Dora, Diego, SpongeBob and Other Viacom Shows Leave Netflix | Hacker News Reader

Dora, Diego, SpongeBob and Other Viacom Shows Leave Netflix

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39 pointsprotomyth48 comments

The worst part about this from a parent's perspective was that there was absolutely no warning. My daughter was all excited for her once-daily episode of Dora, and suddenly it wasn't there even though mommy and daddy said it would be. (I take this whole thing as a broad lesson on the dangers of relying on the cloud.)

By the end of the day, we'd signed up for streaming via Amazon Prime (which includes Dora). And cancelled it via Netflix.

We experienced the same - our toddler gets an episode of Wonder Pets every day after she comes home from day care. When my wife drove her home that day she got her all excited to watch it, and she was singing the theme song the whole way, only for my wife to get home and select the show (still displayed in our recently viewed list) just to get hit with an error message. Had to research some to find out what had happened. We were actually lucky that we already had a Prime account and found the shows there the next day when we read online what was happening.

Really bad user experience and communication, combined with a very passionate target viewer for those shows who doesn't understand license negotiations.

The next generation of toddlers will be the first to understand license negotiations.

They won't understand license negotiations; they'll understand the consequences of poor license negotiations.

<editorializing>Then, bad licensing will become the norm. </editorializing>

> By the end of the day, we'd signed up for streaming via Amazon Prime (which includes Dora). And cancelled it via Netflix.

Well, if enough people do this, it will certainly give Viacom greater leverage in negotiating with Netflix.

I felt a bit bad about that: I didn't want to "take sides" in the negotiation, since I think either side getting all that it wanted would be bad for the consumer.

But we were upset about the lack of warning, and upset that the two sides had given up on negotiations in the first place. I can roll my eyes at the situation and grumble and move on with my life, but I'm an adult. Toddlers and preschoolers are not quite so savvy.

We may make some effort to get our daughter less attached to Viacom programming as a result, too. (If for no other reason than self-preservation for when they try the same thing with Amazon!) But that's a longer-term project.

Our 3 year-old watched Dora and Diego almost every day from about 1 1/2 to just turning 3. It became somewhat of an obsession and he always wanted to watch another show. On the other hand, my wife and I rarely watched shows or movies, and only had Netflix (no cable) in the house. We finally decided to ditch the TV all together, and 6 months later, it is going fantastic! Our son was upset for a few days after we got rid of it, but now it is a pleasure to watch him play with real things.

Anyways, not passing judgement on any parents and we'll probably get a TV again some day. But it's been pretty awesome!

now that I think about it, letting your young kids avoid the psychologically targeted commercials is probably a very good thing developmentally.

Part of it for us was the 'zoning out'. We had Netflix so no commercials, but he'd sit in his chair for an hour or more and just suck his thumb and zone out. Afterwards, he just wanted more. I guess that is a lot of the appeal of TV, just escaping from the every day of what's around us.

There is a ton of crass children's programming, but I wouldn't put Dora/Diego and other Nick Jr. content in that category. It has some educational content, and it doesn't even have commercial interruptions when it runs on Nick Jr. The worst I could say is that it grooms kids for the more crass/commercial stuff that comes when they migrate from Nick Jr to Nick and Cartoon Network and Disney Channel.

Yeah, my son won't care. In the 30 minutes per night we allow him on the iPad, he binge watches like 8 different shows, and it doesn't matter which ones. He watches Dora, but probably won't notice it's missing. I'm going to say this is much worse for Viacom than Netflix.

My kids have just started watching Diego (as in last night), so it seems the licensing deal is still active in the Canadian Netflix library?

Unblock-us.com is the way to go, costs $5/month and means you can access all of the Netflix libraries (US, Canada, UK and others).

If you're going to violate their policies, you might as well just fire up a BitTorrent client as be done with it.

I live in New Zealand... there's no other way to subscribe to Netflix.

Right, there's not a legal way to subscribe so you're illegally subscribing. For the children, or something.

I'm doing everything I can to legitimately pay for the service. If it is "illegal" then it's absurd and just shows you how dumb the laws are regarding digital movies/music.

In the "pros" column, you're just violating netflix TOS so in the worst case they figure out you are lying about your country and delete your account. Sounds like a pretty safe (but expensive) way to pirate movies to me.

Netflix is ok with you travelling to another country and use their service from there, but they warn you that content will be different.

So switching DNS is kinda like travelling fast...

If Netflix and the content provider decides that I'm a horrible person and don't want my money, they can cancel my account, maybe I'll start considering torrent'ing then.

I live in Australia, same deal.

Using a proxy is just a feel-good venture rather than making the use of it legal.

I don't understand this. Sure, it's against their policies, but you're still paying Netflix, and they in turn are still paying on your behalf for all the content providers smart enough to let them.

Add http://www.moreflicks.com/ to that so you can find in which country the movie you are looking for is available.

Don't spend 5 dollars a month! There are free extensions for your web browser that will do dns spoofing which is all you need for netflix.

Yep, I was quite shocked (Yo Gabba Gabba is my daughter's favorite, gone as well). But it seems my kids have short memory, thanks to the new Jake and the pirates and Handy Manny and they seem to worry about it less than I do. (And a part of me is kind of not-that-sorry that I won't have to hear "jumpy jump jump jump jump jump", and "there's a party in my tummy, so yummy" in the near future)

Yet still, I protest, and demand it back, no stability in this world, you can't put your trust in nothing anymore.

