Streaming TV is Having an Existential Crisis, and Viewers Can Tell (washingtonpost.com) 144
Streaming television is going through an existential crisis, involving the people who make it and the viewers who watch it. Its revolutionary zeal has naturally faded, as that initial wave of near limitless expansion, boundless creative opportunities and vast archival choices crashes ashore, after a spate of megamergers and a drop in new subscribers. From a report: Just when streaming has finally attracted more viewers than cable or broadcast TV, its major players are engaged in a long-predicted war for subscribers, who are becoming all too aware of rising subscription prices and, both subtly and directly, a change in what programs get made and how long they stick around. Commercials could soon become more common, and services may be bundled (for one low monthly price!), already triggering visions of a future that recalls the dark days of cable.
The list of seismic rumblings in recent weeks is long, as chronicled in the Hollywood Reporter, Variety and elsewhere: Warner Bros. Discovery is cutting shows from its archives and unfinished movies from HBO Max as it prepares to merge it with its sister streaming service Discovery Plus, having promised its shareholders a $3 billion cut in costs. Faced with a plunging stock price and worrisome subscriber loss, Netflix plans to add an advertising-supported model for a lower price and may crack down on password sharing. Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus, which can all be subscribed to in a cable-esque bundle, are raising prices after taking a more than $1 billion hit in the fiscal third quarter. [...] The fear of having your show or movie deleted on an executive's whim -- a growing reality for many, including Katai -- is compounded by the fact that in the post-DVD digital age, viewers may never be able to access the shows again. Showrunners might not even have physical copies of their own work. And that's not the only downside for creators.
The list of seismic rumblings in recent weeks is long, as chronicled in the Hollywood Reporter, Variety and elsewhere: Warner Bros. Discovery is cutting shows from its archives and unfinished movies from HBO Max as it prepares to merge it with its sister streaming service Discovery Plus, having promised its shareholders a $3 billion cut in costs. Faced with a plunging stock price and worrisome subscriber loss, Netflix plans to add an advertising-supported model for a lower price and may crack down on password sharing. Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus, which can all be subscribed to in a cable-esque bundle, are raising prices after taking a more than $1 billion hit in the fiscal third quarter. [...] The fear of having your show or movie deleted on an executive's whim -- a growing reality for many, including Katai -- is compounded by the fact that in the post-DVD digital age, viewers may never be able to access the shows again. Showrunners might not even have physical copies of their own work. And that's not the only downside for creators.
No Commercials! (Score:5, Insightful)
I stopped watching regular TV because of commercials.
I watch streaming because it doesn't have commercials.
If they start inserting commercials in the middle of content, I will just stop watching it.
I don't mind commercials at the FRONT of content - I can easily just ignore that - leave the TV on mute until content starts, go take a shit, go do something in the kitchen...no problems, provided it is under 5 minutes. If it start to get like movies theaters, where there is a half hour of BULLSHIT between the published movie start time and the actual movie start time, then I'll just stop watching.
Re: No Commercials! (Score:5, Interesting)
I have always hated that there isnt a massive repository for all of TV like their is for all of Music, ala Spotify or Apple Music. There needs to be. A paid for version that is commercial free and and a free commercial version. And all content should be on it. It would work if everyone abandoned all other platforms and settled on one. Like, popcorn time!
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I have always hated that there isnt a massive repository for all of TV like their is for all of
Music, ala Spotify or Apple Music. There needs to be. A paid for version that is commercial free and and a free commercial version. And all content should be on it. It would work if everyone abandoned all other platforms and settled on one. Like, popcorn time!
Amazon video is about as close to having "everything" as we currently have but if it's not on prime, the TV shows are usually $2 per episode which can get expensive quickly. If amazon offered an "unlimited everything" plan for $50/month, although I probably wouldn't, plenty of people would subscribe.
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You just specified why they put unskillable commercials in between content.
What they need to do is to adapt their offer to what customers want: pay a monthly fee and no ads. That might mean less expensive CGI if it's where all the ad money goes (and this actually is a good thing that will force better screenwriting and better storytelling).
The audio repositories were enabled by the authorship rights management companies that exist since 1851 in France (non-profit SACEM), 1914 in England (PRS for Music), 1923 in Switzerland (non-profit SUISA), 1933 in Germany (GEMA), 1939 in Japan
Re: No Commercials! (Score:5, Informative)
The reason for this is congress. Music has statutory licensing, where anyone can pay a royalty to broadcast a work. This is how radio (and streaming audio) works, though the two formats have wildly different royalty rates. Movies and TV shows have no such statutory framework (except for retransmission, i.e. taking a broadcast signal and providing it via satellite or cable).
