Netflix Already Facing Hard Times while AT&T, Disney and Comcast Want to Kill it

[snakeeyes]

Even with a prerecorded show and a dvr the commercials are still very annoying. Then again that has been the ticket for free content for a while...

Well my TiVo with Comcast cablecard actually skips commercial breaks. You are alerted that skip is available and then press the skip button.

 

[lovinthehd]

Well my TiVo with Comcast cablecard actually skips commercial breaks. You are alerted that skip is available and then press the skip button.

Sounds nice, it does this well, i.e. never cuts into a program or leaves pieces of commercials?

 

[BMXTRIX]

Ha-ha... Netflix is going to be in serious trouble.

It's just reality. Why sell your content to someone else to resell, when you can just sell it direct yourself and make a ton more money?

This is why ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, and the rest all exist in the first place. To compete with each other and their different products. To prevent the monopoly.

It's completely crap to consumers. It doesn't work well, but it is capitalism at its finest.

Eventually most Netflix content may very well be only what Netflix has created in house.

Then you will pay for CBS All Access, Disney, ABC, and all the rest. You can sit through hours of Discovery Channel's online viewing garbage, or pay them to remove the ads. It's the future we live in.

There is no question in my mind, and there hasn't been for many years, that this is an inevitability.

 

[Darenwh]

Ha-ha... Netflix is going to be in serious trouble.

It's just reality. Why sell your content to someone else to resell, when you can just sell it direct yourself and make a ton more money?

This is why ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, and the rest all exist in the first place. To compete with each other and their different products. To prevent the monopoly.

It's completely crap to consumers. It doesn't work well, but it is capitalism at its finest.

Eventually most Netflix content may very well be only what Netflix has created in house.

Then you will pay for CBS All Access, Disney, ABC, and all the rest. You can sit through hours of Discovery Channel's online viewing garbage, or pay them to remove the ads. It's the future we live in.

There is no question in my mind, and there hasn't been for many years, that this is an inevitability.

You are likely correct. Combine that with the likelyhood that they may soon stop selling physical media and you will have no choice but to pay for every piece of new content you want, and any old content you cannot find the media for. Yes, there will be more pirating via Torrent and other options but they will do all they can to nip those if they can find a way. It all comes down to the green. That's why I have the physical collection that I do. I don't want to have to depend on finding the content online or via streaming if I can help it.

 

[GO-NAD!]

Maybe I'm not watching all the right(?) programs on Netflix, but I'm not getting any sense of over-the-top woke-ness. I'm not much into all the superhero shows, which I get the sense is the main source of complaints. I did watch The Punisher though...didn't really see much/any particular wokeness in that.

I'm not a heavy watcher regardless, but much of what I do watch is the foreign programming. I really hope Netflix survives, but I get the sense that we are going to be right back to a cable-like scenario, which, ironically, was the motivation for dumping cable in the first place.

 

[panteragstk]

Ha-ha... Netflix is going to be in serious trouble.

It's just reality. Why sell your content to someone else to resell, when you can just sell it direct yourself and make a ton more money?

This is why ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, and the rest all exist in the first place. To compete with each other and their different products. To prevent the monopoly.

It's completely crap to consumers. It doesn't work well, but it is capitalism at its finest.

Eventually most Netflix content may very well be only what Netflix has created in house.

Then you will pay for CBS All Access, Disney, ABC, and all the rest. You can sit through hours of Discovery Channel's online viewing garbage, or pay them to remove the ads. It's the future we live in.

There is no question in my mind, and there hasn't been for many years, that this is an inevitability.

What's funny is that I don't actually watch ANY content on Netflix that isn't their original stuff. I used to when I was starting to watch shows I hadn't previously seen, but that was some time ago.

Hulu is the interesting one to me. It has even more deals with content creators than netflix, but at one time it was co-owned by a lot of those big creators. Now, Disney owns all of it. I read yesterday that for $12.99 I can get Hulu, Disney+ (great for my kids) and ESPN+ in a bundle. Hulu without commercials is $11.99 right now. Netflix and Amazon will have a hard time competing with that. So will any other streaming service just because ATT is too stupid to do anything correctly when it comes to this sort of thing and I'm not sure how many people are going to pony up for NBCUniversal. I don't even remember the last NBC shows I watched that I couldn't get for free OTA.

