Comment by iso1210 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iso1210 | Hacker News Reader

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Netflix should have been spending its money buying legacy studios - Paramount for example and their god-awful 1990s production mentality (region locked trailers - really?), not to mention a massive backlog. £35b, it's a lot, but Netflix is worth 5 times that at least, even after yesterday's crash, let alone what it was worth a year ago.

Disney gets the new landscape. They give early access to tons of youtubers and you can't move on yourtube without bumping into the latest breakdowns, rections etc about an episode of moon knight or a teaser trailer, shows are released globally within hours, and they have a massive back catalogue.

Amazon bought MGM, bringing in things like Stargate and Bond, but it's dabbling, if their video service stops, it doesn't really cause the company to fail. Apple doesn't seem to know where it wants to go, it's not really in the game, but it's not their core competency either.

Netflix had an opportunity to secure their catalogues a couple of years ago, but just threw money at trying to create original content but not really knowing how (and certainly not knowing how to do it efficently)

It's almost that legacy industries actually do know things disruptors don't, and sometimes these things can come back at the disruptors. Like the way episodes of TV series used to be aired, weekly with defined timeslots. We went from that to making whole seasons available at once, and now back to weekly airings without a fixed timeslot for blockbuster series like everything Star Wars or Picard. It's almost like broadcasters had reason to air episodes weekly.

On the other hand the pathetic handling of global release for modern trek (Discovery season 4 being uplled 2 days before air led to a massive backlash, no Prodigy, Paramount are more concerned with differentiating international markets then driving more viewers, there's no attmept to engage with youtube 'influencers')

Paramount etc can make stuff, but they don't get the global media landscape in a way netflix and disney do, and I think similar can be said about other well established media companies.

I don’t think there One True Way to Release New Episodes that’s applicable for 100% of the cases.

Some shows worked better with entire season released at once, some didn’t. Streaming services will probably dabble with both.

For what it's worth, you might be overvaluing the impact of youtubers due to your own filter bubble. I've never watched an influencer breakdown/reaction/etc about a tv show on youtube and correspondingly the algorithm essentially never recommends or suggests such content to me.

I'm sure it's an important channel to reach certain demographics (gen z? I'm not sure who exactly) but most people aren't choosing a streaming service based on youtube reaction videos.

Netflix is doing just fine content wise, go look at the weekly streaming charts and you'll see they dominate the top 10 for tv and do well enough in movies as well. More people are watching more stuff on Netflix than just about any other service, consistently week to week.

Content isn't the problem, they just ran out of people willing to sub, they were always going to reach that limit at some point and when they did their tech unicorn valuations would reset back to something more realistic.

Content quality is the problem, like what happened with cable.

They are selling attention addiction like Facebook without caring about quality recently. Ex: Korean copycat shows and "documentaries", just because both categories tend to rate higher on imdb. Seems like a decision a PM will make, based on metrics to improve profit, not quality - i.e. give users what they want, even if it is bad for them (or the business) in the long term.

Don't forget also their strategy of buying 1st season hits then creating new seasons regardless of the story or quality just to capitalize on "safe bets" or the "money cow" loyalty/fan phenomenon. Ex: The Crown, Money Heist, Designated Survivor, etc.

PS: Disney is doing the same, but with brands instead.

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