Congress could solve this problem if it so chose... but it will not.
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Re: No Commercials! (Score:5, Interesting)
What you describe is exactly what Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, et. al. were trying to do. Then the big studios got greedy and decided to go their own way. The result: media consumers learning that each studio with their subset of content isn't presenting enough value to continually subscribe to, thus people leave the platform.
The balkanization of streaming media will end up with some of these studios flushing hundreds of millions of dollars down the toilet in the vanity exercise of starting their own streaming service, only to realize that they just don't have enough content to keep people paying every month. Others will make it because they actually do have enough content, or have the ability to create enough content.
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My "guess" is in the end either Amazon Prime Video or someone like Xfinity will be the 'victor'..
Where you maintain a subscription to the primary service and they provide the interface you use along with a basic offering late-80s grade basic cable content better known titles with commercials some "classic" content without and a smattering of middle budget first party stuff just to raise the complexity of any new comers trying to enter the market.
With that as the underlying offering everyone else's libraries
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I stopped watching regular TV because of commercials.
I watch streaming because it doesn't have commercials.
If they start inserting commercials in the middle of content, I will just stop watching it.
You just specified why they put unkillable commercials in between content.
Ironically, one can still easily skip through commercials on recorded broadcast/cable TV -- I watch very few things "live". In fact, TiVo is pretty good at flagging commercials for their Commercial Skip feature, though it's usually only available on prime time shows/movies on the more mainstream channels. Otherwise, most commercial breaks are of similar lengths on various networks so a few quick 30s skip clicks is easy to do.
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I don't mind commercials as long as they don't cause the content to be censored and I don't have to pay a subscription fee.
Re: No Commercials! (Score:3)
as long as they don't cause the content to be censored
How will you know? Censorship isn't just bluring out the occasional flash of side boob. It's stuff that will never be made. Unlike the DVD shops, where they can just move some stuff behind a curtain to the adult section, sponsors often threaten to dump an entire network if the risqué stuff shows up anywhere.
Re:No Commercials! (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe it's past time for SCOTUS to revisit United States v. Paramount Pictures (1948) [wikipedia.org], where they decided that content should be separated from delivery. It was determined that having to go to a studio-branded theater to see that studio's content violated US antitrust law.
I don't see how this differs today: content comes from studios (Universal, Disney, 21cFox, CBS/Paramount, etc) but they want you to patronize their service to see that content.
I further believe that the DOJ ruling in 2020 was in complete error.
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Disney's content already *was* on Netflix, until Disney pulled it all to start their Disney+.
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If you don't see the problem, then you aren't paying attention, or don't actually use these services.
5 years ago, if you wanted to stream something, you went to Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, or Hulu. You had 3 services, which meant 3 apps, which meant 3 bills. Useability wasn't the best, but it also wasn't bad, because you had a maximum of three places to search for what you were looking for.
Now, we still have those three, but with less content on each. And then in addition, we have HBO Now, Disney / ABC
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DMCA made it so that it's illegal for a player to work without authorization by the DRMed content's copyright owner. It's hard to say creation and delivery should be separated, when combining them is required by law.
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Amazon, Hulu, Vudu, etc. were already streaming content they didn't create without being in violation of the DMCA prior to Disney, Paramount, etc standing up their own platforms.
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Re:No Commercials! (Score:4, Insightful)
More likely would reverse the original ruling.
And depending on who writes the opinion, they may justify reversing it based on the idea that in the 1600s if you wanted to experience performance art, you had to go to the performers, and whatever establishment they were performing in. Thus, it's perfectly fine if you restrict Marvel movies to Disney-owned theaters.
I mean, if they can reach back to the witch-burning era for centuries-old antiquated ideas about how to fuck up laws regarding reproductive rights, why not other stuff too?
TiVo OTA FTW (Score:3)
An over-the-air PVR is the best solution for network TV. TiVo's commercial-skipping feature is pretty darn good. It appears to use crowdsourcing or at least post-processing to figure out where the commercials are, because it's more likely to auto-skip a day or two later versus watching immediately. Some shows (e.g. Late Show with Stephen Colbert) gum up the works by having the band play over commercials, but you can still hit the 30-sec skip button.
