This was a very foolish choice on Netflix's part. Most if the iconic IP from WB/HBO has gone down hill in a dramatic fashion over the last decade.
Game of Thrones was good for a few seasons, but half way through the fans started dropping almost as quickly as main characters. DC movies have had very few genuine successes, even if they've technically turned a profit.
Putting all that content up on Netflix would be unlikely to pull in that many more subscriptions, and would require dropping the existing streaming service(s) and agreements to allow for exclusivity.
This doesn't bring significant talent or IP to Netflix, it's just an attempt to grab market share. I doubt they'll try to move anything out of WB/HBO's existing streaming platforms or agreements. This just looks like an attempt to increase profits by simply buying a profitable company and letting them mostly continue to function with minimal changes.
In other word, this probably isn't the worst acquisition possible for consumers, but it certainly won't improve life for anyone to let it happen, and it does consolidate market share and control when it comes to media. This probably won't be hugely evil, but it won't be good either.
Any consolidation like this seems like a negative for consumers. But at least it wasn’t bought by Larry Ellison, as was considered very likely (assuming this merger gets approved, in the current administration you never know).
From a Hacker News perspective, I wonder what this means for engineers working on HBO Max. Netflix says they’re keeping the company separate but surely you’d be looking to move them to Netflix backend infrastructure at the very least.
This particular one could be ok for them? A major cost for Netflix in the modern era is licensing contracts that never adjusted to the streaming world. As such, consumers may actually get access to some backlog of WB stuff that is otherwise not worth offering?
My guess is you are right for some properties that WB owns outright, but legacy IP that has rights shared, especially pre-streaming rights will still have a lot of barriers/untangling to do.
I think Netflix is the most well run media company today by a mile, but also on the spectrum of quality/art -vs- straight money/tech domination they fall into the latter category, and they are the among the least friendly to creators as far as contract/rights.
In their books (e.g. "No Rules Rules" Netflix seems extremely attractive to creators because they pay top dollar, as a general policy, and have the internal decision-making processes that support making bold bets on art without committees that push "safer" creative choices.
Totally fair. The rights around a lot of media is a giant mess. Is why songs used on some movies are not the same as the ones that were used in theaters. And is just baffling for people from the outside to consider.
> Any consolidation like this seems like a negative for consumers
This is a very common narrative to this news. But coming into this news, I think the most common narrative against streaming was essentially "There is not enough consolidation." People were happy when Netflix was the streaming service, but then everyone pulled their content and have their own (Disney, Paramount, etc.)
I want a separation between the streaming platform companies and the content making companies, so that the streaming companies can compete on making a better platform/service and the content companies compete on making better content.
I don't want one company that owns everything, I want several companies that are able to license whatever content they want. And ideally the customer can choose between a subscription that includes everything, and paying for content a la carte, or maybe subscriptions that focus on specific kinds of content (scifi/fantasy, stuff for kids, old movies, international, sports, etc.) regardless of what company made it.
I think you're right, but I've always been a bit skeptical of that vision -- it implicitly relies on the assumption that "THE streaming service" will choose to make as much content available as technically and legally possible; they're imagining something like "Spotify but for movies and TV shows". But I was always worried about "Apple's App Store but for movies and TV shows": one company with ultimate gatekeeper status over what you can and can't legally watch. (The movie and television business is not like the music business; the financial incentives don't, as far as I can tell, support the same kind of distribution models.)
I'm not particularly thrilled about this kind of consolidation, but given that Warner was going to be bought by somebody, Netflix may be one of the least worst outcomes.
The problem is content exclusivity. It would be great if all the content or at least most would be available on all platforms. At least eventually. That would be great for consumers. Mergers like this typically not.
>Everyone likes a service when it’s subsidized by VC dollars.
Netflix went public in 2002. It was +8 years later that the streaming-only service was launched in 2010. It wasn't "subsidized by VC".
Netflix had more content from everybody back then because the other studios licensed their content for cheap prices to Netflix. But those studios then realized that Netflix was growing rapidly on the backs of their content. Once those multi-year contracts expired, studios like Disney didn't renew with Netflix and instead, started their own platform (e.g. Disney+).
These content library contracts are only for a couple of years, and each time one lapses, some terms get negotiated. Nobody in the streaming industry is successful because they have a long term lock on someone else’s content. It’s all about eyeballs and margins.
Sure, that was very early though. You could argue that was crucial for establishing their brand, but the industry has caught up and doesn't do that very much now.
The assumption back then was that other companies would be making shows. Consolidating even more show production in one company is not something we should want.
This is an absolutely wild (and incorrect) thing to assume. The problem of content lock-in is anti-competitive and it would be better solved without mergers
Consumers don't care so much about consolidation as they care about not getting ripped off. When Netflix and Hulu were the only streaming platforms you paid a pretty low price to get virtually everything you wanted. Now you pay more for a worse experience.
