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Comment by no_wizard | Hacker News Reader

I'm gonna attempt to break this down:

- Netflix has 5-6 Billion USD free cash flow, and because they got what debt they do have under favorable terms, they are positioned to retain most of that free cash flow

- Disney, Comcast (Peacock), CBS/Viacom and other media corporations are saddled with debt, and are all losing money on their own independent streaming businesses. Likely untenable in their shareholder model

- Therefore, Netflix needs to do what it can to retain / attract subscribers, but essentially can wait until the other services have to give up due to cost

In a nutshell, Netflix is poised to play more long game, due to cost structures of their competitors.

so fair, sounds good, but it assumes the boards / leadership of these companies won't also play a long game, seeing some sort of profitability horizon is they cannibalize their existing businesses for sticky services (like streaming). I could see Disney doing this, to some extent, with their cable TV channels and movies. I'm less bullish on Comcast/NBC, CBS/Viacom or really any other media company being able to do this, simply because they don't have the "staying power" Disney does.

This also fails to account for the strength of HBO Max (very strong sub numbers)

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What I don't understand is how e.g. Disney+ is losing so much money. It's Disney's content, has an enormous userbase, and somehow is bleeding billions?

> It’s Disney’s content

That is partly the problem. You spend hundreds of millions to make blockbuster movies and then release it on Disney+ in a few months for free (or sometimes directly). That costs money. Add to that over reliance on only Disney content creates two problems:

1. You can’t have enough new content every month, subscribers therefore don’t keep the subscription year round.

2. You have to pay money to create content. Vs the ability to buy content for cheap or add it for a few months.

On top of that, Disney overseas also includes live sports in their packages which can get expensive.

On top of the... 'opportunity cost' of not licensing out content that otherwise would have went to Netflix, ABC, whoever.

If previously Disney made Daredevil and 'sold' it to Netflix for $1m (hypothetically), but now you're holding that back to stream yourself, you've got to account for that missing $1m somehow.

No you don't. You don't normally include opportunity cost on your balance sheet.

Depending on how org and financials are structured Disney+ may need to purchase Daredevil from the other part of Disney for $1m, which is recognising that opportunity cost.

These deals can be complex. Consider if you were going to make a movie, and were shopping it around to studios.

If Studio A was like "we'll give you a 10% cut of whatever we then license it for for streaming" and Disney was like "we're gonna stream it on our own platform for free, sorry" that's a negotiation problem for Disney. So selling internally at market rate is a good thing for relationships with external creators and partners.

It seems like it’d be infinitely more fair to say “should we stream it in house, here is how royalties will be calculated.”

yes and no. The problem is if last year they earned $1m from it by it being on Netflix. Moving it to their own streaming platform will look like a $1m less revenue.

You don't, however Disney was making this money before as they were directly licensing it to these services, so it's not just opportunity cost, but actual lost revenue when compared to previous years.

Not to be pedantic (ok a little bit), but you don't normally include any costs on your balance sheet, but you might want to include them on your income statement.

That’s not entirely true. Disney+ is partially losing money because of “transfer payments”. Disney+ has to “pay” Disney studios the market rate for the right to stream a movie. Of course the money mostly flows up to Disney. But from an accounting standpoint, Disney+ can’t say it’s profitable by getting movies for free from Disney studios and cause Disney studios to lose potential profits they could have made elsewhere.

There are also revenue share agreements that are involved with actors. That are still taken into accounts

> You can’t have enough new content every month, subscribers therefore don’t keep the subscription year round

That’s not strictly true either for kids content. You can keep recycling content to kids for years and kids will rewatch the same thing.

Disney has been making money off the same animated content for over half a century. To a first approximation, no one cares about Netflix’s back catalog.

There’s no where else to say this, but for wholesome kids entertainment, Bluey is hard to beat. Every 10 minute episode is basically a guide on how to play. Kids love it. Parents relearn how to play. It’s so charming and ridiculous. Totally worth the money.

Fair warning there is a Bluey episode where the kids push their father down steps. A day after watching one of my wards pushed someone down the steps :/

I have some beef with how Bluey depicts the parents as stooges to be toyed with and manipulated as the kids see fit, with little pushback from the parents. In the end there's generally some kind of lesson to be learned, but the parents go along with pretty much anything the kids propose.

Mild disrespect for authority is an Australian cultural trait.

Is Bluey this generations’s Caillou?

> You can keep recycling content to kids for years and kids will rewatch the same thing.

Furthermore, kids will complain if they lose access to frozen etc so disney+ has an exit cost. Like the admiral said, it's a trap!

> To a first approximation, no one cares about Netflix’s back catalog.

People would care more, if Netflix would stop cancelling everything. I'm not sure they realize how much they're killing their own backcatalog revenue by making everything a one/two season max.

Octonauts would like to have a word

Creature Report, Creature Report. Creature Report!

Wonderpets maybe also (not on Netflix right now, but it used to be). And TimmyTime. And Adventure Time.

sound the Octo-Alert!

Ok, totally off topic, but am I the only one that hears “Explore, Rescue, Rrotect” rather than “Protect” in the intro?

See here at 0:40ish: https://youtu.be/mR_Ui_3Iz2o

If I can go on another tangent I would just like to recommend Octonauts. It is charming, funny and clever show. My 5 year old daughter loves it and she would like to have a Tweak costume.

I can't stand many kid shows, but this one even I can love. It is incredible for me how Octonauts are not pretentious, like so many "science!" shows for kids are.

I would recommend it for children also. My kids have learned a decent amount from having watched it, unlike many other shows without any real educational content.

I also hear this, sounds very faint, a little bit clearer with headphones.

> That’s not strictly true either for kids content. You can keep recycling content to kids for years and kids will rewatch the same thing.

I'm looking at you Netflix and your lack of new seasons of Octonauts and Cat in the Hat :-)

A lot of it also, is just not that good.

And they keep pulling stuff down or putting stuff up. I don't need artificial scarcity, I want access, just as I want to listen to a song on Spotify when I really want to hear it without being told its no longer available with my subscription. I'm subscribing to the Disney library and most of the time half of it is unavailable.

Are they still doing “The Vault” over on Disney+?

>You can’t have enough new content every month, subscribers therefore don’t keep the subscription year round.

I suspect that, in addition to ad-supported tiers, we'll see more annual subscriptions or at least subscriptions where annual is sufficiently cheaper on a monthly basis that it's essentially an offer a lot of people can't refuse.