On streaming, it's hit-or-miss. Some services only put ads
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If they continue to fuck this up... (Score:4)
Re:If they continue to fuck this up... (Score:5, Insightful)
When Netflix blamed account sharing on their drop in subscribers, it felt like a betrayal: they'd rather blame their users than the fact that Disney and others have been slowly withdrawing their shows from their platform while executing shows left and right based on binge stats, leaving them without content or continuity. They certainly fill a niche, which is great, but growth isn't a realistic option for them.
In any case, this fragmentation doesn't bode well for the streaming industry. It'll likely go down in painful buyouts.
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This seems true for some people I know. Netflix solve the problem of piracy through accessibility. Now, as things grow more complex and more costly, people will begin to leave.
When Netflix blamed account sharing on their drop in subscribers, it felt like a betrayal: they'd rather blame their users than the fact that Disney and others have been slowly withdrawing their shows from their platform while executing shows left and right based on binge stats, leaving them without content or continuity. They certainly fill a niche, which is great, but growth isn't a realistic option for them.
For Netflix I suspect account sharing has always been a problem but as they were growing it wasn't a big deal, and mind-share was more important anyway. Basically, it's easy to be the good guy when things are easy.
Now that everyone is streaming and growth has plateaued they're in the same state as every other industry. Margins are tight and competition is stiff and you need to start compromising your ideals to survive.
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Margins are tight and competition is stiff and you need to start compromising your ideals to survive.
Or spend your creative budget on a few good shows instead of an endless stream of mediocrity? Several of the rival streaming services have launched with big names that got significant numbers of people to sign up just to watch. If I'm looking for some entertainment in the evening then I'd rather spend an hour watching a good one-hour show than one of ten OK or awful ones I can choose between.
Netflix got into the independent content creation business impressively quickly and had those capabilities well befor
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Most likely you could have gotten that movie for almost half that price at a second hand store such as Second and Charles. Amazon is not always cheaper.
What I don't get... (Score:3, Interesting)
Why does a streaming service EVER delete content? I can see rotating content between "free" and "paid" tiers, but once the content is on the platform, why delete it? It's just taking up a few terabytes of storage.
If the licensing is "pay for having my content available on your platform" instead of "pay every time someone streams my content" then that is silly: You've just killed the "long tail" model.
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Also syndication deals with exclusivity-in-a-particular-market clauses.
Re: What I don't get... (Score:3)
Otherwise the consumer cost would likely keep going up at a pace that matched newer content.
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Paying royalties to the actors.
It's not just the actors. Haven't you noticed the proliferation of "Executive Producer" credits on shows and movies over the past few years?
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Disney practically created the model of making your own content unavailable for an extended period (putting it in the "vault") and then bringing it back.
Considering they have been doing this for the better part of a century across multiple mediums (TV/Pay TV/VHS/DVD/Blu-Ray/Streaming) it must be a reliable way to bring customers back.
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It's particularly puzzling for content created in-house. The investment has been made, you own the content, and the cost to distribute/archive it is extremely small.
Do you have any examples for this?
I'd assume any deletions are due to losing the IP, other than that I'd assume it's there forever.
Re: What I don't get... (Score:3)
It's the limit on the number of eyeball-minutes available. Studios need to drive viewers to their latest big budget productions. In order to justify future expenditure on such content.
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Why does a streaming service EVER delete content? I can see rotating content between "free" and "paid" tiers, but once the content is on the platform, why delete it? It's just taking up a few terabytes of storage.
If the licensing is "pay for having my content available on your platform" instead of "pay every time someone streams my content" then that is silly: You've just killed the "long tail" model.
I think part of it is the same reason that Apple and Google don't just unlock their phones - they want some level of quality control to maintain their brand and prevent them being associated with really awful stuff.
If an exec looks at Series 8 of Game of Stones and thinks "this is making us a laughing stock" the easiest thing, especially if series 1-7 have stopped generating piles of cash due to the crushed reputation of the programme, is to just drop it and pretend it never happened.
Aside from a handful of
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What you said is pretty much the case. Storage is cheap. Permission is expensive. They license the content to put on their platform, and those licenses aren't in perpetuity. If they want something "forever" they would have to buy it outright, which is usually cost prohibitive.
