AT&T had the right idea buying Time Warner. Disney is now in the process of proving how crucial it is to have big global brands to use in streaming, movies and related businesses (like merchandise). Disney bought Star Wars, made The Mandalorian, now is making money off Baby Yoda dolls, and it knew there was demand for Baby Yoda by looking at their own streaming data. That's how it's gonna work from now on. Streaming as the nerve center for the whole business, and big brands to bring in big numbers of subscribers to generate that data.
AT&T should be able to follow suit with HBO Max. If they fall on their faces instead, then the layoffs should start in the C-Suite. Because wow AT&T really isn't making smart decisions. Both the name and the price for HBO Max are just bad. They have every advantage, paid for at great cost by investors. If they blow this, then the investors have every right to revolt.
Yeah there will be some irreducible core who never cut the cord: old people who can't deal with change. But nobody under 30 bothers with cable at all, so that tells you all you need to know about cable's future.
I'm convinced that these dolts aren't quite as doltish as you'd think. They know damn well that streaming is going to destroy their business but the C-level jerks are all guys in their 50s and 60s. Pretty close to retirement. If they jumped right away into streaming, their decades of experience would become irrelevant.
Their rolodexes of contacts in advertising and distribution become useless, and what they really need is what some kid in Silicon Valley knows about data-driven decision making. Advertising is less important or unimportant and suddenly you need expertise in the global entertainment industry that never mattered to cable. So why wouldn't the dinosaur in the C suite get the boot in favor of the Silicon Valley kid? Nah, better to hunker down and let their company go under just to get closer to golden parachute retirement.
News is a commodity and how it's going to continue as a viable business really remains to be seen. I'm cynical enough to think that news will largely operate as bias confirmation services. People don't watch Fox News for information, they watch to have their biases confirmed. There are a lot more types of biases that people might want confirmed than just the Fox News variety. There's money in that.
Sports has been artificially supported by cable subscribers that don't watch it, and now that that's ending, the greedy bloat in sports will be deflated some. But I'm sure some streaming solution will emerge. The leagues will have their own exclusive platforms, Disney makes ESPN+ work as a sports streaming destination, or something else happens.
Cable was never going to be able to compete with streaming. The internet is just more of an efficient platform for reaching the world. Netflix is a "cable" service capable of cheaply offering content to the planet, without even needing the expense of maintaining the infrastructure. There is no such thing as global cable, so you can't ever tap into the same efficiencies of scale. When i realized this years ago, I knew cable (and broadcast) were doomed as less efficient business models.
All Prime is will be doing is offering HBO Max, Disney+ etc at full freight. What could really change the game is offering customized payment schemes that cut across services.
Prime mass-subscribers to HBO Max, Disney+ etc and then offers various plans like "12 seasons per month" of any series of your choice across all the services for a set price. Or they bundle various genres together like a sci fi bundle. Or they institute auto-churn and do what we can all do, except with more effort, namely Netflix is January and Disney+ is February, etc. There are many other customized payment schemes that could be devised rather than the mere two we have now: cheap bundles of exclusive content (Netflix) or expensive targeted pay per view (iTunes).
That kind of meta-service will emerge first from the likes of Amazon, Apple or Google and will involve the immanent losers in the streaming war, like CBS All Access and Peacock. And maybe it's a way Apple avoids being a loser itself? It will be a desperation move to carve out a space while Netflix and Disney+ gets subscribers the old fashioned way, but as the industry matures, it could spread to encompass all the players.
This is beyond pathetic. I saw this trend coming about five years ago, and I'm just some random idiot on the internet who doesn't even make a living in this industry. But all you have to do is see what the leading populations are doing - the young people, the early tech adopter crowd - and extrapolate forward. The older populations die off (and advertisers don't care about them anyway) so what matters is what younger people do. The tech adopter crowd paves the way for the general population. And it's all shaping up exactly as I predicted: both cable and broadcast are cratering, replaced by streaming. Derrr. Why do these CEO idiots be paid millions?
My local Blockbuster was awful. I never got there fast enough to get anything good. The shelves would be bare and I'd pay $5 to rent some crap I didn't want.
Netflix never had "everything" either. HBO never licensed content to them for starters. Netflix DVD was as close to everything as we ever got. And I still get their DVD service too.
You got it. Nobody is going to license content to help competitors win. They'd rather let pirates help them drive the weaker competitors under so the winners can buy them and then make use of their brands.