> I suspect that, in addition to ad-supported tiers, we'll see more annual subscriptions or at least subscriptions where annual is sufficiently cheaper on a monthly basis that it's essentially an offer a lot of people can't refuse.

I think they're already experimenting with things like that. I signed up for an annual subscription when Disney+ launched (I knew my wife and kid would love it) and when it came time to renew they offered a "Disney Drop Box" as a reward for signing up for another year. The box was a themed selection of Disney merchandise that they claimed was valued at ~$150, which is probably a stretch, but my kid loved it.

Isn't this basically what amazon does via prime membership? Apples and oranges I guess because it isn't "just" streaming, but does anyone pay this monthly?

along with maybe a broader return to serialization and longer seasons again - but this only really is valuable for shows that capture the zeitgeist, otherwise most people will just wait until the season ends and subscribe for a month to binge and move on.

"1. You can’t have enough new content every month, subscribers therefore don’t keep the subscription year round."

For our household, this is true of all streaming services. We rotate them, or subscribe for short stretches. For example, I got Paramount+ for a couple of months, watched all of the Star Trek content, and then cancelled. Amazon Prime is the exception (because free(-ish) shipping.)

I wonder to what extent the big streaming services are aware of this phenomenon and how they hope to mitigate it.

The services definitely know about this and to a large extent they build it into their model. Every subscription service has a churn model being accounted for.

The services also know that the only thing they can do about this is release enough new content to keep users engaged, or bundle the subscription with other ones.

Or rotate what parts of the library are available each month.

Or each day! And we are back to where we started.

Hear me out: what if we had like...an hour block where EVERYONE streamed one of the same 15-20 shows at the same time?

Obviously, we'd also need to have a few random catch-up blocks for older shows, maybe in the mid-afternoon. Perhaps we could even do it over the air wirelessly, with no ISPs involved.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto_TV

Of all the competitors to Netflix, Pluto tv (owned by Paramount) is the most interesting.

Precisely because they built, and continue to optimize, their product around profit:user.

If they can get favorable licensing deals by broadcasting as linear programming... they do it.

If they can get good deals around on demand... they do it.

The end result seems to be that they have many more options to minimizing cost of licensing content, and therefore maximizing the amount of content they can offer a user, versus a pure-play on demand provider.

If Netflix added linear programming "channels", I'd buy their stock tomorrow.

Or offer discounted annual subs. Or partner with credit card companies for statement credits. Lots of ways to fight churn.

> I wonder to what extent the big streaming services are aware of this phenomenon and how they hope to mitigate it.

I suspect that not many people do this.

It it becomes a problem, they can always bring back the old weekly episode model.

Since I became a parent, waiting for weekly episodes to completely release and then subscribing has become immensely favorable since it turns out I can easily live without being a part of the internet discussion of whatever.

They don't even list all their old content. For example the old Donald duck cartoons, there seem to only be about 15 or so streaming. The rest are not available. Why?

I don't know about Donald Duck cartoons in particular, but I think a lot of those old cartoons are difficult to find because they contain content that the corporation fears might offend somebody. Racist (or arguably so) ethnic caricatures, extreme cartoon violence, that sort of thing.

For instance, the original version of Disney's The Three Little Pigs has the wolf disguising himself as a stereotypical Jewish merchant.

Old cartoons have been whittled down like this for decades. In 1999, Cartoon Network stopped airing anything with Speedy Gonzales because they decided he was an offensive ethnic stereotype. They ended up reversing course when they discovered that Hispanic audiences by and large liked the character.

So, pay someone with good sensitivities to watch the cartoons and decide based on notes. How expensive can that be ?

Or, integrate a feedback system and take down complained-about cartoons quickly. That's probably better since sensitivities change and some perfectly fine items today might be off-limits tomorrow.

Doing nothing is not a great option, even if it's the easiest to implement.

> So, pay someone with good sensitivities to watch the cartoons and decide based on notes.

Maybe they did, and that's why the cartoons aren't available? If you have to cut X% of a show for content, maybe they make the call to cut the show entirely and pretend it doesn't exist, just so they don't have to answer awkward questions about why so much of the show is missing.

In sales there’s a concept where you don’t just sell against competitors, you sell against doing nothing.

What’s the convincing reason for Disney to not simply do nothing? Sell me on Disney digitizing and releasing old cartoons with the salary of at least one person versus doing absolutely nothing.

You also have to sell me on that employee working on the Donald Duck smoking cigars and speaking in a Mid-Atlantic accent archive project versus working on something else. Why is that employee not instead working on The Avengers Versus Guardians of the Galaxy 2: Hulk We Groot Again!”

The sell (though they seem to be avoiding this particular avenue) is that they have become the owners of a LOT of cultural cornerstones and can leverage that content to create something Netflix cannot:

A complete multi-generational back-catalog that is always available to stream.

Netflix’s irrevocable back-catalog can only go as far back as their first Netflix original. Everything else is licensed.

In a romantic sense the idea that a multi-generational back catalog being a profitable pursuit might feel right, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to a marketable product.

Netflix hasn’t needed much of a back catalog to out-earn the competition.

The truth is that back catalogs have the potential to be basically worthless except for a select few “best of the best” classics.

The majority of Disney back catalog content is most certainly not at the level of Snow White or Cinderella. I think about many of their package (anthology) films as a great example of near-unwatchable garbage that only has non-profit historical value.

Media companies quite literally let their back catalogs rot (like the neglect and disinvestment that led to the Universal masters fire of 20008).

While I think your points are valid, I also think that simply making “trusted archive” part of their brand is enough to justify the cost of employees watching through everything and tagging offensive content.

I understand that fear and that is probably the reason, but why not just put a warning at the beginning and not post it on the kids profile?

Actually I’m personally ok with 1-2 really good series (e.g. Andor) a year. I think the yearly price tag is reasonable for that.

I have to admit though that the rest of the year is used up by the kids watching cartoons on D+

What I don't understand about the movie business is the cost of making them. The most important ingredient to the success of a movie is the plot. We've all seen low budget movies that made lots of money - because of the plot. Casablanca, Psycho, Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, Primer, ...

Star Trek TOS was a very low budget affair, and produced excellent results, because they hired the best scifi writers. When they threw money at the Star Trek movies, they were all terrible.