 

[Pogre]

What's funny is that I don't actually watch ANY content on Netflix that isn't their original stuff. I used to when I was starting to watch shows I hadn't previously seen, but that was some time ago.

Hulu is the interesting one to me. It has even more deals with content creators than netflix, but at one time it was co-owned by a lot of those big creators. Now, Disney owns all of it. I read yesterday that for $12.99 I can get Hulu, Disney+ (great for my kids) and ESPN+ in a bundle. Hulu without commercials is $11.99 right now. Netflix and Amazon will have a hard time competing with that. So will any other streaming service just because ATT is too stupid to do anything correctly when it comes to this sort of thing and I'm not sure how many people are going to pony up for NBCUniversal. I don't even remember the last NBC shows I watched that I couldn't get for free OTA.

That becomes very attractive to me with the UFC move to ESPN.

 

[jinjuku]

It's cheaper to acquire and spin up servers and hosting and player software than it is to curate content. So the advantage is with the Studios that have extensive backlog of content and are primarily in the game of producing said content.

 

[Paul Lane]

Becoming a one stop Anime and Japanimation destination could help NF longterm..

 

[panteragstk]

It's cheaper to acquire and spin up servers and hosting and player software than it is to curate content. So the advantage is with the Studios that have extensive backlog of content and are primarily in the game of producing said content.

Hell, they're all probably using AWS anyway, just like Netflix.

 

[wiyosaya]

Ha-ha... Netflix is going to be in serious trouble.

It's just reality. Why sell your content to someone else to resell, when you can just sell it direct yourself and make a ton more money?

This is why ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, and the rest all exist in the first place. To compete with each other and their different products. To prevent the monopoly.

It's completely crap to consumers. It doesn't work well, but it is capitalism at its finest.

Eventually most Netflix content may very well be only what Netflix has created in house.

Then you will pay for CBS All Access, Disney, ABC, and all the rest. You can sit through hours of Discovery Channel's online viewing garbage, or pay them to remove the ads. It's the future we live in.

There is no question in my mind, and there hasn't been for many years, that this is an inevitability.

I doubt Netflix will be in trouble.

For those of us who still have physical media players, BR, UHD-BR, DVD, anything I want to see that is exclusive to any of these new services will almost certainly release on physical media. It is another chance for these services to make a profit, and they will not be able to resist the opportunity since profit is the prime motive for them finally climbing on board the ship "FAD". Waiting, for me, is no problem.

I am a long-time Doctor Who fan, and the past several seasons I have still seen as a result of my local library purchasing the most recent seasons; the price is right, too! I point out, too, that Doctor Who streaming is exclusive to Brit Box in the US. Where ever this topic comes up, I point out that there are other sources like your local library - IF, of course, you still have a physical media player.

There's the cost aspect, too. As a cord cutter, I cut the cord because of $85/mo bill I had from DishNetwork. There is no way that I will subscribe to every service just to have a similar bill. With Netflix and Hulu currently and so much content that I want to watch but just do not have the time to watch, it would make no sense for me to subscribe to even more that I do not have the time to watch.

Netflix has a large amount of great material. As I see it, the are not going away any time soon.

 

[BMXTRIX]

Netflix has a large amount of great material. As I see it, the are not going away any time soon.

Oh no, I don't think Netflix is going away.

I think the key thing you said is here:
"There is no way that I will subscribe to every service just to have a similar bill."

THAT is exactly what I think is going to be required to get the same delivery of content that cable currently offers. Cable is a one stop shop. You get all the channels you want from them and you pay for all those services at once.

There are some who don't need certain things and definitely don't want 90% of the channels they get, but there are tons who want the live sports, the live shows, the very good live quality that now comes from these broadcasts, and other services don't measure up and won't be able to measure up from a single provider. Netflix, especially, is at the whim of so many content providers that their only real option is to create their own content and become an important player because of their original content, not because of their 'content on loan'.