EDIT: Backyardigans also gone?? this is outrageous. I would have canceled my Netflix account if I had any control over it.

"Don't, don't, don't bite your friends!"

Yeah, Yo Gabba Gabba and Backyardigans were two of our "backup" shows for times when our daughter wanted something other than Dora. We were really scrambling once we realized they were all gone overnight. (In the urgency of the moment we stumbled into "Curious George", which I have issues with. I hear good things about "WordGirl", though I get the impression that it's got a slightly older target audience.)

We still get these via amazon prime. We actually get much more than $80 in prime instant videos and shipping.

Still on Hulu+, right?

For $7.99 a month I'll subscribe to 3-4 streaming services. It's worth it and still less than the hundred bucks a month cable costs.

The new "channel". And ala-cart.

I don't have kids, but if/when I do, I will avoid giving them TV access that comes with ad breaks. I'd rather they become conscious consumers on their own terms, instead of being spoon-fed ads from such an early age.

Case in point: I took a college psychology class where the professor flipped through slides and asked the class to raise their hand if they could identify who was it was being displayed. Most hands shot up immediately for slides of Captain Crunch and Tony the Tiger, but figures like Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell hesitantly got maybe 1/2 of the class.

If Hulu gave me the option to pay another $7.99/mo to remove the ads, I would, but I guess that's not their intent.

Can someone please create an account-sharing service that just blends netflix/amazon/hulu/itunes/whatever-else together? I'll pay you $X/mo and you provide me with a massive library of content. I don't care which provider it comes through.

Thanks.

would you be OK with

at least (22.64 <= 7.99 + 6.66 + 7.99 + a-la-carte) * 1.20

per month? (so that the provider makes money)

No, you'd do account sharing across the services. Oversell like cheap webhosts do based on the fact that people vastly under-utilize services. You could probably negotiate a cheaper rate from the providers as well since you'd be presumably paying for hundreds of accounts.

Why should I pay for all the services when I'm only using one at a time? If I'm watching Arrested Development on Netflix, someone else can watch Dora on the Amazon account.

In the process, the provider would violate his/her TOS at each service, and get his/her account banned.

"Fail early" I guess.

I doubt the providers would be interested in providing a bulk rate, because their business model isn't based on the constant consumption of content. In fact, if you're planning to constantly utilize all of those accounts, they likely ban your service.

Time to introduce your kids to Minecraft, if you haven't done so already.

On behalf of my boy & girl, ages 3 & 5: "NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! I want Dora!"

Neverland Pirates had better be on there with a whole buncha episodes.

Good riddance. This is the second time Viacom shows have left Netflix. I would assume that this time, like the last, is that Viacom wants more money than Netflix considers their content worth, which is the same story as when Viacom pulled their shows from DirecTV recently.

I'm guessing the content will show up again, but I hope they don't pay more than they did on the previous agreement for the same old episodes.

As a parent, I'm glad Netflix made a large agreement with Disney.

Disclaimer: our kids aren't into Nick shows as is, they mainly watch the Disney channels; all of us enjoy the marvel cartoons.

If Oscar's Oasis ever goes off Netflix, my nephew will be very, very mad. That show is a serious addiction, not bad for grownups, and doesn't seem to be available for purchase.

I would mourn the loss of Wonder Pets and Avatar is actually a great shoe for adults even. At least there is Phineas and Ferb (funnier than most sit-coms).

Odd taste aside there are so many streaming services now with so many different licenses it is becoming hard to find one with my favourite shows. And I still have a hard time getting the best BBC shows in a timely manner (Sherlock, Doctor Who, etc...)

Mr Krabs, we hardly knew ye.

My son's on to Shaun the Sheep, Phineas & Ferb, and sundry others...

NOOOOOOOOOO

Spongebob and Avatar: The Last Airbender are like the 2 singular reasons for a Netflix account. i'm going to have to reconsider reconsidering reactivating my account

Nice use of triple negative. I had a little mental exercise trying to understand the meaning correctly.

My two-year-old son is mourning the loss of The Backyardigans. Time to buy the episodes on iTunes and fire up Requiem+pyTivo.

Children's programming is a dime a dozen, no big deal.

I have observed this is simply not the case. There is a lot of crud out there and some genuine gems. Even 3 years olds have opinions on what they like.

There is a lot of crud out there and some genuine gems.

Perhaps from your perspective.

Even 3 years olds have opinions on what they like.

That's true, but that doesn't mean they have discerning tastes; small children like what they like and it has the potential to be pretty much anything.

Like any art, some of it is great and a lot sucks. Just because it is directed at children doesn't make it interchangeable or a lesser art. There is a rather large difference between Pixar and Good Times Video. A 3 year old will not watch stuff they don't like, as they will loudly tell you.

A 3 year old will not watch stuff they don't like, as they will loudly tell you.

This is true, what I'm saying is that a three year old does not have the cognitive ability to appreciate artistic nuance; of course they have preferences, they're just completely arbitrary and entirely detached from anything that a developed adult could recognize as quality.

I have to disagree with you. They might not express it in words, but they do know quality.

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