It's the plot that matters. Nothing else.

The issue is making money. There are lots of low budget movies with good plots that don’t make money (or not a lot of it). While at the same time, they can make the 5th sequel to some shitty comic book video and almost guarantee a few hundred million in profits. Of course movies can tank, but generally they are not stupid and the accounts have it figured out.

If you're going to spent $100 million on a movie, why settle for a boring plot and pedestrian dialog?

I watched the La Brea show for a while. Lots of expensive special effects. But the dialog was just pablum. The characters each talked like they were the same person - using the same words and phrases. They behaved the same, too.

Because bad/simple dialog is way easier for the over 50% of the modern box office that isn’t the US. CGI explosions don’t need to be dubbed/subtitles in 20 or 30 different languages

Because it makes money anyway and getting actually good people would cost more nd take longer.

I quit watching it, mainly because of the execrable dialog. When you want all the main characters to be eaten by a gru, something is wrong with the writing.

I expect the cost of a good writer is a pittance compared with the cost of the production.

> The most important ingredient to the success of a movie is the plot.

Provably false by all the bad sequels which nonetheless made more money than the original¹. If plot were that crucial, movies would consist of a person sitting down reading a book, à la The Invention of Lying². Money matters to commercial success of a film above anything else.

¹ https://www.vox.com/2016/7/1/12070048/resurgence-independenc...

² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invention_of_Lying

The Invention of Lying makes me sad. I just showed it to someone last week[1]. Great premise, the first half is genuinely funny and then it throws out the whole vibe and turns in to a very cliché critique of religion.

[1] I actually only showed them the first part so we could walk away enjoying it

In what universe was Casablanca low budget? Inflation adjusted it was over $30 million dollars.

All substance and no style can work, as your examples prove. But it's also possible to find examples of successful movies which were all style, no substance. For instance the first Avatar (I haven't seen the recent sequel.)

Yeah, well, I saw the first Avatar, too. It was completely boring. Didn't bother with the sequel.

Tbh I agree, but it was certainly a commercial success.

nah, you can't tell me that the transformers movies have plot and they raked in the money!

Disney+ isn't free though...

I think the economics of it is basically like, Disney spends so much on creating content that Disney+ just doesn't bring in enough money to cover cost, because users get a subscription to binge / burn thru several things in a single month and then cancel their subscription.

> users get a subscription to binge / burn thru several things in a single month and then cancel their subscription

Surprisingly similar to the old days of bugging my parents for the Disney channel (of course, didn't have on-demand selection back then).

> You can’t have enough new content every month, subscribers therefore don’t keep the subscription year round.

Didn't Disney's CEO talk about getting to the point of having a movie release a day or something like that late last year? The quality might be questionable at that rate.

In theories those movies should make most of their money back in the movies. Otherwise the finances don't work out.

Content is expensive to produce. Disney+ is not just a streaming platform for existing Disney content, rather, Disney produce content for it. Likewise, Netflix spends most of its money on content, operating the actual platform is comparatively cheap.

Yeah, D+ is churning out an enormous volume of what would be considered prestige content at other services. All the Star Wars and Marvel shows are star-studded and larded with top-tier visual effects. And some of them aren't really getting a lot of viewers from what the rumors say.

TBH this more or less describes the problem at least for me. I'm like 3 Star Wars series behind. Catching up at this point feels more like a chore than entertainment. Forget Marvel.

I agree with this and would add (perhaps partially and naively in the hopes of some Disney executive seeing this) that I feel very little excitement at the idea of watching any more super hero / jedi movies anymore.

Somehow the branding has become severely distorted, so now these movies make me feel like the studio sees me as a barrier between them and my money.

If Disney can once again make me feel like they're producing content because it's what they love to do, and because they love how we enjoy it, then I'll go back to giving them my money.

The "Mickey Mouse shit machine" (to quote Rick and Morty) never loved to produce content. They love to make money with endless sequels.

Marvel seems like it'd be even worse since A) the storylines all intertwine, so you feel like you have "homework" to watch before seeing the latest one, and B) they're all pretty much superhero movies.

With Star Wars, creators can ignore the tired Skywalker storyline, plus there's no genre expectations tying creators down (IMO sci-fi is not a genre so much as a meta-genre or motif). At least in theory--they've been pretty reluctant to spread their wings until recently.

> I'm like 3 Star Wars series behind. Catching up at this point feels more like a chore than entertainment.

Here let me get you caught up. Blue laser sword is good, red laser sword is bad.

Is green laser sword ecofriendly and organic?

They are marketed as an ecofriendly alternative but that is just greenwashing by the kyber crystal mining industry.

here's some advice, skip everything else, just watch Andor, it's fantastic, best Star Wars since Empire. Other stuff has been hit or miss.

My gosh, I thought Andor was just a horrific bore. I literally couldn't stay awake for it. It felt like about four episodes worth of story stretched out to 12 episodes. I feel like with all the glowing reviews, people are watching it through the lens of being Star Wars universe fans, and not judging it objectively against other content.

I did enjoy the Mandalorian series because at least it had the comic relief of Grogu, if the rest was a bit of a slog.

That's a surprising take considering how little it intersects with the rest of the SW universe. There's no Jedis, no lightsabers maybe one brief space battle and barely any direct overlap with the films. You could come in cold without having seen anything else and still enjoy it. I thought it was outstanding, especially the pacing and suspense of the early episodes. The second half is a lot more action-packed and squeezes in both an epic heist and an emotional jailbreak sequence.

I thought the heist was kind of silly though; the whole strategy was just go in and strong-arm the guards, which is kind of lazy. A more clever "Star Wars-y" approach might have been to create some kind of subterfuge such that they could simply walk in and take the credits without even a challenge.

As far as the jailbreak, I had trouble getting emotionally invested in the outcome, as I found Diego Luna's character to be one-dimensional. Again, the approach was simply shoot your way out.

Agree but it had typical movie tropes; a bank heist, the anti-hero, a prison break, etc.

Andor reinvented the spy thriller in the Star Wars universe.

Mandalorian reinvented the Western in the Star Wars universe.

Both are superb. The other Star Wars series are not.

In general, over the last decade+ the more peripheral Star Wars content is to the central storyline, the better it is.

We got both a heist, and a prison break from Andor.

The Mandalorian is Western + Ronin / Samurai.

And yes, they're both great.

Half the season is an amazing heist story, the other half an amazing prison break story.

