You can only blame IP laws so much. Someone has to fund the production of content.

If Netflix could just take what they wanted, nobody would make anything but disposable reality TV.

Stupid is probably the wrong word here; "clueless"? I personally think consumers are on the verge of reinventing TV channels, with each streaming service acting like a channel. Consumers, who liked that Netflix had so much content in one place, are slowly pushing time to go backward.

I still don't see how it's the consumers' fault. Say there was one single person out there who wasn't an idiot or clueless, and just wanted to watch some TV after work. What should this person have done?

Consumers want high quality, entertaining content, at low cost, with little commitment, at any time. Prior to Netflix, there wasn't such an intersecting product. Now, Netflix has low quality content, but still has all the other stuff. Consumers see this, forget what life was like back in the early 2000s, and switch/sign up for several other services. It's where consumers spend their money that will result in this regression.

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.

The issue is Netflix as it was is not sustainable. It's like plenty of VC startups, build the market at a cost, and then go down in quality so you can make a profit. Or sell the company. But they can't do that because it's already public. In fact that means earning reports and they've just recently turned cash flow positive.

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.

For Netflix it is worse than selling at cost. They were sourcing most of their content from the companies they were putting out of business. It was unsustainable at any cost.

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.

>That costs money to make,

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.

I generally agree with you, though I would say now we are finding out if it's sustainable or not. Remember that for the past 2 years, TV Studios have been on lock down and the only stuff Netflix was really releasing was stuff that was nearly done before covid. Netflix has tons of cash that _they couldn't spend_, but now they can.

The difference is switching services is easy. Month over month billing means I simply watch what I want on one, unsubscribe, and then go to the next one.

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.