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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

The numbers listed in the article don't actually support the author's argument at all.

> Netflix spent $11.8bn in 2020, Disney is expecting to spend $8-9bn on Disney+ content by 2024, and Amazon is estimated to be spending $7bn this year alone. By contrast, according to the BBC’s most recent annual report, it spent about £980m ($1.3bn) on “programme-related assets and other inventories” in the 2020/21 financial year.

Netflix/Disney/Amazon and the rest are catering to a much larger and more varied user base, and BBC should absolutely be able to compete with ~1/5 the budget for its 67 million residents. A British public broadcaster does not need to make Korean dramas or Bollywood movies or launch $25m/episode blockbuster franchises.

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Netflix (and Amazon) literally list UK produced shows they had no involvement with except for buying the global rights to it after the fact as "exclusive/original content". I assume they do the same for other nation's domestic output too.

BBC have done co-productions with other enterprises since before streaming and have continued to do them with Netflix.

If your model of the future of the BBC is that the license fee, which costs about as much as Netflix, should give you a comparable product - then if Netflix have 10x the budget, the BBC's going to have a tough time competing.

If I were forced to choose between Netflix and BBC's back catalog and current programming for the same price, I'd say that BBC comes out far ahead.

Indeed. Especially as the BBC is kneecapped in what they can have on the iPlayer at any one time. If they could put up their entire back catalogue it would be great.

They should also sell subscriptions to those outside the UK as well, there is enough demand for sure.

Living in the USA, I tried to buy a license during the London Olympics. I was using a proxy so that I could stream the BBC coverage (instead of NBC's drivel). Even though I'm a UK citizen, it was based on residency and totally impossible to do. Ridiculous. Happy to pay the fee (as noted, it's similar to Netflix) so that I could watche the content.

Would that be true in 10 years time when Netflix has been churning out content at its current rate and cost?

I'd be curious what Netflix is going to cost in another ten years. They're intent on aggressively hiking the price of their plans. Their standard plan, which you need to get HD content, is close to $14 now (in both the US and the UK). Another ten years, I'd bet on $22-$25 or so.

Some of this value proposition question will depend on what the BBC is going to do on their pricing. We can be certain what Netflix is going to do.

Netflix is churning out garbage I will never watch. I see no value in an increasingly large garbage pile.

This spending argument is weird because the charm of BBC for an American viewer has always been low-budget production with generally strong stories and characters and clever British dialog/wit/sarcasm set against the English countryside.

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