It was truly excellent. For a complete surprise, do not watch Rogue One first.

Star Wars: Visions is good if you like anime.

That's always been an issue with shared universes. I remember trying to follow X-Men in the 90s. You couldn't just read X-men, you had to read Gambit, Wolverine, &c.

Or even just a TV series you didn't watch at the time. For a traditional 1 hour drama on TV, that could be 7 seasons times 20 hours per year even absent any spinoffs. I'm unlikely to catch up on 140 hours of past content.

Add to that the fact that Disney productions feel very formulaic and redundant, and you know you're not really missing anything. Just same ingredients stirred in a different bowl each time.

>All the Star Wars and Marvel shows are star-studded and larded with top-tier visual effects.

I'm just going to throw this out there. What if these shows just aren't that good?

Also if you’re not into superheroes and Star Wars, despite it being Disney there’s not a ton there.

Even if you are, there's the chance that the glut of the content coming out causes fatigue. I used to really look forward to new Star Wars things because it didn't come out super frequently (a new trilogy of movies every few decades, a TV show here and there), but it was enjoyable. Then they started coming out with a new movie and multiple TV shows year after year, and it just wasn't good enough to justify going out of my way to consume all of it. Marvel stuff seems the same way; I'd generally go to the movies maybe once or twice a year, so when there are half a dozen of them coming out for a single franchise within a year or two, it feels more like work than entertainment to keep up with it all. At this point, I'm not sure I'll _ever_ go to see a Star Wars movie in a theater again, which is extraordinary since even 5 or 6 years ago that would have seemed ludicrous to me.

Totally.. Disney has completely missed the fact that a big part of the pent up love of some of these franchises had to do with people having to wait their entire childhood for a new release. I went to ROTJ for my 7th birthday party. There was no more new Star Wars content till I was 22!

Now there is so much you need to pay attention or you'll miss it. People get sick of drinking out of a firehose.

I knew I was done with Star Wars movies when I caught myself looking at my watch about a half hour in.

Marvel released 4 movies and 3 series in 2022. Plus a second season of an existing one and a holiday special.

There were four Star Wars series.

That's too much content.

Two movies a year that Marvel started with was perfect. It gave you tome to unwind, and get hungry for more.

Superhero movies are like Westerns in the fifties. It’s a just a weird genre that’s having a moment.

I’d say it’s a mixed track record, and that risk of disappointment is enough to deter customets from content they might actually like.

You don‘t need a “what if” for that. ;)

> What if these shows just aren't that good?

What if they aren't that good in a very calculated, lowest-common-denominator way?

Any really big $$ production has to have really broad appeal to succeed. Maybe the safest way to do that is just to target some minimum threshold for ticket buying on a rainy thursday.

Fwiw too late too edit but I meant that in a technical, not judgemental way - and I’m not suggesting that being popular implies not being good.

That's why it's so surprising imo. Disney+ has a very wide and deep catalog of pre-existing IP, and I would have imagined that most subscribers care more about that than any future original production. So it's weird to see them invest so much in new content, more so than competitors that have a much weaker, smaller catalog. Especially when the content is made exclusively for Disney+.

But I'm almost certainly completely wrong, and I'm sure they have tons of data justifying their investment in new content. I guess I'm biaised since I pay for Disney+ so that my little sister can use it, and original shows weren't important to my decision to subscribe at all.

Think it's a bit of a double edge sword. Disney+ is all Disney IP which is great for those that like it. But if you're not into Marvel or Star Wars or the kids catalogue there's not a lot there.

Yeah, this is my family. We don't have kids, but we probably wouldn't have D+ if it didn't come bundled with our Verizon bill. I don't know how everyone else is managing, but I'm suuuuuuuper burned out on superhero and star wars movies. It really feels like Disney in particular but Hollywood more generally need to branch out more and not rely so much on stamping out franchise films--they're good for an occasional flick, but there needs to be more substance on offer (if the market doesn't already agree with me on this, I suspect they will in time).

...we probably wouldn't have D+ if it didn't come bundled with our Verizon bill.

This feels like it should be illegal. You're certainly paying for D+, and it's not as though Verizon competes in a free market.

Eh, I don't really have a problem with it. I'd pay Verizon's rate even if they didn't offer D+ because the network is just so much better than the competition (I have no loyalty to Verizon; I've used AT&T, T-mobile, and US Cellular and they're worse by a considerable margin in my experience traveling around the country).

At least by US standards, cellular service is about as free a market for a utility as we have.

If you need to be on Verizon's network, you could go to Visible or another MVNO. If not, there's ATT and T-Mo and all of their MVNOs as well.

I could watch The Godfather, Goodfellas, Patton, The Shining, Barton Fink and Millers Crossing a million times without getting tired of them and if I’m just flipping channels will always stop to watch if one of them is on.

But I don’t think I’ve ever streamed any of them other than maybe to show a friend who hadn’t seen them.

Don’t know why that is, but it’s weirdly true.

Theory: When you come across a movie you love on TV, it's already in the "good bits".

Where as on streaming you have find it, sit through 2 or 3 studio logos, and then 5-15 minutes of exposition that even in most good movies isn't that good.

Disney+ is also very disappointing on that back catalog. There are Disney cartoons that I watched as a kid and would love to show to my kids. I can find them on YouTube, apparently badly copied from VHS tapes. I can't find them on Disney+, or only find a "modern" remake that's outright cringy :/

I mean their best bet seems to be to license it out to other companies but that would defeat the purpose of having D+ in the first place.

Seems they've backed themselves into a corner

Marketing. I also suspect that alot of Disney's most core userbase don't make up enough volume to make this profitable.

I consider myself an ardent Star Wars & Marvel fan and I just couldn't keep up anymore, so I axed Disney+.

Netflix still drops enough documentaries that I keep it around.

Yeah I think there’s a big Marvel and Star Wars fatigue factor that isn’t talked about enough. Only the hardest of the hardcore fans can keep up with all that stuff. Regular people and casual fans pretty much only see the big blockbuster movies and maybe watch the Mandalorian to see what all the baby Yoda memes are all about.

I think you underestimate how much they hand out Disney+. For example, Verizon has a deal with Disney to give out free Disney+ with many plans. Comcast, I think, was also offering me free Disney+ access. This must eat into margins on some level while keeping the subscriber number up - there's no way that Verizon/Comcast are paying full price for that free subscription (in most cases, it's only a year free).

