In the end, Netflix is a company that used to be great and kinda made some of the most genius ideas to fight the Goliath but was undone by a single dude leading a team making poor choices on what content to make. 3 Adam Sandler movies for half a billion dollars? I’m assuming this is as big or a bigger blunder than Zillow, and was powered by stupid data science ideas as well, probably.
they had the wrong idea that original content is their strong point. It's not. It's disney's strong point.
Netflix should've used their dominant position to lobby for new rules to the game - prevent exclusivity of content! They should've lobbied gov't to mandate that studio productions of content be permanently untied to a streaming service, and be available to all players in the streaming space. Just like net neutrality, we might call this content neutrality.
Netflix is at it's core, a tech company that solves technical issues with streaming. They pivoted to content creation, and they aren't very good at it - sure they got a couple of hits, but they cannot possibly compete on this with actual movie studios that own IPs from a century ago to this day.
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> they had the wrong idea that original content is their strong point. It's not. It's disney's strong point.
I guess there are different people watching content. Note that I mainly talk about TV shows, as I’m not a big movie fan.
Because I hate pretty much everything Disney. MCU is low-brow humor with plot-hole riddled writing and weak characters mainly fueled by action scenes and star power. I don’t know what Star Wars is, but nothing that interests me, I don’t think I’d even have liked the original trilogy if I had been older when it came out.
Netflix, both their English original content and many foreign shows (assuming good dubbing, which usually means the actors dubbed themselves) has far better content.
and the different groups have different sizes. Your tastes, unfortunately, belongs to the smaller of those groups, so content-wise, disney's franchised content won't appeal to you. But they do appeal to a very large group. And this large group is where the profits lie, and why netflix is not competing well in. It's the wrong game to be playing for netflix.
When they started out creating original content, they were hitting it out of the park. Orange is the new black, daredevil, house of cards were all big hits.
They scaled, quality was sacraficed for quantity, and their brand became very dilluted.
I've never used Hulu, but there's a good chance I'll sub in the next few months for the new season of The Orville. I'd expect anime series would be a great similar target- there are plenty of manga/novel adaptations that did one 13-episode series that covered the first fewbooks, and now the source material is finished with 25 more volumes they can adapt.
That only really works if you respect the original source material, which seems to be a problem for the "creatives".
The original version of House of Cards was a four episode mini-series. There was a lesson there that Netflix chose to ignore.
What is it? Network television spent decades milking shows way past their expiration dates and still made bank.
The Office was originally a 14-episode arc built to an actual conclusion and NBC made who knows how much with middling season after season of the US version.
People watched because we're creatures of habit and you only have to get us hooked once.
That didn't change. What changed is the # of options. Instead of 1/25 shows catching on its 100/2,500 and it doesn't scale the same way.
I was late to Netflix.
The original movies I saw were beyond bad. In every movie they used every plot twist ever invented, and every bit of cliched writing. The overpaid actors just read lines.
It's almost like they locked sober hack writers in a room and told them just write. Write like your audience is an angry/perverted Forrest Gump, and can't speak English. (I threw in sober because even if under the influence--they might have written better?)
They just wasted money.
I understand comming up with original clever scripts is hard.
I felt they could have redone classic movies though--instead of the garbage they threw at us.
I was watching Dog Day Afternoon the other day. The movie aged very well, and is an all time classic. No one is going to top that movie on any level.
Netflix could have tried to remake it though with up to date references, and even change up the script. Sonny, and Sal could have made it on the plane, and go from there.
Dog Day Afternoon is a bad example because it aged so well, but their are other good movies that could have been brought up to date?
I believe it's too late for Netflix.
In retrospect, I would have rather had them throw money at students in film school.
(I don't bet on stocks, but we all saw this comming. Every studio was working on their own pay per view service a year after we started talking about Netflix. Someone brobally made millions shorting that company.)