But, then they are competing with a ton of other content creators who will find that they can also charge 10 bucks a month directly to consumers for the content they create. Disney is definitely doing this. CBS ALL Access is putting together a setup with Star Trek original content airing year round.

This just goes down the line until it takes half a dozen online providers along with an over the air antenna and a home made DVR setup to record some live shows and....
Geez, this is really a headache for the average consumer who had one cable bill and got everything they wanted from one place.

No...
Netflix isn't going away, but they are going to have 3rd party content issues in upcoming years that will make them a less attractive option. And that's all they will be in years to come. One option out of many.

 

[Wayde Robson]

We once thought the format war was bad HD DVD vs Blu-ray... but at least you "owned" the disc.

Welcome to the "Platform Wars" for an average of $10 a month (soon to be at a monthly discount for the year)... for unlimited access to 1/3rd of whatever you want to watch on TV.

Well... technically, Sony and Blu-ray were early adopters of the 'platform' model, BD had a level DRM encryption that maintained "ownership" of the content on the disc, which HD DVD didn't have. That's why I always supported HD DVD in that particular war.

Owning a record or tape is such a quaint fossil of the past.

Recurring revenue stream is the way of business in the 2020s... everything is moving in that direction.

How would you feel about monthly $50 for daily access to a fast food restaurants menu (limitations definitely apply)?

It may not exist yet, but it's definitely in the mail.

 

[Pogre]

How would you feel about monthly $50 for daily access to a fast food restaurants menu (limitations definitely apply)?

It may not exist yet, but it's definitely in the mail.

What a bleak future that is...

I think a lot of folks would start learning to cook! That's what I did. It's already too expensive to eat out all the time.

 

[Wayde Robson]

What a bleak future that is...

I think a lot of folks would start learning to cook! That's what I did. It's already too expensive to eat out all the time.

Yeah, it just feels like every business wants its $10 a month nowadays.

 

[JengaHit]

I worked in Hollywood for a veteran indie movie producer for 7 yrs (I'm now retired). I'm also Asian-American. I can tell you it got tiring seeing lead casting lists with the same 25 or so white actors ad nauseum, with any suggestions of a non-white actor shot down immediately. It's hard enough for a struggling white actor to break into this elite group, so you can imagine how even more difficult or impossible it is for a non-white actor. Bruce Lee struggled to break through beyond stereotypes--even after Enter the Dragon. Does that mean every casting decision needs a non-white actor? No. There are period dramas where it would be historically inaccurate to cast, say, an Asian actor as an English aristocrat. But there are plenty of stories where race doesn't fundamentally determine the core of a character. Example: Into the Badlands on AMC. And there are plenty of historical stories where minorities have just been background or servants, and now can be brought to the fore. Example: Warrior on Cinemax, about 19th-cen SF Chinatown around the time of The Chinese Exclusion Act. Bruce Lee developed the idea into a treatment, then pitched it to the networks in the 70's, only to have them reject the idea and then turn around and poach it into Kung Fu, starring a white actor, David Carradine. And needless to say, there are still plenty of movies that are perfectly fine with white leading actors.

But mostly this casting wall hasn't been, at least in the last 30 yrs or so, necessarily because of racial animus per se--though outright racism was definitely there in the 20's through the 70's. Racism still exists to some extent, just not overtly. The wall has existed because a very short list of white actors who drive box office (with Will Smith and Denzel Washington having been the exceptions) determine whether a producer can get financing and distribution. It's perceived financial risk in the producer's eyes. It's been a chicken-and-egg problem.