If you chose to license per stream instead of by catalog grouping, the IP owners would find 99% of their catalog without value. Out of 279 episodes of the Big Bang Theory, for instance, maybe 15 would be watched with any frequency. So
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2 reasons:
1- they don't have 100% ownership, so they have to pay for x views or worse, pay just to have then available. The total paid is more than the x people subscription, so they think it is fine to lose some clients but ending losing less money paying royalties.
2- storage cost and db cost. even if 100% theirs, having thousands of hours of content that only a few dozen people actually see may be a extra cost that they can easily cut
Both are of course stupid blind math, as if i am on supermarket with onl
THIS (Score:2)
This is why I only purchased Paramount+ for a month. Watched what I wanted, binged on a bit of Tosh, it was fun.
But they offer very little of Paramount's back catalog (ignoring tons of crap from the 50s/60s).
They churn it, "releasing" a few old movies and removing some every week or so.
Absolute stupidity (directly promotes piracy - the OWNER, not even a licensee like Netflix, can just take it away from you when they feel).
HBO and Netflix get this right, the difficulty there is finding what I "may" be looki
Wat (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, it's not considered revolutionary any more because the revolution already occurred. But it's not like there was ever any single moment where everybody jumped ship. There are still people watching OTA broadcast TV. There are still people watching cable.
Which either means that the revolution is still in its early days, or we've moved on to a new one. I like the former description of the situation more, because we aren't on to the next thing yet — Streaming has barely become the status quo! [arstechnica.com] It's not surprising that there's still lots of shaking out to be done.
Oh bollocks. Nothing is fundamentally changing. Mergers between services happen all the time, and nobody will be dramatically impacted by any of them. Some services get a little more expensive.
A fundamental change in the streaming market would either be enough mergers to leave just one or two players, or providers adopting open standards that let you use the player of your choice to watch content from the services of your choice, with integrated search. You can more or less get this functionality with various streaming platforms now even though they don't use such standards* through various services like Google TV, but the functionality is provided through apps instead of standards. It's literally the opposite of what I'm talking about, despite offering similar functionality.
* Yeah, they use standard codecs and protocols, but that's not what I'm talking about
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The streaming revolution will not be televised!
You're going to miss your DVR (Score:5, Insightful)
Commercials are going to come back, and there won't be much you can do about it.
I haven't watched a commercial since I got a VCR+ over twenty-five years ago, and streaming looks like it's going to kill the golden age of skipping commericial.
Re: You're going to miss your DVR (Score:4, Insightful)
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I've never understood people's hyperbole about commercials.
Yes, this is because you don't find your time valuable.
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Commercials are going to come back, and there won't be much you can do about it.
Hold my beer.
Block all domains that stream advertising, like blackholing all Doubleclick's domains (that you should already be doing anyways).
Stream to intermediate proxy that caches and allows you fast-forward based on that.
Buy a video capture device, then strip commercials prior to watching. I have not looked, but there is probably OS software that will automate it for you.
Wait a few months and buy shows on DVD (yes, those are still around).
Glut (Score:2)
Yeah, that's exaggeration, but not by much.
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So now instead of paying Comcast a gazillion dollars a month, the alternate paradigm is to pay a gazillion streaming sources whatever they charge per month.
Maybe if you love wasting money. The new paradigm is signing up for each service for just long enough to binge whatever they got since the last time you had a subscription that you dropped the day before it auto-renewed.
The real problem is that these services are starting to include commercials. The top two things people wanted from post-cable television were on-demand, and no commercials. Now they're trying to find ways to force them on us. If they do that, I will literally just not watch TV, but I don't k
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So now instead of paying Comcast a gazillion dollars a month, the alternate paradigm is to pay a gazillion streaming sources whatever they charge per month.
Maybe if you love wasting money. The new paradigm is signing up for each service for just long enough to binge whatever they got since the last time you had a subscription that you dropped the day before it auto-renewed.
Ugh, more trouble than it is worth to me.
The real problem is that these services are starting to include commercials.
Oh that is definitely a huge problem.
The top two things people wanted from post-cable television were on-demand, and no commercials. Now they're trying to find ways to force them on us. If they do that, I will literally just not watch TV, but I don't know how many other people will follow suit.
