Roku Plans To Produce Original Shows and Feature Films (protocol.com) 52
Not content anymore with just streaming Hollywood's old shows and movies, Roku is looking to produce originals: The company published a job listing for a lead production attorney, which spells out plans to build out an "expanding slate of original content." From a report: This renewed push into originals comes just weeks after Roku acquired Quibi's content library, for which the company reportedly shelled out less than $100 million. The job listing was first spotted by Revealera, a data provider for job openings. A Roku spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Roku's job listing is the clearest evidence yet that the Quibi deal doesn't represent a one-off. The listing tells potential applicants that they would "serve as lead production attorney for Roku's original episodic and feature length productions." The listing also makes it clear that Roku may be looking beyond simply acquiring existing shows and films on an exclusive basis. The attorney would be interacting with guilds and unions, and part of the job would entail working on "option purchase agreements, script acquisition agreements, life rights agreements, agreements to hire writers, actors, directors and individual producers, production services agreements, below-the-line agreements including for department heads, location agreements, clearances, prop rental agreements, likeness releases and credit memos," according to the listing.
Smart move, IMO.... (Score:3)
As Hollywood goes into decline, I think this is the future people are willing to pay for; good original programming on streaming services.
The movie theater chains are almost all bankrupt now, thanks to COVID lockdowns. And even if they return? The quality of Hollywood films vs the high cost to see them at release time makes them pale in comparison to the original series getting produced today by the likes of Amazon Prime Video or Netflix.
I mean, I found Stranger Things, or The Boys, or The Expanse FAR more compelling than anything I've seen as a major movie release in the last year.
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I mean, I found Stranger Things, or The Boys, or The Expanse FAR more compelling than anything I've seen as a major movie release in the last year.
Did they even release anything in the last year though?
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Ozark, You, Undercover, Dark...plenty of others that I didn't watch, but others liked. There's a few I partially watched and wanted to like but either got bored with or are still on my list.
Those probably aren't even all Netflix productions, but Netflix shows them which is all that really matters to consumers and I wouldn't have heard or seen them without Netflix. Similarly, shows like Occupied, Hap & Leonard and Sleeper Cell were all things I don't think were produced by Netflix but I 'discovered' the
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> this is the future people are willing to pay for; good original programming on streaming services
Somewhat, but not in its current form. I would prefer pay per view on a single platform instead of having tens of subscriptions because each of them occasionally has something I want to watch. I'm too casual of a viewer, so now I am subscribed to absolutely nothing at all and consume pretty much only content from youtube and my own library. Early days online netflix was good as well as it had enough content
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So, subscribe to dozens of streaming services or torrent it. Easy choice.
Even if I did subscribe to Prime or Netflix, there's still no guarantee that any particular show will be available in my country.
Oh good (Score:5, Insightful)
Another video service and another subscription.
We need a law to prevent producers being exclusive distributors of their own materia or something. This is turning TV into a pain in the ass.
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This is like the situation where you almost had to have DirecTV to watch Fox and Comcast to watch NBC. Luckily, that was avoided. Now, you need too many online services to see it all.
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Another video service and another subscription.
We need a law to prevent producers being exclusive distributors of their own materia or something. This is turning TV into a pain in the ass.
A law to prevent them from selling their own products?
Or to put this another way, you want to have access to all the new shows without spending as much money. You do realize that you don't need any of those services right? They are luxury items nobody needs at all.
Re:Oh good (Score:4, Funny)
They can call it the "Because I Want It" law. It should be very popular among the self-entitled.
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Another video service and another subscription.
We need a law to prevent producers being exclusive distributors of their own materia or something. This is turning TV into a pain in the ass.
A law to prevent them from selling their own products?
The issue is tying two products - the shows and the service.
And, in case you hadn't noticed, the purpose of laws is to force behaviour desired by society. I don't owe these people special consideration for their business plan, any more than I do Uber.
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The issue is tying two products - the shows and the service.
And, in case you hadn't noticed, the purpose of laws is to force behaviour desired by society. I don't owe these people special consideration for their business plan, any more than I do Uber.
I'm not nearly the socialist that you are I guess.
Re: Oh good (Score:2)
Hint: the free market is about free competition growing the economy so we all get rich, not rich people and monopolies get richer.
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No, the purpose of the law is to protect your natural rights from infringement by others such as a mob trying to force behavior.
You have a natural right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
You will never have a natural right to the labor of others, that is called slavery.
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No, the purpose of the law is to protect your natural rights
No such things exist.
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We need a law to prevent producers being exclusive distributors of their own materia or something.
This was actually a thing, once upon a time. US v. Paramount [wikipedia.org].
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Re:Oh good (Score:5, Informative)
I don't understand. Isn't this the a-la-carte television that everyone wanted back in the bundled cable days?
Don't buy a subscription you don't want.
You don't HAVE to purchase another subscription. And, if you do want to watch one of the shows, wait until the run is done, spend the monthly fee, binge them all and then cancel the subscription.... You are in and out for way less than a bundled cable bill...