On the one hand, there's the insistence that there aren't minority actors who would drive box office and thus help a producer obtain financing and distribution. Who would a producer cast? They're not there.
(Note: In the indie film world financing relies on obtaining distribution--the two are entwined. Financing is mostly packaged by pre-selling int'l distribution licensing rights to use as collateral, along with tax breaks, to obtain bank or private-equity financing. So buyers of licensing rights--distributors--determine casting as much as producers, since they're key to financing a movie. And distributors always predicate their willingness to buy on casting they think will drive box office. You wouldn't believe how many times I heard even Asian distributors insist on the predictable white casting. The major US studio/distribution world--the Disneys and Paramount etc.--face similar pressures even if their financing structures are different. And in any case, most studios are only financing tentpole content they own themselves, like Marvel properties, or slates they might acquire from producers who act as work-for-hires under production-finance-distribution deals. The rest they license from producers, which means the indie-financing pressues I describe above come full circle.)

And on the other hand, producers and distributors are unwilling to take a risk developing and marketing a non-white leading actor who might break out and become a star (in the manner of Harrison Ford and Star Wars). So there are no non-white actors who drive box office because producers and distributors haven't even taken risks in grooming or developing them. (As noted above, Will Smith and Denzel Washington have been the exceptions.) They don't know. Chicken and egg.

Now, tv/cable and streaming have changed the game because their revenue models are based on advertising and subscriptions, not box office, which gives them more immunity to the trials of non-traditional casting. They don't have to rely on the whims of distributors ensuring financing. They have more time to test out casting and stories. Which is why you see most of the progress coming from TV/cable and streaming. And most of the creative energy has been brewing there anyway, dating back to HBO and The Sopranos. But that should be changing in movies with the financial success of Crazy Rich Asians. (Warner Bros only distributed, not financed Crazy. A Chinese private-equity fund, China Cultural and Entertainment Fund (CCEF) financed it by buying a stake in the production company, SK Global.) Money talks. Hollywood will always follow profit even if they aren't the first to take risks. I have never worked in a more capitalistic world than in Hollywood--and I worked in technology before Hollywood.

 

[JengaHit]

As for NF, in their start-up years they were able to license content from producers who thought of streaming as a lower-tier revenue stream. Little did they know that streaming would rapidly grow, so then producers and content/rights owners got wise when NF's re-ups came around for negotiation and started demanding much higher licensing fees. NF all of sudden faced rising licensing costs so they switched strategies and started developing their own content. How did they finance a now expected $15 bil in production investment? Bond debt and aggressively expanding international subscribers (notice all the original Latin, French, German, Nordic, and Asian content on NF). Let's hope they can keep revenue flowing to service their $12.3 bil long-term debt. They're now a magnet for creative and executive talent in Hollywood. I'm happy NF streaming (and Amazon) are providing competing distribution and financing alternatives for producers and talent. The worst scenario would be an oligopolic juggernaut centered around the major studios.

 

[baronvonellis]

One thing Netflix has going for it is decades of data on peoples viewership habits. Remember 15 studios rejected Stranger Things, and said it shouldn't be centered around kids. It's one of the most popular original NF shows now. They know what people actually watch, not what critics say people should watch.

I haven't watched any shows from the networks for years, and most of cable TV is garbage. I can't think of a NBC show I'd watch other than the Office. I can buy the DVD's of the Office and own it, I don't have to subscribe to NBC for $10 a month to watch Office reruns.

I used to watch the discovery channel in the glory days of cable, but last I checked it was mostly reality junk tv. They used to have good documentaries, now netflix makes alot of good documentaries.

Netflix makes high quality original content that I will happily pay for. Then I get Amazon since I pay for the free shipping and their video service comes with it. I have a HD antenna where I get 40 free over the air channels in my area for all the networks.

T-mobile offers free Netflix for life as long as you have them as your cell provider. So I have free Netflix now from T-mobile

So I went from $85 a month cable bill to $0 a month. With more content than I have time to ever watch, unless I quit my job lol. I might sign up for Disney + for their Star Wars content and back catalog of movies. Although I think their $6.99 teaser rate will start to creep up in a year or two. A problem with Disney is that they are going to drip out content 1 episode a week just like the networks. You wont be able to binge a season like Netflix. Which seems like they wont have much new content to watch, and they want to get people to stay subscribed and not cancel after they've binged the new Star Wars series.

