure more "diversity" is ensured, often times making the story worse.

And finally, casting is sometimes...weird to say the least. That does not help producing better shows.

Now you know how it feels to be tired of a lifetime of seeing that every single TV show they produce seems to absolutely need to play the cis heterosexual orientation bingo.

Eh, I'm gay and I still agree: those types of shows get a bit boring sometimes. I'm all for representation but it shouldn't be the only point of a show: it shouldn't be "here's Ghostbusters, the exact same film all over again, but with women!", or "here's Ocean's Eleven, the exa"- eh, you get the point.

I'm sure some people will hotly contest that these shows/movies are genuinely works of art, and representation just happens to be a bonus, but that's not how it feels when watching a load of this tedious paint-by-numbers pablum.

(This isn't to say that there are no instances where I feel the opposition to minority/female casting was driven more by bigotry than by people's finely-honed critical faculties. Of course there are. But I happen to think it cuts both ways in this case: many of those shows/movies are just godawful, and trade on the "you're a bigot if you don't like this!" card to drive sympathy/virtue demand, from people who want to feel like Rosa Parks for going to the cinema.)

But previously, movie houses would just produce the exact same film again without women. It's not like women are the reason every goddamn movie is a remake of a good idea someone had 30 to 70 years ago.

Meanwhile, as a gay man I’m excited any time I find a show with any kind of halfway decent gay representation. There’s still a long way to go IMO.

> Racist homophobic bigots hate "woke" content

There’s no accounting for taste. You should not be so fast to hate; it prevents you from understanding that which you wish to change. After all, we’re talking about entertainment, not war. Aren’t we?

Actually, we are talking about war, a cold civil war in the US and a lot of the West, and often hot shooting ones in the countries in which we foment color revolutions, the Ukraine being the current extreme example of that.

He hopes in his heart of heart to not have to skip down to cancun to use grindr

Think I read somewhere that of one of their content production differentiators is their direct-to-consumer approach. Classically lots of content was produced for the "average" consumer. Netflix can use their subscriber data to create low-cost content for extremely niche consumers, who might love that extremely relevant production (think super edgy, super graphic, super cartoon, etc - the type of extremes not covered by the average).

Not sure how much this holds true anymore, as now many big players have direct-to-customer streaming, but just sharing since it was a neat thought when I first read it

This seems like a way of sugar-coating the actual content strategy Netflix deploys, which has much more to do with product placement than it does content production. Their strategy is to align their content productions with the brands that best correlate with their subscriber base. In so doing, they can create lucrative deals with brands where their products are intricately woven into the stories/narratives of the show.

As an example, Stranger Things featured an average of 9 minutes of product placement for each episode of their third season. [0] The company claims they did not receive any payments from brands for this placement [1], but they likely received other extremely valuable considerations in the form of payment instead.

[0] https://www.ama.org/marketing-news/product-placement-in-stra...

[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90380266/more-product-placements...

I hope those advertisers feel like they got their money's worth, because I can't remember a single brand from Stranger Things

I feel like if you were able to remember those product placements that would be a failure for the advertisers.

The best product placements are the ones that go unnoticed.

How could you have missed all the Coca-Cola in that show?!

Dungeons & Dragons?!

I wonder why the market reacted so harshly though, with NFLX losing 1/3 last Wednesday ($347 to $215).

Many of the big tech stocks are insanely overpriced according to traditional investment measures. The rational reasons to support those prices are expectations of similarly extreme future growth or a belief that it might be a speculative investment but the dollars will keep pouring in.

The discussions this week aren't just a wobble, they're about whether Netflix can still generate that kind of extraordinary future growth. If there's even a strong hint that it might not then the speculative bubble bursts. If there's a serious expectation that it won't then the growth investors are out as well. One stock price crash, coming right up.

Netflix was never a “Big Tech stock”. It’s revenue was nothing compared to the Microsofts, Apples, Amazon’s and Google’s of the world.

It's literally the N in FAANG, a term that came from the investment world and referred to (at the time) the five tech stocks that had the most impressive performance.

It was treated that way by one commentator on MSNBC.