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It's not truly "a-la-carte" if you are forced to buy A to get B. There should be some industry-wide royalty agreement that allows resellers to distribute anybody's shows. Some bundling should be allowed so that deal-hunters can get deals, but within reason.
In other words, allow "soft bundling" but not hard bundling. Perhaps limit the bundling mark-down allowed. Otherwise, we end up with dick-wad oligopolies & monopolies.
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I think the current market is hardly a monopoly. What you are proposing is a monopoly, someone to hold all the rights and distribute them at some cost.
Mutual agreement [Re:Oh good] (Score:2)
I'm not sure what you mean. It would be a mutual agreement between producers, distributors, and consumer groups, perhaps with backing and assistance from the FCC etc. If a producer or distributor wants to be part of "the network", they have to agree to various terms and limitations. Nobody has to join the network, but you get sufficient benefits if you do to encourage most to join.
The motion picture industry and the recording industry have made somewhat comparable agreements in the past per royalties and ra
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HBO can be bundled with just about any streaming and cable service out there at some discount, Disney+ is doing the same on some Internet and mobile packages.
This does not exist (yet) for highly profitable franchises, which makes sense, why would you sell what is often the only selling point for your service. This will become possible, but even Netflix found the current overhead for low budget shows and movies was too great if they had to go through another party.
For low-budget movies most streaming service
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That's exactly what it is. But it turns out they didn't want à la carte - they wanted à la carte at all-you-can-eat prices. Never occurred to folks that's mutually incompatible.
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"Isn't this the a-la-carte television that everyone wanted back in the bundled cable days?"
No. It is a bundle, just from a new source.
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That will happen, eventually. You can already see it happen with independent movies where exclusivity would be too much of an investment even for the likes of Netflix so you see a release appearing across multiple providers.
Some franchises will be milked (eg. Star Wars) by a single provider, but the era of good Star Wars production has long been over, even their spinoffs are getting less and less compelling after the first season. It will take some time, but I can see Disney selling out their franchises to
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Always a Good Business Idea (Score:1)
How do you pronounce this? (Score:2)
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https://www.google.com.au/sear... [google.com.au]
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Row-koo. It's the Japanese word for 6 (presumably products 1 through 5 failed).
No One Wants a Roku Account (Score:5, Informative)
I can see why Roku themselves might want to ruin it all (for their customers) by becoming a big streaming player, which they could leverage to get onto other platforms and stop doing all that hard work of making their own good hardware (Hell, maybe even sabotage Rokus for competing services or stop supporting them). But in the long run wouldn't that inevitably devalue their most valuable business segment (hardware), and probably leave them in a much worse position as "just another streaming service" on platforms owned by someone else (Google/Apple/etc.)?
P.S. When I set up my Roku 3 six years ago, it demanded I give it a pointless Roku user/pass and credit card number. There was an alternate activation URL that bypasses the CC# requirement, but you'd only learn it if you were pissed off enough to call Roku tech support (or simply google for it, as I did). So back then Roku's ambitions were merely a temporary annoyance, but that sounds likely to change for the worse.
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Welcome to extreme capitalism (Score:2)
Nonstop growth for no reason other than having the best 2nd derivative profits.
You know they had investors pressing for more "success" and like many other companies you've heard trying something new that likely began from a stock analyst's ignorant suggestion among the brainstorming sessions of greedy bastards demanding "what have you done for us lately?"
They will be back to promote sell-outs, mergers, eventually regardless if they got you to burn all your customers loyalty beforehand or not.
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No different than Amazon's Fire stick. Or your Android phone or your iOS phone which stream all the services.
Owning the hardware means you get the licensing fee for the other services that work on it.
Disney+ and HBO will likely come up with their own branded hardware as well.
Streaming devices haven't been independent actors for a very long time. Convincing someone to own your device to stream other services provides a bonus revenue stream.
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Weird. I never had to give Roku a CC# when signing up for a new account.
Let me guess (Score:5, Interesting)
It will be called Roku+
It will cost a bit below what everyone else is charging
They will offer 90 days free with a new device sold
They will want bank information with every new device sold
Other studios will start removing their content from the service
It will fail in less than a year
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Well, it was good while it lasted. (Score:2)
Going into content competition with their existing content partners won't end well.
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NOOOOO.... (Score:1)
I cancelled Netflix because they create an push immoral (sh.. stuff) can't they just keep doing what they are good at and not start making who knows what.
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I cancelled Netflix because they create an push immoral (sh.. stuff) can't they just keep doing what they are good at and not start making who knows what.
Immoral in what way? Can you clarify what they did?
Fix their index first (Score:5, Informative)
When I search for content on my Roku, the results of the search are incorrect at least 50% of the time. They routinely assure me that the film I seek is on one fo the channels I have installed, but it is not there when I search inside the channel. The links to content provided in the search results work only intermittently, even when the content is actually present where they say it is. If they can't get something this simple right, I can only imagine what their original content will be like.
I can't see this ending well (Score:2)
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Nice (Score:1)