I'm a fan of classic old movies, I'd pay for something like AMC on demand. That's the only thing that is missing from Netflix, and I'm not sure what other streamers offer a big collection of movies from the 40's-90's such as film noir, Hitcock, westerns ects.
I want a movies streaming channel, Netflix has gotten rid of alot of their old movies that they used to license from the studios.

 

[JengaHit]

One thing Netflix has going for it is decades of data on peoples viewership habits. Remember 15 studios rejected Stranger Things, and said it shouldn't be centered around kids. It's one of the most popular original NF shows now. They know what people actually watch, not what critics say people should watch.

I haven't watched any shows from the networks for years, and most of cable TV is garbage. I can't think of a NBC show I'd watch other than the Office. I can buy the DVD's of the Office and own it, I don't have to subscribe to NBC for $10 a month to watch Office reruns.

I used to watch the discovery channel in the glory days of cable, but last I checked it was mostly reality junk tv. They used to have good documentaries, now netflix makes alot of good documentaries.

Netflix makes high quality original content that I will happily pay for. Then I get Amazon since I pay for the free shipping and their video service comes with it. I have a HD antenna where I get 40 free over the air channels in my area for all the networks.

T-mobile offers free Netflix for life as long as you have them as your cell provider. So I have free Netflix now from T-mobile

So I went from $85 a month cable bill to $0 a month. With more content than I have time to ever watch, unless I quit my job lol. I might sign up for Disney + for their Star Wars content and back catalog of movies. Although I think their $6.99 teaser rate will start to creep up in a year or two. A problem with Disney is that they are going to drip out content 1 episode a week just like the networks. You wont be able to binge a season like Netflix. Which seems like they wont have much new content to watch, and they want to get people to stay subscribed and not cancel after they've binged the new Star Wars series.

I'm a fan of classic old movies, I'd pay for something like AMC on demand. That's the only thing that is missing from Netflix, and I'm not sure what other streamers offer a big collection of movies from the 40's-90's such as film noir, Hitcock, westerns ects.
I want a movies streaming channel, Netflix has gotten rid of alot of their old movies that they used to license from the studios.

There's one argument circulating that NF's Q2 miss in subscriber growth (2.7 vs guidance of 5 mil) is ironically good. It was because of a consumer price revolt against NF price increases, which essentially tells competitors they'll be in the same boat, and also won't have much price flexibilty. Moreover, the argument goes, NF has a huge advantage in global subscriber numbers (over 150 mil).

https://www.fastcompany.com/9037820...its-bad-news-for-disney-hbo-and-everyone-else

We'll see. NF still needs to rebound subscriber growth from Q2's hit, in order to service their $12.3 bil long-term debt. It's also worrisome that they've been negative free cash flow for years (expected $3.5 bil negative free cash flow this year). In other words, they're still running a cash deficit after operating expenses and subtracting capital expenditures. By itself that could be a potentially forward-looking sign that the capital expenditures might payoff with long term growth. But we'll have to see if int'l growth rebounds (60% of NF subscribers are int'l), as for the first time US subscriber growth declined (-130K in Q2). And PWC projects US subscriber growth will peak in 2020. Int'l growth is crucial to NF's financial survival. Hope they rebound.

https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/netflix-subscriber-peak-us-pwc-report-1203234190/

I'm also a fan of classic movies. I've been noticing more classic movies on Amazon Prime, including a lot I had never heard of. On the negative side, I just learned that starting in Oct Comcast is dropping TCM (Turner Classic Movies) from its digital preferred pkg. TCM will only come with the Sports Entertainment pkg, which is an extra $10/mo. I hope that doesn't mean MLB is also dropped from digital preferred and only available with the extra Sports pkg.

 

[markw]

Owning a Roku lets you download thousands of apps, some free, and some with a charge. Free apps are TCM, AMC, SyFy, NBC, ABC, FX and a multitude of other TV/cable channels. Additionally there are free mocie channels like Tubi and Roku. Yes, they come with commercials but so do the OTA and cable channels

Some do offer a "premium" option which will do away with commercials and perhaps some additional content.