Or to make this more concrete: CBSViacom makes Star Trek exclusive to its service. But it's too small so people don't subscribe, they just pirate Star Trek. This accelerates CBSViacom's demise and one of the stronger competitors like Amazon or Apple buy them and then they get to use Star Trek for their own profit.
Pirates help big corporations get bigger. All these corporations think they're the king of the hill or are trying to be, so they don't mind pirates helping cull the herd.
Oh they know what the game is, namely that consumers are going to balk at subscribing to more than 2 or 3 of these services at a time which means the cutoff bar for success will be very high and the losers who don't clear the bar will be eaten by the winners. This is an existential fight but they do need to fight it out because nobody is going to give up willingly.
Winners: Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+Hulu and HBO Max. Apple will win only if they go on a buying spree and snap up the losers (CBSViacom, the entertainment portion of Sony, Lionsgate, AMC, Discovery) and maybe Netflix too. Apple has money, they just need the will.
Well that's the thing that would never happen. Nobody in government is going to interfere with corporations to such a degree that they force Disney to start licensing their Star Wars content to Netflix, Amazon and HBO Max or force those platforms to license their own content too.
Instead, if Netflix, Amazon and HBO Max are jealous of how kick-ass The Mandalorian looks, they should develop their own competing shows. Netflix is developing a Western tinged space show with Cowboy Bebop. If Amazon and HBO Max followed suit, we'd get four Western space operas instead of one, why is that a terrible thing?
Actually it is, ha ha. It's the reason there is too much content now but there's no stopping these people. They will continue to go berzerk and flood us with more content than we can deal with. Maybe we need legislation to stop them or at least slow them down.
I'm sure different plaforms would love to host competitors' content. Its the competitors that don't want others getting access to their content.
It's like this. McDonald's would sue the holy heck out of Burger King if Burger King dared imitate and sell Big Macs under that name. So instead, Burger King invents the Whopper - a whole lot like a Big Mac but not named that, and with somewhat different ingredients - and everyone is happy and no one gets sued.
So if competitors are jealous of Disney+ and The Mandalorian, they should feel free to create their own Western-tinged space opera series and in fact, Netflix is doing just that with their live action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop. Same basic genre but different enough that nobody would dream of suing anyone.
I've yet to see a free streaming service that is funding much of anything worth paying for. And I do like cat videos but I also like expensive multi-million-dollar entertainments such as YouTube has never funded.
If the ad-supported business model was going to fund Game of Thrones type content, YouTube would have done it already. They've been in business for 14 years. What's the holdup?
And the attitude of the industry may be depressing but there's nothing that's ever going to change it.
My government is headed by a buffoon named Trump and that's the government that would need to start ordering Netflix and Disney around. The orders that Trump would give to Netflix and Disney are funny to contemplate but not something I want to see become reality.
The ability of these companies to have exclusives on their content is the reason they are making such a tsunami of stuff now in the first place. If they had to share with others, it would be cat videos all around. They're not going to invest much in that.
A few of these services can "win" in tandem. I figure Netflix, Prime, Disney+Hulu and HBO Max are the winners circle. They eat the others. Maybe Apple survives by going on a cannibal spree.
Of all the things the government should work on, getting us easier access to The Mandalorian is not one of them. How about fixing the health care mess first? Oh yeah and climate change.
On the post: AT&T Said Trump Tax Cuts Would Create Thousands Of Jobs. Instead, AT&T's Laying Off Thousands.
right idea, bad execution
AT&T had the right idea buying Time Warner. Disney is now in the process of proving how crucial it is to have big global brands to use in streaming, movies and related businesses (like merchandise). Disney bought Star Wars, made The Mandalorian, now is making money off Baby Yoda dolls, and it knew there was demand for Baby Yoda by looking at their own streaming data. That's how it's gonna work from now on. Streaming as the nerve center for the whole business, and big brands to bring in big numbers of subscribers to generate that data.
AT&T should be able to follow suit with HBO Max. If they fall on their faces instead, then the layoffs should start in the C-Suite. Because wow AT&T really isn't making smart decisions. Both the name and the price for HBO Max are just bad. They have every advantage, paid for at great cost by investors. If they blow this, then the investors have every right to revolt.
On the post: Cable Execs Now Falsely Claiming Cord Cutting Is Slowing Down
Re:
Yeah there will be some irreducible core who never cut the cord: old people who can't deal with change. But nobody under 30 bothers with cable at all, so that tells you all you need to know about cable's future.