I imagine a lot still will watch, but that's a them problem. I don't watch much regular Television now, other than Rick and Morty, and Primal, and the science Network, which is slowly turning into yet another Discovery channel. Youtube has largely taken their place, you can find intelligent shows there. I recommend Fall of Empires. Real history, not what passes for it on commercial Television. https://www.youtube.com/c/Fall... [youtube.com]
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If the former, learn to sleep with one eye partially open.
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Maybe if you love wasting money. The new paradigm is signing up for each service for just long enough to binge whatever they got since the last time you had a subscription that you dropped the day before it auto-renewed.
Maybe, if you love wasting time. And also if you have kids that don't mind having their favorite show unavailable for months at a time.
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Maybe, if you love wasting time.
It takes me only seconds to sign up for or drop a streaming subscription. What's your problem?
And also if you have kids
I don't, and I thank contraception. People bringing children onto this planet with its failing life support system are self-delusional.
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More pain is yet to come, they will inhibit service-hopping, add commercials, and generally squeeze this harder and harder until they basically drive all of us older folk out, because we've seen all of these stories, we're saturated with them, and our demand has grown inelastic. And perhaps we'll be better off for that. They certainly won't care, as they are more concerned with milking the younger crowd who still hunger for just 1 more movie/show.
In general though, the transition from buying customers to
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The new paradigm is signing up for each service for just long enough to binge whatever they got since the last time you had a subscription that you dropped the day before it auto-renewed.
That works fine in a single person household. Getting four plus people with different tastes and different viewing hours all on the same binge schedule is not as easily done. The days of the whole family sitting on the couch together for prime time are also long gone.
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No the new paradigm is subscribe to what you want, avoid what you don't.
My daughter likes Netflix, my wife likes Hulu, and we all seem to find stuff on Disney+, and we get Prime anyway, so that's us sorted. We don't subscribe to HBO Max because, quite honestly, none of the shows everyone keeps talking about as "Must sees" seem that interesting to us.
Your particular situation does not define the paradigm. It is the cable companies figuring out how to address the demand for ala carte subscriptions.
I think that the 4 services you subscribe to kind of show my point. What happens when the next new service has you, your wife or daughter begging to subscribe to it?
No, it isn't (Score:5, Informative)
"Streaming television is going through an existential crisis, involving the people who make it and the viewers who watch it."
They are not all the same.
I PAY for Amazon Prime because I get between 8 and 12 parcels a week.
I don't care if their dragon series sucks or not, I'll pay anyway.
I also don't share my password, because I don't want people ordering shit on my dime.
There's a difference between Netflix and Prime.
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It's a mess (Score:5, Interesting)
I was looking into getting onto the streaming bandwagon but the landscape is just such a mess. You'd have to maintain at least half a dozen account and subscriptions to be able to watch a good selection of shows, for example
And just like with cable, you'll end up paying for shit you don't need. There really needs to be a way to buy individual shows independently.
Like the different shows are fully owned and financed independently (through crowdfunding if necessary) and can then sell it directly to the viewers or at least through some common marketplace (which would otherwise have no stake in any of the content). I'm not an insider but as I understand, the "idea" currently go to the different services and beg for financing, which of course ties them to that platform.
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There really needs to be a way to buy individual shows independently.
Err... there already is? Amazon, Google, and others will happily sell you movies and shows (the latter per episode or per season) once the owner of the work decides to make it available. Just like going to walmart and buying DVDs (which is another way to buy shows independently).
Re:It's a mess (Score:5, Funny)
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While you jest, you can do this very thing at Second and Charles. They sell used CDs, DVDs, and books as well as brand new merch. You buy the movie series you want, watch it, then sell it back to them. Yes, you will lose money this way, but it's most likely less than the cost of what
Re: 2nd and charles (Score:2)
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While you jest, you can do this very thing at Second and Charles.
I'm guessing you must live fairly close to one of their 45 stores, most of which are in the Midwestern and Eastern US. I've looked at their website; the instructions for buying and selling "stuff" start with "Find your store".
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Yeah sure I can watch it later once everyone else already forgot about the show, and the pirate bay exists, but that's not what I mean.
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For certain values of "later".
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Yeah, it's not even the money. It's the hassle, which includes stuff like region locking and deleting old shows.
I can either waste my time trying to find stuff or waiting while everyone else talks about it (looking at you Paramount), or I can just head over to thepiratebay.org or RARBG and a few minutes later watch on my preferred device.
The worse they make it, the less inclined I am to jump through the hoops necessary to pay for it.