Contrast that with HBO Max that has never had a sale of any kind except for a single free trial week.

I also think that people underestimate the cost of serving streaming entertainment. It's very compute- and data-intensive. If you architect your systems badly, which I assume Disney did, you will be paying a LOT of money for this service.

FWIW I used to get HBO Max free with my AT&T phone plan, so they have at one point given it “for free.”

And I think you could be right about D+ architecture, they went from zero to a streaming service very quickly.

> they went from zero to a streaming service very quickly

Disney basically bought MLB's streaming service and used that for Disney Plus.

Is it possible that Disney (Walt Disney Co) makes more money by providing its content via Disney+ rather than in theatres/via other streaming platforms? So while Disney+ itself might be losing money, Disney as a whole is benefiting.

Disney+ doesn't just get all its content "for free" even though Disney owns it all.

A company as big as Disney has to be able to look at its different subsidiaries and analyse how they're performing individually. So maybe Walt Disney Animation Studio spends money making movies and earns money selling the rights to those movies, and so Disney+ gets exclusive access to streaming rights, but it still has to pay for them.

I can watch Disney shows for a month, cancel for 4 months, and then come back and maybe have enough content for another month. We're talking one or two movies and a TV show. It's simply not enough.

Disney+ is also a very specific fan-oriented service. Don't like Star Wars or comic books? Not a child? Good luck finding something worth watching that isn't a documentary.

I don't know any detail on Disney's debt, but worth noting that a lot of "Disney's content" is stuff they just bought. E.g. they bought ESPN, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, etc. These are massive multi-billion purchases. Breaking even on the content purchases is hard work.

Disney's content library only appeals to very specific demographics. Mostly just kids and the Avengers/Star Wars crowd. Netflix has something for literally everyone.

Disney has a lot of adult content as well (via subsidiaries), but as far as I know they have pushed most of this to Hulu.

But yes, as a guy in his 30s, Disney+ provides nothing compelling to me. I do pay for Hulu though

> Netflix has something [mediocre, that will be cancelled after the first season] for literally everyone.

FTFY.

A lot of the Netflix one or two season shows got cancelled when they were finally finding their legs too.

I don't know if it's the same in the states, but here in Canada we get Stars with it as well, which is a huge bunch of Fox stuff, including It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and American Horror Story, so it's a little more varied than you're making it out to be.

I have a pet theory, many families use D+ as a second streaming service mostly for the family content. Because of this there's no real concern about "profile contamination". So multiple profiles aren't needed for individuals who live in the same household. The profiles end up being used to share the account with other households.

A grandparents single account is used in the households of all their grandchildren.

> It's Disney's content

I have a feeling it might be that they don't have enough established TV shows. But this is the problem of pretty much everyone but Netflix, and this will most likely change in the next 2-3 years.

Remember that profit is basically just a made up number in accounting. The "profit" or "loss" made by one business unit within a group even more so.

It's extremely cheap.

Good summary. Couple notes/IMOs...

HBO Max is great, but it's tied to a terrible management/company anchor. Rumor is now they are going to drop the trusted HBO brand smh.

Netflix is well positioned, but a player like Disney is also setup to acquire other streamers as they fall over from cost structure issues. I think we're about to see mass consolidation.

Finally, I'm kind of sad that I think the content 'golden era' is likely coming to a close. Cheap money and the fighting for subs led to more money being spent on content relative to what subs paid than at any other point in history. If nothing new was ever made again, I think the list my wife and I already have to watch is longer than time we have left living.

On the content of HBO Max:

Its been very hit or miss for me with HBO Max originals. HBO (they do brand them differently) originals are still stellar, for the most part.

If the new Velma show is any indicator of what HBO Max wants to do as run of the mill content though, I'm wondering how long it'll hold up as a premium streaming service.

Warner didn't even unlock their entire backlog of Looney Toons cartoons on their own streaming service, which would bolster its brand and make it more sticky

Agree. Sticking a bunch of questionable content under the HBO brand (which Max is certainly piggy-backing on) is more proof of the incompetent management.

Even though I benefit, I think it was also dumb for them to give away HBO to any AT&T subscribers (maybe internet only?). HBO was something I used to pay for.

FWIW my understanding is that WB withholding the Looney Tunes backlog is entirely due to the fact that there's a lot of problematic (e.g. racist, sexist) material in there that they're understandably worried about. I completely agree with you otherwise.

Disney+ got around this problem by just adding disclaimers to the content. They did this for all their questionable content, and if people reported it (IE they missed something) they were quick to add it.

It seems Disney+ isn't scarred by this at all (it definitely doesn't dominate the public conversation around it), so perhaps there is a lead in here?

Sort of. Disney as a company still tries extremely hard to pretend Song of the South never existed.

Unless you go to Disneyland and ride the ride. Although it is called Splash Mountain, it is 100% Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox and Brer Bear.

Not for long:

"In June 2020, it was announced that the U.S. versions of the ride would be receiving a new theme based on Disney's 2009 film The Princess and the Frog.[2][3] The new ride, which will be titled Tiana's Bayou Adventure, is scheduled to open at Disneyland and Magic Kingdom in late 2024"

There is racist content made by Disney that is not available on Disney+.

The stuff that WB removed from HBO Max is more comparable to Song of the South (which is completely unavailable) than to Dumbo (which has disclaimers).

According to Wikipedia, Disney+ has the edited 1948 version of The Three Little Pigs, but not the original 1933 version with a disclaimer.

This would hold more water if they weren't also trying to vault or bury a bunch of their other animated content, and sell off their back catalog for easy money.

> HBO Max is great, but it's tied to a terrible management/company anchor. Rumor is now they are going to drop the trusted HBO brand smh.

The Kool-Aid right now seems to be WBD is pure evil but from my perspective they're making smart and necessary moves precisely to avoid what the OP article is predicting.

And say what you will about Discovery, their frugality or their content, but at least they're a media company. I will still take that any day over a telco, especially AT&T who has done the most "evil" historically of any telco.

It's quite funny to see so many people donning rose-tinted glasses for the short-lived AT&T era. As I remember it at the time, you had near-weekly articles lambasting AT&T higher-ups as being out-of-touch baffoons. A revolving door of executives. Existential dread over resolving debt. (Sound familiar?) Pretty much the only consumer goodwill came from Project Popcorn, and that made Jason Kilar persona non grata in Hollywood.