Netflix used to be a tech company that solves the problem of content discovery, too. Then they chose to not generate recommendations based on data but instead push their in-house content.
I’d also argue Amazon prime has fared far better with OG content than Netflix in a fraction of its budget. The blame should entirely fall on its current ceo who imo should be ousted and Hastings needs to come back to salvage his baby.
Countries like India already have protections like these in place. They haven't regulated the streaming space yet. However, the other channels are very well regulated and content cannot be tied to the delivery channel. This means consumers win at the end of the day and competition is preserved. Content can be acquired by competitors _without_ consolidation.
That is very subjective. My wife and I really liked The power of the dog. And I am sure there are more.
Also subjective: watching Netflix every day (I do not) will end up in watching below par stuff. No service will be able to produce that much high quality content for everybody’s taste.
I think a large contribution to their failure is Netflix cancelling shows after two seasons. If a show's probably gonna get cancelled before it gets a good run, why why would I bother watching it? People want easy watching, and they want a lot of it. Eg The Office, which ended up lasting nine seasons. Only Netflix knows exactly why they canceled shows, as only they have the viewer numbers, but a rumor I've heard is that after two seasons is when the production starts to get expensive because that's when a show gets traction and the production team and actors can unionize to demand more money - money that Netflix doesn't want to spend.
Unfortunately, in cancelling shows so quickly, there just aren't the shows to keep subscribers on the service - especially if subscribers have to keep picking a show to watch every two seasons. There's nothing more unsatisfying than spending an hour on Netflix trying to find something to watch only not to find anything. If they had more shows that ran nine seasons, it would be easier to justify keeping the subscription just for those shows. Two seasons just isn't enough episodes to keep watching a show and by playing penny-wise and pound-foolish, they just don't have the catalog. Which is sad, because the have a ton of good short-run shows that just needed more of a chance.
The other thing is their habit of releasing entire seasons at once. Their choice, but it's very supportive of my habit to cancel my Netflix subscription every time I run out of things to watch, and subscribe to a different service.
If they didn’t do this and I were going to screw about with subscription micromanagement, I would just subscribe when an entire season had been released, since I have no interest in being drip-fed a show or watching something over several weeks.
The Korean studios are quite smart with this. They release 1 or 2 episodes on a weekday just like Netflix used to with Star Trek Discovery.
Kind of a weird example when the adam sandler movie (uncut gems) was probably one of the few critical succeses of their recent original content.
Separately, Netflix just purchased streaming rights for Uncut Gems, which Sandler didn't write, from A24.
I'm assuming it's the Sandler originals that OP is referring to.
It was definitely a contributing factory that's for sure.
That is true. It also means that if you are going to proselytise, you're going to lose the audience who just want to be entertained.
That’s all well and dandy if you have an actual point to make, but they didn’t. There was no nuance because in their minds any deviation from those political beliefs are evil.
What about CNN+?
The main reason... Almost everything has some fringe minority edge, a gay lead, a token trans friend and most of the stuff is "victim porn" with the usual white male protagonist.
100% reason why I cancelled and the same for my friends.
Netflix, or Wokeflix is basically trash.
That's not the point. The point is "making money". Netflix is throwing a lot of money at their originals, the clear majority of which are "Woke" with a capital double-you. From all that I've read, the clear majority of Netflix originals are also losing money. Now before you claim that there is no reason to believe that the shows that lose money and the shows which are Woke are (in the majority) the same shows, let me clarify.
With their 220m+ subscriber base and deep knowledge of what people watch, there is no reason for Netflix to have this much uncertainty about what will be a hit and what will not.
They know exactly at which point each subscriber gives up on a show; they know which episode the subscriber saw last, they know which minute of that episode the subscriber stopped viewing at. They have much more detailed knowledge of what turns off viewers than Hollywood does, or any of the more traditional production companies.
They know what genres do well, they know what mix of genres do well, they know what the viewers appetite is for particular mixes, they know what most viewers want, they know what the long tail wants.