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For All Mankind
I lolled.
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I lolled.
I did too when I watched it, it's fun!
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And just like with cable, you'll end up paying for shit you don't need.
The cost to produce an episode of a TV show is in the neighborhood of $3,000,000.
The cost to deliver a copy of it is in the neighborhood of $0.003.
Not sending you the "shit you don't need" is going to impact the network's cost less than 0.01%.
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I'm not talking about the bandwidth costs, the point is that I'd be paying those services money whether or not there's stuff I want to see, or have to remember to cancel and sign up constantly. And then that money will go into a big pot that they'll use it to make 10 more stupid Marvell shows.
Re: It's a mess (Score:2)
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I'll give you three examples of why crowdfunding isn't a very good model - "The Wars of Other Men", "JourneyQuest" and an Italian(?) version of "Peter Pan" I can't recall the name of.
The first took years to finish and once out, months to get and then once viewed, very disappointing. Very shallow story with a finish that was broadcast in the first several minutes (of 26).
JourneyQuest started in 2010 and still isn't finished (Takes them 3-4
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That common carrier was Hulu, but some of the big content providers scored major hits and realized they didn't have to share the revenue if they had their own service. And having their own service allows them to promote their own offerings to the top instead of waiting for reviews to push them to the front. There's only upside for content providers to provide the full service.
Why aren't there stores for shows? (Score:2)
Indicative of the end of life of the film industry (Score:4, Insightful)
I recently read a book which explained the so called explore/exploit tradeoff. When we're young we tend to try a lot of different activities and take a lot of risk because we still have the entire life before us and we can afford to make mistakes. This is our "explore" phase. However, when we're close to the end of our life, we tend to harvest what we sow through our lifetime - we become comfortable with having just a few well-known friends, staying mostly in our local surroundings and enjoying a handful of favourite hobbies - the ones which bring us the most joy. This is the "exploit" stage of our life.
This explore/exploit tradeoff applies to most areas of our life. The more we explore a specific area, the earlier in the lifecycle we are. The more we exploit - the closer we are to the end.
This can naturally be applied to the film industry. If we look at the visual entertainment landscape a few decades ago, we can see that it was full of new, creative ideas. Most films were at least unique; some - exquisite masterpieces. And today? We have Fast and Furious 10, Spiderman 14, not to mention endless repetitions of the same shows. This is strongly indicative that the film industry is running out of ideas and it's nearing the end of its life.
The film industry itself is also to blame. Quick shooting time, and short time to market is now more important than quality. As the result, creators don't have enough time to break out of the traditional patterns (***) and come up with something truly good, and with the prority on quantity over quality, no wonder people are beginning to recognise the same patterns everywhere and are getting bored, because they have seen all of it before - just in a different dressing.
*** - There is only a handful of what are called story and character archetypes:
Character:
Story: rags to riches, the quest, rebirth, overcoming the difficulty, comedy, tragedy, voyage and return
Characters: warrior, child, orphan, creator, caregiver, mentor, joker, magician, ruler, rebel, lover, seductress
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This is strongly indicative that the film industry is running out of ideas and it's nearing the end of its life.
The industry isn't remotely out of ideas - the problem is that people have gotten accustomed to films with effects and casts that require absolutely ENORMOUS budgets. We've come to a point where studios just can't afford for a film to fail, so they don't do gambles anymore. You can't plop down 200 million on a movie and see if it pans out - you need a guaranteed ROI. As such, you get sequels, reboots, etc that already have fanbases that they can expect to see those films.
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Thing is we could say this during any decade and technically be right, so much so that it doesnt matter.
All art has always followed the 80/20 rule. 80% of whats produced is crap and will be forgotten and the 20% that is worth something will be whats remembered and therefore we tend to look upon the past with nostalgia colored glasses because we only remember the good things and the thousands of bad things are swept into the dustbin of history.
What was teh decade of "exsquisite masterpieces"? The silent fil
And that's why... (Score:3)
"compounded by the fact that in the post-DVD digital age, viewers may never be able to access the shows again." ...people torrent shows. Plus, local media players generally work better than streaming controls.
Existential (Score:3)
I do not think that word means what the submitter thinks it means.
Meet the new TV, (Score:2)
same as the old TV! Except this time around you're stuck with both ads and subscription fees.