You can't please everyone, least of all when Wall Street gets involved. I think WBD will be fine, they traded under $10 last week which is insane to me considering their assets and what I believe their trajectory to be in 3-5 years' time. And people like DC and Cartoon Network. People like Euphoria and The White Lotus. And people seem to really like trashy reality shows. HBO Max will be fine.

PS- On the rumored topic of HBO Max changing its name to just "Max," it's a good call. Tying the HBO name to a service which is only 50% HBO at best did not make sense at the time and still doesn't make sense today. "HBO" and "Home Box Office" mean nothing internationally, either. Save the "trusted HBO name" for the prestige content which actually deserves it.

At this point, I think HBO Max has become known enough that just calling it "Max" won't cause tidal waves of confusion, and will correct their original naming mistake for the service. Plus, it's cleaner[1]. Yes please.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEgk2v6KntY

HBO max doesn't even have every HBO show, they dropped west world from the platform.

This decision would be enough to cancel my HBO subscription, but apparently it's bundled into our cable package so I don't directly pay for it anyway.

HBO has broken the core contract of branded services (i.e. you get access to everything they make), making the value of a subscription much more difficult to understand. I can go back and watch 7 seasons of Arli$$ from 1996, but not the West World episodes released last year?

I will say I am curious how they plan to market a service where you can't use recent hits in your advertising, because they are no longer available...

A lot of shows were pre-contracted elsewhere, so companies that moved into streaming have to wait for the rights to revert.

and Minx and Raised by Wolves.

Disney is currently suffering under a load of debt from their Fox acquisition. I'm not sure going on a spending spree is in their favor.

With Netflix's low debt load and free cash flow, they should actually be in a better position for buying up competitors.

No one is going on a spending spree right now. But, if someone asked me after consolidation who would be the last ones standing, it would be Netflix and Disney.

Well, and Amazon--if only because Amazon can probably ratchet down content spend while Amazon Prime stays attractive for other reasons.

I agree with you 100% on that. I just disagree that Disney is well positioned to take part in consolidation. They might be able to pull off some content licensing like Netflix used to do. But right now, the only thing holding Disney afloat is the parks. And they've certainly upset some fans to make that statement true.

Disney also will probably make more money on its four biggest movie releases this year than Netflix makes in all.

Avatar 2- a movie that came from its Fox acquisition has already made over $2 Billion

Tbf avatar 2 was also extremely expensive, its breakeven point was reported to be in the 2 billion ball park (https://time.com/6241639/avatar-2-costs-box-office/)

Industry experts (including insiders at Disney) note that breakeven was approximately 1.5 billion (the 2 billion came from Cameron), accounting for marketing expenses, the theaters' share of ticket sales, and the fact that the bloated number includes the entire filming costs for Avatar 3 and a quarter of Avatar 4.

So Avatar 2 has earned Disney a profit of at least $250m and it still has several more weeks without any competition. And Avatar 3 will have a far lower break-even point.

Even so, it’s going to break even and make a slight profit before it ever hits streaming.

You can’t say the same about Netflix. Netflix is completely dependent on streaming revenue.

Netflix doesn't get anywhere near the theatrical release of Disney movies, but it does get some: https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/coming-soon/netflix-movies-...

It’s not enough to break even before it hits streaming. It doesn’t really move the needle.

Right now, sure. Just like Disney+ doesn't break even for Disney. It does signal a horizontal expansion for Netflix though.

Part of that cash flow doesn't go to Disney at all, it stays with the theaters.

I'm curious whether that total box office number includes taxes on the tickets as well.

Disney gets 70% of all revenue from theatrical releases during the first few weeks

https://www.quora.com/How-are-ticket-revenues-shared-with-th...

I switched from Netflix to Prime a year or so ago, and a few months ago to HBO Max, and they're all basically the same: a handful of good movies and series I haven't seen, some more mediocre but watchable stuff, and a lot that doesn't interest me or is just awful. I get that they want to serve as large an audience as they can get, but it doesn't keep me on their platform. The only plus of HBO Max is their low price for a 1 year multi-screen subscription.

>- Netflix has 5-6 Billion USD free cash flow, and because they got what debt they do have under favorable terms, they are positioned to retain most of that free cash flow

This is a bit off. They had 1.6 billion in FCF in 2022 & project 3 billion for 2023:

https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/2022/q4...

That said, to me Netflix feels like it is lagging. Not enough to really hurt subscriber numbers yet. But feels like it's stuck in a local minima of A/B testing. Like they've driven me to the line of canceling. Which is good for them because I haven't yet but risky because Netflix is more a habit/default for me these days. Pretty close to canceling and not sure what would draw me back if I did.

They lost me this year. I had been a subscriber for 12 years.

Between the ads and the complete inability to let a show run more than 2 seasons unless it's a global hit... I'm no longer interested.

I've had a kid - and my viewing habits have changed. I can't always watch a show right when it drops. The reality of my life is that I have other things going on, and I rarely have 10+ hours of uninterrupted time.

But now... by the point I have time to watch a show, more often than not Netflix has already announced its cancellation, and I have zero interest in a catalog of dead shows. None. Nadda.

My take is that Netflix is hot fucking garbage at determining the quality of their own shows, and that really - they don't have the creative side down at all. It's too much focus on the stats, and timelines that are too short.

Some of the most widely watched shows in history had fairly lackluster first seasons (see: Parks & Rec, The Office, Friends). Netflix is busy killing off everything that's not a sizzle in the pan. But those flare up and burn out. They need the slow burn shows that grow into their own - and they've ruthlessly slaughtered them all because the numbers aren't great at first.

I dont have a kid, but between work, chores, and other hobbies, I can only have 1 or 2 hours a day to watch anything. I can only slot a movie or a single episode within that time frame. Also, it’s something I do together with my partner so we always pick something that suits us both. And our backlog is getting bigger as we are adding older movies.

The cancellation of 1899 was a big blow for me. It’s the kind of show you can’t really binge watch as it requires focus to really follow what’s going on. And I think it would have grown its audience organically over time.

That's actually the cancellation that pushed me over the edge. I'm also not subscribed anymore because of 1899.

It's the one that's taken me to the edge too.

> complete inability to let a show run more than 2 seasons unless it's a global hit

It just needs to be a slight success. If the show is cheap to make they'll keep it running forever. The only things that seem to get canceled are expensive or complete failures. I'd be interested if you have any examples that this doesn't ring true for.