Netflix literally knows what doesn't sell, and yet they keep making shows that don't sell. The only reason for going against the data has to be due to a top-down directive from the company itself.
After all, if you have data that says "this will more likely be a hit than that", and you go ahead and make "that" anyway, the only reason you would do so is because you were told to do so.
Now, with all of that in mind, ask yourself what that top-down directive could possibly be ...
Nobody knows “literally” what doesn’t sell when it comes to film and TV. It’s a shot in the dark each time.
No, I did not. I said they have the mountains of data to predict better. I said that there must be some reason why they are ignoring that data. I said that you can figure out what the most plausible reason is for ignoring that mountain of data.
> Nobody knows “literally” what doesn’t sell when it comes to film and TV. It’s a shot in the dark each time.
It's not a binary possibility; of course they literally know what does not sell, because they just made something, and measured it, and determined that it did not sell.
You make it sound like it's all down due to chance; the reality is that while luck plays a part, Netflix has much more agency in determining whether to continue on a certain path or not.
You hysterically screaming "It's not Wokism. It CAN'T* be Wokism because it hurts my feels and damages my worldview"*[1] doesn't make the data go away.
[1] I don't normally point out how absurd people are in this manner, but I feel you had it coming with you attempting to cast my post as some sort of conspiracy theorist. I point out that they have data, and you respond with false accusations of Illuinati and Marx.
> I said they have the mountains of data to predict better. I said that there must be some reason why they are ignoring that data
Are they ignoring their data? Says who?
I guess it’s more comfortable to your worldview to make several jumps:
1. The data must say Woke content sucks
2. Netflix must not be listening to this data
3. Something must be forcing them to ignore it (but hehehe I won’t say why I think that is!)
And pretend that it’s fact. The anti-woke agenda being pushed by the conservative media as a next-generation “roe vs wade” division point has no bearing on me and my country, so I don’t really care. It’s just funny and a bit sad to watch.
Well, the fact that they are following flops with flops is a good indicator.
> I guess it’s more comfortable to your worldview to make several jumps:
Ironically, the only person who made jumps here was you. All I'm doing is pointing out that they have to data to reduce the number of flops, and it isn't getting reduced, hence they must be ignoring that data.
You are making the unwarranted conclusion that it's all down to pure chance. There is no evidence that that is true.
Owl House is pretty woke, enough to make Disney uncomfortable with it, but it gets great reviews and has a large fan base because it is written well. Meanwhile Star Trek: Discovery is rightfully being trashed by life long Star Trek fans like myself, who are pretty accustomed to progressive themes, because it is written largely by hacks.
This has literally never actually happened to anyone.
(Black Rifle Coffee just took a $4B writedown, so the opposite seems like more of a bad strategy.)
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-examples-that-support-th...
The majority are over it.
Anyone seen Shameless? Seasons 1-9 featured loads of gay and trans characters and plots, and they were superb. Seasons 10.5-11 were unironically woke garbage, and I had to abandon it midway into 11. I actually could not stand it anymore. The in your face preachy wokeness.
Reservation Dogs? Excellent show.
Dear White People? Woke Garbage.
Kill Bill? Excellent movie.
Captain Marvel? Woke Garbage.
You're demonstrating nothing but your own hyper-fixation on superficial identity characteristics by failing to recognize that there are plenty of "women, LGBT, PoC, etc" in all kinds of media beloved by those who are sick and tired of woke media. You think that these characteristics are sufficient for people to dislike this media, whereas the precise inverse seems to be true, wherein pro-woke people seem to be perfectly happy accepting garbage as media so long as these identity groups and messages are present.
I'm not interested in continuing this conversation by taking some kind of boomer position on wokeness, I just think that you're willfully arguing in bad faith, but you already know that.
No vote no power.
If Netflix could just take what they wanted, nobody would make anything but disposable reality TV.