I guess the on-demand capability is worth some of that hassle for some viewers. But I'm also guessing that torrent sites will start to see a sustained increase in traffic as the ball rolls down the far side of "Peak TV".
Removing Original Titles (Score:2)
Ok, I can understand them removing third party titles due to licensing expiring, but HBO Max has been removing some original programming. Why would you intentionally make your catalog smaller!?!?!
Good luck competing with both Pirate Bay + YouTube (Score:2)
Strong and hungry players will survive. As for the rest - there have been enough content produced in 20th century to watch for one's lifetime and not waste time on new substandard drivel. Plus enough people are willing to upload videos just for the love of making them.
Reality TV killed TV. (Score:2)
Reality TV killed TV.
Shows laden with agendas driven by Identity Politics, Gender Studies and Racial Studies killed TV
Ads pushing a vision of America that is simply non-existent and untrue killed TV.
In short, a cancer spread in the past century through academia, and then media, and killed TV. And it's killed critical thinking. And that is killing not just the US, but UK and EU too.
It is time to Resist. For sure. Resist when ridiculed, resist when protested, resist when downmodded. Resist. Be strong.
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Ads pushing a vision of America that is simply non-existent and untrue killed TV.
Which particular ads are you referring to? My main ad-viewing has been during the World Series, where erectile dysfunction and car/truck ads dominate, and Roku TV's free programming, which has a lot of T-Mobile, Liberty Mutual, and drug ads. The drug stuff is usually amazingly positive in the first half - "Emerge Tremfayant!" - and then has a lot of horrible side effects in the second. There's one particularly disturbing "bent carrot" ad that has "penile fracture" as a potential side effect. I don't watch
Predictable. (Score:2)
It's almost like people around here were predicting that balkanizing the streaming market would result in total failure of some services, because people don't want to spend $10/month for 8 different services with 8 different apps that don't work together and have no common search functionality to enhance ease-of-use.
The studios may have chopped the head off the golden goose here by each trying to get a bigger slice of the pie and refusing to work with anybody else. Their greed has resulted in a less useabl
Deleted shows (Score:2)
Bro, you don't Plex?
Ruthless (Score:5, Insightful)
This dynamic was totally upended by OTT streaming, which can now capture revenue directly from consumers - but because content remains the biggest demand driver and content is expensive, services need to scale, and the cycle of consolidation through mergers and acquisitions begins again in order to run lean operations that cost less money.
The problem here is that the companies that were disruptors, become part of an oligopoly that ends up controlling a good chunk of information delivery and shape the views of consumers over a significant period of time. The big focus on lean operations and squeezing margins end up costing consumers because we start getting 10 minutes of ads for every minute of content, and the total employment of the industry shrinks as companies consolidate customer service, technical ops, etc etc.
So what's the solution? I'm not super for government regulation - but it's important to keep a healthy entertainment at home ecosystem - scrutinizing mega mergers and supporting innovation in this space via tax incentives and access rights to content, impeding 'most favoured' nation clauses and other tricks that allow super conglomerates to retain market power.
torrent is due to make a comeback (Score:2)
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Add incompetence and extreme risk-adversity to it and you probably have the complete picture.
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It's an anachronism. (Score:2)
TV is for people who insist on living in the past. Modern adults get their news from the Internet, and spend their free time doing more mentally engaging things like video games.
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Yes, pretty much. There is also evidence that games and content that makes you think is slowing down mental aging somewhat, while passive entertainment is not good for you at all, besides being boring.
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This is kind of a dumb topic. Yes, every legacy visual media company is trying to create their own version of Hulu/Netflix ex post facto while the latter get slowly Napster'd out of existence. Meanwhile, static video is getting hollowed out by the video game industry, just like radio was hollowed out by television, just like live music was hollowed out by records. Years from now, those media companies will be destitute in comparison to the golden age when they controlled much of the levers of distribution and many will be found guilty of price fixing their streaming services. Every media has tried this with widely disparate success based on where and how they can stick their fingers into the media itself.
It seems that you're regurgitating claims from the 1980s! Every decade there's clamoring about the impending death of media companies. Recent history has shown that there's so many ways for media moguls and conglomerates to keep the gravy train going (see the histories of: Rupert Murdoch, Viacom, Comcast, Disney, Amazon [they own MGM now]).
Media consumption has only grown since those late-70's/early-80's days. With greater connectivity, it'll only keep growing -- whether you personally enjoy/prefer the m