Netflix at least has technical chops. Other studios (looking at you, Paramount-) put out barely functional apps because they know consumers ultimately will pay for their content.
>you paid a pretty low price to get virtually everything you wanted
Depends what you wanted.
Both a deep back catalog of TV and film more generally were always pretty lacking on all-you-could-eat streaming services. Frankly, my biggest complaint with Netflix is that they basically drove local video rental out of business and then shut their own rental down.
As a rule of thumb, consolidation is never good. There are exceptions where consolidated services can improve (eg arguably physical infrastructure, healthcare), but in general this will not benefit the consumer.
People were happy because they only needed one subscription and one app. Buying Warner Bros won't bring that back. If anything, it makes it less likely.
Maybe there are licensing restrictions or other things that prevent it, but wouldn't it make more sense to combine HBO Max and Netflix into a single app? Or at least make all HBO Max content also available in Netflix (and then eventually sunset HBO Max). That would make a Netflix subscription a much more compelling purchase for a ton of people.
Not attacking you in particular, but I've always hated how we talk about "licensing restrictions" as if they're some kind of vague law of nature, like gravity. Oh, Studio X can't do Y... Because Licensing. "Licenses" are entirely conjured up by humans, and if there was an actual desire by the people who make decisions to change something, those people would find a way to make the "licensing restrictions" disappear. Reality is, the people making these decisions don't want to change things, at least not enough to go through the effort of changing and renegotiating the licenses. It's not "licensing restrictions" that is stopping them.
Same always comes up when we talk about why doesn't Company X open source their 20 year old video game software? Someone always chimes in to say "Well they don't because of 'licensing issues' with the source code." as if they were being stopped by a law of physics.
Speaking as someone who once worked at a company where these were real issues that came up - it's very often the case that intermediate parties in the contracts have dissolved.
Renegotiating the contracts would require lengthy and expensive processes of discovering the proper parties to actually negotiate with in the first place.
Although the contracts that were already executed can be relied upon, it truly is a can of worms to open, because it's not "Renegotiate with Studio X", it's "Renegotiate with the parent company of the defunct parent company of the company who merged with Y and created a new subsidiary Z" and so on and so forth, and then you have to relicense music, and, if need be, translations.
Then repeat that for each different region you need to relicense in because the licenses can be different for different regions.
The cost of negotiation would be greater than the losses to piracy tbh.
> Reality is, the people making these decisions don't want to change things, at least not enough to go through the effort of changing and renegotiating the licenses.
Which is a perfectly sensible reason for a business decision.
> "Well they don't because of 'licensing issues' with the source code." as if they were being stopped by a law of physics.
So laws should just be ignored? Issues created by human social constructs are very real.
We can change the laws. Radio stations don't have "licensing issues" with playing songs.
From another angle, if copyright were more like it was originally in the US, every single show I watched as a kid would be in the public domain, since I haven't been a kid for 28 years.
I'm with you in spirit, but I think you are underestimating how wide and complex the dependency trees can be in content licensing. And simplifying those licensing structures often mean removing control from individual artists, which we tend to consider a Bad Thing.
Yea, what I mean by "people who make decisions" is everybody involved: studios, distributors, rights holders, and the maze of middlemen who have inserted themselves into the business: If all of them decided that more money could be made, if not for those pesky licenses, the "licensing problems" would immediately disappear.
Licensing is really complicated and requires lot of paper work. The best example is the music soundtracks of old TV series. They even get substituted if they don't get the proper license to stream them. So some old show get new soundtrack or background music and they don't feel the same.
That would be amazing if we could watch both Netflix and HBO Max content at the price of one subscription. At least for me, these two platforms covers 95% of my video content needs.
"The price of one subscription" being the price of Netflix plus the price of HBO. Streaming is turning back into cable where everything is trapped in one bill, no matter how expensive and uninteresting some part of that bill is.
Having Discovery's awful content push out quality HBO content was already a major blow.
The cable thing in US is something Im struggling to wrap my mind around. I can’t imagine someone deliberately paying so much money for such a bad content.
The only explanation I can think of is that most of the subscribers are elderly folks who signed up long time ago and didn’t bother to look into current bills.
Internet/TV bills can be negotiated, but it is usually something you have to do annually and most people, rightly so, hate it. The companies make it hard to do, so most people would rather pay an extra $5-10 rather than spending an hour or two on the phone. After 5-10 years, those fee bumps really add up.
The only way to keep Internet/TV costs low is to threaten to cancel or switch every year, and actually be willing to do it. For some that isn't an option because there is only 1 provider, and others I've talked to hate that idea because you have to learn a new channel lineup. It's amazing how much people will pay to not be slightly inconvenienced.
Your last point is the stronger one. Live events, including sports, are a heavy driver of these subscriptions.
Another is broadband deployment. Choice is low in many parts of the country, and bundled service offerings are frequently priced near the "internet only" offerings to nudge customers into a "might as well" posture.