On the post: Cable Execs Now Falsely Claiming Cord Cutting Is Slowing Down
Re: Re: Almost enough to garner sympathy. Almost
I'm convinced that these dolts aren't quite as doltish as you'd think. They know damn well that streaming is going to destroy their business but the C-level jerks are all guys in their 50s and 60s. Pretty close to retirement. If they jumped right away into streaming, their decades of experience would become irrelevant.
Their rolodexes of contacts in advertising and distribution become useless, and what they really need is what some kid in Silicon Valley knows about data-driven decision making. Advertising is less important or unimportant and suddenly you need expertise in the global entertainment industry that never mattered to cable. So why wouldn't the dinosaur in the C suite get the boot in favor of the Silicon Valley kid? Nah, better to hunker down and let their company go under just to get closer to golden parachute retirement.
On the post: Cable Execs Now Falsely Claiming Cord Cutting Is Slowing Down
Re:
News is a commodity and how it's going to continue as a viable business really remains to be seen. I'm cynical enough to think that news will largely operate as bias confirmation services. People don't watch Fox News for information, they watch to have their biases confirmed. There are a lot more types of biases that people might want confirmed than just the Fox News variety. There's money in that.
Sports has been artificially supported by cable subscribers that don't watch it, and now that that's ending, the greedy bloat in sports will be deflated some. But I'm sure some streaming solution will emerge. The leagues will have their own exclusive platforms, Disney makes ESPN+ work as a sports streaming destination, or something else happens.
On the post: Cable Execs Now Falsely Claiming Cord Cutting Is Slowing Down
Re:
Cable was never going to be able to compete with streaming. The internet is just more of an efficient platform for reaching the world. Netflix is a "cable" service capable of cheaply offering content to the planet, without even needing the expense of maintaining the infrastructure. There is no such thing as global cable, so you can't ever tap into the same efficiencies of scale. When i realized this years ago, I knew cable (and broadcast) were doomed as less efficient business models.
On the post: Cable Execs Now Falsely Claiming Cord Cutting Is Slowing Down
Re: Re: Starlink will doom them
All Prime is will be doing is offering HBO Max, Disney+ etc at full freight. What could really change the game is offering customized payment schemes that cut across services.
Prime mass-subscribers to HBO Max, Disney+ etc and then offers various plans like "12 seasons per month" of any series of your choice across all the services for a set price. Or they bundle various genres together like a sci fi bundle. Or they institute auto-churn and do what we can all do, except with more effort, namely Netflix is January and Disney+ is February, etc. There are many other customized payment schemes that could be devised rather than the mere two we have now: cheap bundles of exclusive content (Netflix) or expensive targeted pay per view (iTunes).
That kind of meta-service will emerge first from the likes of Amazon, Apple or Google and will involve the immanent losers in the streaming war, like CBS All Access and Peacock. And maybe it's a way Apple avoids being a loser itself? It will be a desperation move to carve out a space while Netflix and Disney+ gets subscribers the old fashioned way, but as the industry matures, it could spread to encompass all the players.
On the post: Cable Execs Now Falsely Claiming Cord Cutting Is Slowing Down
ostrich time
This is beyond pathetic. I saw this trend coming about five years ago, and I'm just some random idiot on the internet who doesn't even make a living in this industry. But all you have to do is see what the leading populations are doing - the young people, the early tech adopter crowd - and extrapolate forward. The older populations die off (and advertisers don't care about them anyway) so what matters is what younger people do. The tech adopter crowd paves the way for the general population. And it's all shaping up exactly as I predicted: both cable and broadcast are cratering, replaced by streaming. Derrr. Why do these CEO idiots be paid millions?
On the post: Too Many Streaming Exclusives Is Already Starting To Piss Users Off
Re: Re:
My local Blockbuster was awful. I never got there fast enough to get anything good. The shelves would be bare and I'd pay $5 to rent some crap I didn't want.
Netflix never had "everything" either. HBO never licensed content to them for starters. Netflix DVD was as close to everything as we ever got. And I still get their DVD service too.
On the post: Too Many Streaming Exclusives Is Already Starting To Piss Users Off
Re: Prisoners
You got it. Nobody is going to license content to help competitors win. They'd rather let pirates help them drive the weaker competitors under so the winners can buy them and then make use of their brands.
Or to make this more concrete: CBSViacom makes Star Trek exclusive to its service. But it's too small so people don't subscribe, they just pirate Star Trek. This accelerates CBSViacom's demise and one of the stronger competitors like Amazon or Apple buy them and then they get to use Star Trek for their own profit.