> My take is that Netflix is hot fucking garbage at determining the quality of their own shows, and that really - they don't have the creative side down at all. It's too much focus on the stats, and timelines that are too short.

Most TV shows are canceled very few keep going forever.

> Some of the most widely watched shows in history had fairly lackluster first seasons (see: Parks & Rec, The Office, Friends).

Go look at the viewership of those even at the start they were good enough and cheap enough for a second season. Shows almost never grow after the first season. This idea that so many shows just need to get there legs under them is bullshit.

> Most TV shows are canceled very few keep going forever.

I don't expect them to go forever - I expect them to END. Ending is a (hugely) different proposition than being canceled.

A show that wraps up the plot (even if not executed particularly well) is a-ok.

A show that starts a story and then dies is not.

One of them has value in watching, one is a complete waste of time.

I also don't really care how they work out the budget - A show getting a mini-series as the final season because they don't want to invest in a full one? Fine - just resolve the fucking plot.

Personally - I don't even care if the show is only one season (or two) as long as it wraps up. What I do mind - quite a bit - is the start of a story that we know will never end.

If netflix wants to be so axe-happy, that's fine. Buy freaking mini-series and wrap them in a season.

Or set a more strict budget if the creators want to run multiple seasons.

My whole point about them being garbage at this is that I don't really care all that much how the wrap their shows. I just want a story to consume.

Personally - I really think production budgets are set far too high in an attempt to make them global hits, and it's really, really not panning out for them.

> This also fails to account for the strength of HBO Max (very strong sub numbers)

It's important to note that those numbers are very juiced. For example, my HBOMax comes for free with my AT&T internet (still). I've never paid them a dime directly. When they first started they were basically giving away accounts like crazy to get growth. I think they also gave free accounts to their cable subscribers.

So while their numbers look really big on paper they aren't getting a lot of income from those subscribers.

ATT’s grandfathered mobile plans including HBO Max are a ripoff ever since they sold it to Discovery. You effectively are paying ~$15+$5 per line per month for 1 account of HBO Max compared to the current ATT plans offered to customer.

I have 6 lines on my ATT Unlimited Premium Plan (the most expensive retail plan), and the monthly cost dropped by $60 by removing HBO max and switching to the new plans.

It is probably cheaper just to buy directly at HBOMax.com

See the “new” ATT prices, all without HBO Max (couple years old now maybe?)

https://www.att.com/plans/unlimited-data-plans/

This may be the case with the mobile plans, but I get HBO Max with my AT&T fiber service, and short of going to a lower speed tier, I do not see any cheaper plan I can switch to without HBO Max.

Netflix comes free with T-Mobile Magenta plans, I think Comcast includes some sort of premium Peacock subscription. I don't know that AT&T bundling it would be much different than the other services bundling, would it?

I think the difference might be that to leverage the Netflix through T-Mobile you have to actively sign up for Netflix or switch to T-Mobile being the payment processor. Where as with the AT&T/HBOMax deal, you just login to HBOMax with your AT&T credential.

Interestingly, we're not on Magenta but one of the earlier plans so the OnUs benefit is for the HD teir of Netflix. As I said above, T-Mobile becomes the payment processor on the account so when I upgraded to 4K my T-Mobile bill went up a couple bucks to account for the difference.

The tech part of streaming no longer matters and Netflix is in serious trouble due to their lack of quality content.

I'm no fan of Disney, but you have to give it to Bob Iger. He just paid out the nose to buy every piece of valuable IP: Pixar, Lucasfilm, Marvel, Fox, even Jim Henson.

The amount of content they now own is insane. Everything from Sunny in Philadelphia to the Muppet show to Alien to Avatar to The Simpsons to Starwars. It's nuts... you can't throw a dead cat in Hollywood without hitting Disney IP.

Meanwhile Netflix makes something worth streaming every year or two, if that.

> Netflix is in serious trouble due to their lack of quality content.

People say this often, but I have never seen it manifested in a viewership chart. Just using Nielsen data as an example, Netflix absolutely dominates the Top 10 chart, with 7/10 of the programs:

https://www.nielsen.com/top-ten/

Anecdotally, when traveling outside the US, Netflix & Disney are really the only providers I have seen have any kind of footprint.

Is there any data to back up the "content quality" complaint, or is it just a personal preference?

The subscriber count continues to grow, so it seems like the content is fine. Or at least not so bad that people are unsubscribing.

It seems to me that Netflix still has the most generally appealing content. Yeah Disney has some of the biggest names, but unless you 1. have young kids or 2. are a huge, not burnt-out Star Wars or Marvel fan, Disney+ is a pretty poor service. Most of the other services fall somewhere else in the middle of that spectrum.

> Netflix is in serious trouble due to their lack of quality content.

I feel the opposite. Marvel's content are getting really tiring now. Superheroes with superior technologies choosing primitive societal and political structures really turned me off. Not enough great action flicks, or binge-worthy dramas like Oz and Strange Things. Not enough international hit shows. Not enough old catalogs.

I agree with you, but don't underestimate how many people just want to leave The Office or something similar running in the background for hours and are willing to pay Netflix for that.

The bear case for Netflix is once again the “DropBox problem”. Streaming services is becoming a feature not a product.

When Disney creates a movie. It can monetize the movie across its entire “flywheel” - movie theatres, video on demand, licensing to third parties, toys, theme parks etc.

It’s streaming content has already made a billion in the box office before it ever hits streaming. Streaming is additive.

Netflix paid millions of dollars just for the rights to the “Knives Out” sequel for instance only to make a pittance in limited release and then go to streaming.

The same is true for the other players.

That’s not even to mention Apple, Amazon and Google who are playing a completely different game.

I think Google quit.

Google has YouTube live and just outbid everyone to get the (American) football deal that DirecTV use to have.

Google is playing a slightly different game.

I've talked with several of my friends about this. EVERYONE was universally willing to pay Netflix their monthly sub when all the studios just sold their content to Netflix.

NO ONE has subscribed to all of Disney+, Apple+, Paramount+, Peacock, etc. in the new everyone-built-their-own-netflix era.

They're all either making do with less content or sailing the high seas mateys yo ho. In many cases they've even DROPPED Netflix.