You ask what this person should have done? Not sign up for other services. The other providers are better quality, but regresses on all the rest of the experience. Youtube TV is more than $60 a month. Disney+ great content, but an extremely narrow content offering ("few but ripe"). HBO lagged like crazy when the season finale of GOT came out. When the regular person you asked about spends money on these other services, it encourages them to grow. The content is great, but the bad-experience, price, and schism is what they will get in return. They are unknowingly demanding it.
Like you say, consumers want high quality content. That costs money to make, and when Netflix first started streaming, the cost of shows was subsidized by cable TV. Cable TV is declining or dead now, so who is going to pay for those shows?
Look at how Netflix's prices continue to rise, but their originals are mediocre for most people. Not signing up for other services would just encourage Netflix to keep doing that.
Until Netflix, TV production was funded by Networks paying for first run rights. The re-run/steam right were worthless unless you could get big re-run deals. So they got the rights for next to nothing and destroying the networks that paid for the content in the first place.
I agree that high quality costs something, but anyone familiar with modern media should be aware that the relation between cost and quality is not 1 to 1.
Red Notice would be an example, and interestingly enough, an argument against the idea that consumers want high quality content. Sometimes consumers just want content that will be exactly what they think it will be, no more and no less.
The real trick here is Amazon right now because the Prime subscription has other benefits - in my house we've kept that active because it makes ordering baby stuff much cheaper.
The old Netflix was an absolute gold mine. There was sooooo much good content and almost none of it was their own. The place was overflowing with great movies from every genre. It had all these great movies because they were the only game in town and the studios hadn't yet identified them as a competitor. It was a novelty. "Hey sure, movies on the internet. Why not! Here's our entire back catalog. Go nuts."
Once everyone realized this wasn't a novelty the IP holders began to pull back. First it was increased rates, which meant Netflix could have fewer of the top items available for streaming at any given time. Fine, kind of annoying that I can't find everything I want anymore but there's still a lot of good stuff! Then the megacorps that own all of the studios began to develop their own platforms to cash in on the money train and stopped licensing their content to Netflix altogether. Instead they began to pile the IP up to be released exclusively on their own platforms. Netflix knew this was going to happen so they went absolutely nuts on the spending, trying to produce enough of their own content to fill the gap left by 60 years of the top IP that was (mostly) banished from their platform.
The spending didn't work because it turns out making high quality IP is really, really hard. Think of all the film and television IP created over the last 60 years. Not the hits, I'm talking about everything. Now think of the hits. Those are like, what, 1% of the total? Netflix can't fill their catalog to compete with who they used to be. It's not physically/creatively possible. That means they will never live up to the initial experience of using the site.
As a consumer, I'd prefer they shift to become something closer to HBO/Apple TV+. A company that focuses on high quality, carefully curated productions. At least then I would have a good reason to continue subscribing. As it is, I don't find much value in the endless stream of schlock they've been producing to try to fill in for the lost IP. Quantity doesn't have a quality all its own when it comes to entertainment.
Serving video is an absolute commodity. They should have been getting pennies on the dollar if that. A simple distribution service for studios who should have been thought of as their customers. But no, making a steady, useful, profitable business is not enough.
Taking a big cut from an easily replaced service, and using the money to fund a direct competitor to their customers sure was something. Took a lot of chutzpah, is about the best I'll say for it.
This is why my group of friends stopped playing Catan after a while..
The consumers kinda are the idiots here. They know what they like, but they have no idea why the content is getting worse. Why shows are being pulled. Companies that had their content on Netflix realized they were facing an existential crisis.
Ever played Settlers of Catan and find out another player had 9/10 victory points? Everyone does everything in their power to not trade with that player, send the robber, and limit their chances. It's the same with Netflix. All other studios realized at some point Netflix would become so strong, even the royalties Netflix pays for their content would put them out of business permanently. There is no amount of money Netflix can pay for other studios content. Consumers only see the net effect of good shows going away, and imagining reasons why.