Pirates help big corporations get bigger. All these corporations think they're the king of the hill or are trying to be, so they don't mind pirates helping cull the herd.
On the post: Too Many Streaming Exclusives Is Already Starting To Piss Users Off
Re:
Oh they know what the game is, namely that consumers are going to balk at subscribing to more than 2 or 3 of these services at a time which means the cutoff bar for success will be very high and the losers who don't clear the bar will be eaten by the winners. This is an existential fight but they do need to fight it out because nobody is going to give up willingly.
Winners: Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+Hulu and HBO Max. Apple will win only if they go on a buying spree and snap up the losers (CBSViacom, the entertainment portion of Sony, Lionsgate, AMC, Discovery) and maybe Netflix too. Apple has money, they just need the will.
On the post: Too Many Streaming Exclusives Is Already Starting To Piss Users Off
Re:
Unplug all electronic devices.
On the post: Too Many Streaming Exclusives Is Already Starting To Piss Users Off
Re: Re: Re: Deregulation
Well that's the thing that would never happen. Nobody in government is going to interfere with corporations to such a degree that they force Disney to start licensing their Star Wars content to Netflix, Amazon and HBO Max or force those platforms to license their own content too.
Instead, if Netflix, Amazon and HBO Max are jealous of how kick-ass The Mandalorian looks, they should develop their own competing shows. Netflix is developing a Western tinged space show with Cowboy Bebop. If Amazon and HBO Max followed suit, we'd get four Western space operas instead of one, why is that a terrible thing?
Actually it is, ha ha. It's the reason there is too much content now but there's no stopping these people. They will continue to go berzerk and flood us with more content than we can deal with. Maybe we need legislation to stop them or at least slow them down.
On the post: Too Many Streaming Exclusives Is Already Starting To Piss Users Off
Re: Re: Deregulation
I'm sure different plaforms would love to host competitors' content. Its the competitors that don't want others getting access to their content.
It's like this. McDonald's would sue the holy heck out of Burger King if Burger King dared imitate and sell Big Macs under that name. So instead, Burger King invents the Whopper - a whole lot like a Big Mac but not named that, and with somewhat different ingredients - and everyone is happy and no one gets sued.
So if competitors are jealous of Disney+ and The Mandalorian, they should feel free to create their own Western-tinged space opera series and in fact, Netflix is doing just that with their live action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop. Same basic genre but different enough that nobody would dream of suing anyone.
On the post: Too Many Streaming Exclusives Is Already Starting To Piss Users Off
Re: Re: Re: Deregulation
I've yet to see a free streaming service that is funding much of anything worth paying for. And I do like cat videos but I also like expensive multi-million-dollar entertainments such as YouTube has never funded.
If the ad-supported business model was going to fund Game of Thrones type content, YouTube would have done it already. They've been in business for 14 years. What's the holdup?
And the attitude of the industry may be depressing but there's nothing that's ever going to change it.
On the post: Too Many Streaming Exclusives Is Already Starting To Piss Users Off
Re: Is there a point to streaming...?
Ads? Just subscribe to ad-free services. Blech, ads.
On the post: Too Many Streaming Exclusives Is Already Starting To Piss Users Off
Re: Re: Re: Compulsory licensing
My government is headed by a buffoon named Trump and that's the government that would need to start ordering Netflix and Disney around. The orders that Trump would give to Netflix and Disney are funny to contemplate but not something I want to see become reality.
On the post: Too Many Streaming Exclusives Is Already Starting To Piss Users Off
Re: Deregulation
The ability of these companies to have exclusives on their content is the reason they are making such a tsunami of stuff now in the first place. If they had to share with others, it would be cat videos all around. They're not going to invest much in that.
On the post: Too Many Streaming Exclusives Is Already Starting To Piss Users Off
Re: Multiple services and Amazon
A few of these services can "win" in tandem. I figure Netflix, Prime, Disney+Hulu and HBO Max are the winners circle. They eat the others. Maybe Apple survives by going on a cannibal spree.
On the post: Too Many Streaming Exclusives Is Already Starting To Piss Users Off
Re: Compulsory licensing
Of all the things the government should work on, getting us easier access to The Mandalorian is not one of them. How about fixing the health care mess first? Oh yeah and climate change.
On the post: Comcast's 'Free' Streaming Box Is Actually $13 After Stupid Fees
There's a fee for being stupid?
Oh right. The stupid fee is the one all Comcast customers pay, by definition.
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