But let’s not forget that the original term was FANG and didn’t include Apple - the most valuable tech company or Microsoft that has been in the top 5 since 2000.

Netflix is around #50 in the most valuable companies - it at least it was.

On one hand, their product is not tech… it’s media. On the other hand, they’ve invented some of the best tech and have some of the best engineers.

Their streaming tech is a commodity. Any media company can throw money at someone like BamTech (now owned by Disney) and spin up streaming infrastructure.

I did not know that. Certainly wasn’t true in the past. Glad to hear it’s democratized!

And Streamotion (streamotion.com.au), part of Foxtel.

The market reacted because a much higher subscriber growth was factored into the price. After the massive drop Netflix is still worth $100B and is one of the largest media companies out there, which is nothing to scoff at.

Along with the huge miss this quarter they quided that they will lose another 2 million subs next quarter. That signals and end to growth and a rerating of the stock.

The forecast was to add ~2M subscribers, instead they lost 200K

NFLX got clapped for Q4 2021 earnings too

The market disagrees with the higher poster’s analysis

Netflix was never worth its market cap. It’s been borrowing more money than it’s net profit for years.

Netflix P/E ratio is about 30:1, so Netflix not growing is a bad look.

The problem is that Netflix’s valuation was based on the idea that they could raise prices without losing subscribers.

That in turn was based on the experience with Amazon, which has raised the prices of Prime, products on its site, and the fees it charges its sellers all while still growing.

Netflix’s valuation was based on the thinking that Netflix was now a necessity for people. But this shows it isn’t.

In fact, the loss of subscribers is an even bigger deal because it suggests Netflix is eminently replaceable.

I can't think of anything I care about that's on Netflix. I also can't imagine cancelling it... There's always something. Between my wife and I both barely caring, they have my money for years. I imagine they'll survive, and if content doesn't turn around, they'll be bought in some final round of media conglomerates mergers, where I'll be even less able to get rid of it.

> question whether, now that they have moved so solidly into content production, Netflix is actually a scalable / viable company any more

Netflix is a scalable company precisely because they produce content, when they are share other people's content any other platform can do that. But when they create their own content suddenly they operate based on a fixed cost rather than paying for other people's content.

With the established content producers starting their own streaming services, or having more competition of buyers for their content, it seems Netflix has little choice but to move into production. Otherwise it would be a slow death as competitors move in and content prices are bid up. Just my guess though.

One thing that always confused me about Netflix content is that how uniquely un-re-watchable all of it is. Literally, there isn’t one piece of Netflix content that I watched more than once. It is pure volume and even though some of it is good, they produce nothing lasting.

I suspect from the undercurrent people are doing it to force netflix stock down to buy low.

> raised their prices - significantly

https://help.netflix.com/en/node/24926

$9.99, $15.49, and $19.99/mo

What did their prices used to be?

I just took a search through my email to see what I've been paying in the past:

2013 joined at 7eur/month. Can't find the email from when it went from 7 to 9. May 2016 increased from 9 to 10. August 2019 from 10 to 12. March 2021 from 12 to 13. April 2022 from 13 to 15. (All prices euro and rounded up one penny).

I cancelled the day the last hike arrived - it's the least amount of time between raises, as was the previous raise before it. At the same time, their offer is getting more and more disappointing, and they're talking publicly about reducing their content spend and the possibility of adverts.

I feel like they're hooked on a growth bubble, and now that they're reaching market saturation the only way they can maintain that bubble is to squeeze it out of us - charge more, deliver less - which as a user is the complete opposite of value for money, so I'm out.

$8.99, $13.99, $17.99 since the last increase. But in 2018 the prices were $7.99, $8.99, $11.99. It's definitely gone up significantly in just a few years.

consumers don’t everywhere react instantly to price changes. the number of lost subscribers is likely to be greater than what you see today as consumers explore alternatives over time and change. though by how much i don’t know. (for example, it pushed me past the edge to install Jellyfin & friends, but i’m keeping Netflix as backup until i’m comfortable/confident with my new setup).

Surely stay-at-home covid was a boon to Netflix?