I don't see how the current over a dozen streaming media provider status quo stands for much longer. Some (many?) are going to have to fail before everyone gets pissed off and goes elsewhere for their entertainment.

I don't know how big a factor this is, but note that some of those have bundling deals with other services. For people that happen to use those other services this can as a side effect greatly reduce the annoyance of the things one wants to watch being spread over different non-free services.

I have Hulu as part of my Spotify subscription.

I have Peacock Premium as part of Xfinity internet.

I have Paramount+ as part of Walmart+.

I have Amazon Prime Video as part of Amazon Prime.

Some T-Mobile plans include Netflix and Apple TV+.

For a lot of people I know their bundling deal is just sharing passwords with friends and family.

“Therefore, Netflix needs to do what it can to retain / attract subscribers, but essentially can wait until the other services have to give up due to cost”

Much as they did with Blockbuster as he described in the article, correct?

Bob Iger addressed this on the a16z podcast a few weeks back.

He said 2 things really:

* he thinks that content will beat out distribution every single time. And Disney has content Netflix doesn't and cannot get (think of Disneys huge catalogue and IP collections)

* he said when he went to the board and proposed that they (a) give up a huge revenue stream and (b) spend a tonne of money building their own streaming service, he expected it to be a hard battle. He thought it would be very hard to convince investors to look at anything beyond the effect on the next quarter financials. Instead, once they heard the case, they demanded he actually go faster, spend more and be more aggressive. He said (I have not checked) that when they announced the move, the stock price went UP...

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGV...

Personally I think he made a pretty good case that content distributors were basically commodities and were priced as such (you get low margins). Bit content creators/owners were in a non-competitive position and so had much higher margins and better long term prospects.

I guess in a way, we are back to "Netflix has to become HBO before HBO can become Netflix". Can Netflix use it's huge cash pile to build/acquire enough content to become Disney-like before Disney can build enough infrastructure/customer base to be Netflix?

Seems like the logical endgame is Netflix buying up and aggregating these legacy content producer/channels, possibly piecemeal. There are too many walled gardens right now and they will likely into 3 or 4 key players (say Netflix, HBO and Disney) with everyone else getting gobbled up.

Then everyone has 3 channels on their TVs and we start the explode/aggregate cycle again, just like what happens to banks and telcos.

> - Therefore, Netflix needs to do what it can to retain / attract subscribers, but essentially can wait until the other services have to give up due to cost

Good summary. Worth noting as well that he spends a lot of time in the article drawing the historical parallel to Blockbuster. The lesson is that Netflix has been in this situation before, of waiting for its competition to punch themselves out.

Personally, I think it's impossible to really predict the future for stuff like this, but it's an interesting read.

I don't understand why every single company needs to maintain their own. And there's more than what's listed of course, Paramount, Hulu, and whatever that new one is with Lifetime.

It seems like at some point they'd rally behind whoever has the best interface and willing to accept deals - probably Hulu. Just charge for access to the content and forget about doing your own CDN and app dealings?

I don't think the media companies are capable of cooperating on a platform like that.

You mention Hulu which I think is a great example of that model failing. Hulu was originally a intended to be that kind of platform, and has at times included investment from ABC, NBC, FOX, and Time Warner. Now Disney owns a majority share in it and it's a brand under Disney's streaming services, and I think would like to just fold it into Disney+, but they'd need to make some sort of deal with Comcast for their minority share.

What about the state of affairs in emerging markets, which are likely going to be bigger revenue source than US/Europe in the not too distant future?

Also what about (live) sports coverage? Does Netflix have a strategy there? For many subscribers it is appealing if their streaming service carries sports coverage.

The ARPU is a lot smaller and the article even calls out that different markers want local content meaning that content costs will also grow.

ARPU could be smaller but the user volumes would be much higher. In absolute terms it could be a significant portion of revenue. Netflix perhaps is not doing as well in these markets, presently.

There are reports that Netflix is doing badly in India, for example, which is a massive potential market.

Revenue - yes

Profit - no

Is HBO max that big? I only hear about it from time to time, it feels very English-language. I have 2 netflix subs I share between my Chinese and French family and I admit Disney+ has a huge advantage for kids stuff I couldnt get anywhere else, so they'll likely last.

Unclear what the perception of HBO is outside the US, but HBO is historically _the_ prestige television brand, and now they have a pretty good catalog of stuff that wasn't originally on HBO as well. It seems like Warner is hell-bent on ruining HBO Max though.

Netflix is valued as tech but it’s no longer tech. Once you recalibrate that you can easily see where the company is headed. It’s not going to be pretty. They relied on the Koreans (among others) for cheap shows but that’s not going to last long.

Unlike netflix, Disney+ has a good incentive to never become profitable. It pays enormous licensing fees to its parent company. This means the profits flows to there, and they don't pay a cent of taxes.

Now you are going to say, but doesn't "The Walt Disney Company", the parent of Disney+, then pay all the taxes?

No, because this company is located in Delaware, which means it's virtually exempt of taxes as long as it makes only money from activities outside of Delaware. Which is does, since it's only selling IP to other companies, like the entity managing Disney+ which has it's headquarters in California.

That might make it virtually exempt from Delaware taxes, but what about Federal taxes?

They still have to pay it, but skipping on the state taxe an is already a huge break, espacially since no vat is paid in the transfert.

I can see them 100% getting into podcasting and picking up Joe Rogan when his contract with Spotify ends.

I think that in the long term needs to merge with someone with great content.

The competition is never going to give up on streaming.

HBO / Netflix merger FTW?

I think Netflix is better served getting exclusive rights to top IP that differentiates them from others. They don't have many memorable brands that people would buy a T-Shirt for. Like a $5B deal for exclusive streaming rights to all Nintendo IP (think live action Zelda, animated Mario Kart series for kids, Metroid series for adults, etc).

> think live action Zelda

Honestly an animated Zelda would be better. You could even do each season in a different art style as a callback to the games.

That would now mean buying out WarnerMedia Discovery Group which just merged, and WarnerMedia was the owner of HBO before that. AT&T was forced to divest at least.

Never the less, that would be a massive acquisition, they carry alot of debt.

$53B in debt at HBO. Crazy.

HBO is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, likely one of their most valuable assets. I can't see them giving it up.

Indeed. Feels like vast majority of the TV worth watching is HBO. I value my time so I'd rather have access to a few HBO series / year than an endless sea of A/B dross.

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