Hulu and Disney Plus have taken centuries in this endeavor. There's a lot of content licensed to Hulu that is not necessarily licensed to Disney Plus, though Disney Plus seems to be showing more Hulu content, but I assume it has to do with licensing.
Everything about these big moves in the streaming space is basically to re-create the "good old days" of cable subscriptions and pay-per-view.
I think we can expect HBO streaming to continue as a premium subscription for movies and high-production-value shows. That would let everything else to land on Netflix with no conflict.
Yeah, I can easily see something like 2 separate at $20/month vs 1 super at $35/month (make-believe figures).
Assuming all WB and Netflix customers move to the super platform, that's a loss for Netflix (assuming the super platform doesn't significantly reduce their costs).
And the $35 might be more than some set of current Netflix subscribers want to pay, so they drop the service, so an even bigger potential loss.
Certainly, I have no desire to subsidize sports fans via a higher Netflix super package.
The irony is that a lot of people complained loudly about the cable bundle then complained loudly about streaming service fragmentation even when it at least offered a choice to cut their monthly bill.
When Netflix started losing shows did they lower their price to allow users to sign up for competing services? The price just went up for everyone in reality.
No but there's very little I deeply care about watching, including live TV. I definitely pay less for video content than I was paying 5 years or so ago. Netflix has been on my bubble for a while. We'll see what happens with this news.
And I already have Amazon Prime and Apple TV+ through other bundles I have for other reasons. We'll see.
I don’t see how this is ironic at all. Doesn’t this just make sense that people are complaining about the same business model? Or are you saying people should be more grateful we don’t have to watch ads anymore?
I'm regularly a bit surprised at how many people don't even consider purchasing a la carte content or Blu Rays. For films it's often a pretty reasonable option for occasional viewing.
Why is this a negative for consumers? Doesn't everyone complain how they have to subscribe to 5 different streaming services, and plenty of people have to pay for a service just to enjoy one or two series?
I don't think consolidation is necessarily bad. It makes sense from a cost perspective too. I guess they could just license out the content, but this will probably grow the catalog a lot.
No, that was going to happen next year, but it never did and this deal has been agreed for the whole company.
WB pitched that to make it easier for them to be acquired by shunting all the debt to the channels entity - but it was unlikely the debt owners were ever going to go for that as presented, there would have been quite a significant chance of the channels group going under and them losing all the money.
But ultimately it turned out that enough entities were willing to bid now, before that split, that there was no point continuing to work out how to do it. Netflix will, presuming this deal completes, be the owner of CNN/TNT/Discovery at al.
Now, I am very sure they will look to sell several parts of those off - there is absolutely no way Netflix leadership wants to continue to own TNT - but that will have to come later.
> In June 2025, WBD announced plans to separate its Streaming & Studios and Global Networks divisions into two separate publicly traded companies. This separation is now expected to be completed in Q3 2026, prior to the closing of this transaction.
>> Netflix will, presuming this deal completes, be the owner of CNN/TNT/Discovery at al.
^^This isn’t accurate based on the multiple articles I’ve read, including this OP article. The entities they are acquiring are clearly laid out. Your statement is complete speculation at best, and plainly false and at odds with the current facts we know about the deal.
> The transaction is expected to close after the previously announced separation of WBD’s Global Networks division, Discovery Global, into a new publicly-traded company, which is now expected to be completed in Q3 2026.
If they like money, they'll just roll HBO into Netflix and raise prices. I really doubt Disney's complex bundling/pricing scheme is helping their bottom line.
It also underlines in the US that sports is probably the last interest in linear programming. It would be interesting to get a picture of how many US customers will pay for ESPN in a Disney+ bundle but not Linear Hulu. I'm sure Disney will be tracking it, and probably made a smart move making the more interesting bundle the one with ESPN but not Linear Hulu.
There's a huge interest in sports in the US (and elsewhere). And broadcast rights reflect that. But there are also a bunch of people who would happily take a discount on all their other video to not include sports.
I dunno about that. They introduced the ad supported tier as a way to reach consumers at a lower price point and apparently it’s been very successful. I don’t think they want to lose those customers by jacking up prices now.
Netflix has raised prices about 25% at the premium tier since they released the ad-free version in 2022. The with-ads plan has also seen increases since launch.
Their prices have been inching up. I pay for the lowest non-ad tier, and it's $17.99/mo. If I wanted 4K & HDR, it's up to $24.99/mo. At $7.99/mo for the ad-supported tier, they could easily bump that to $9.99/mo if it included HBO/Hulu/ESPN.
I suspect you are right, but I’m not alone in walking away from this trend.
They lost me as a longtime customer after too many price hikes and low programming quality.
Netflix shows are “have it on in the background” quality whereas HBO has released some of the best TV of all time. This merger has enshittification written all over it.
I agree, but HBO has also gone downhill as they lost talent to other services. Currently the streamer with the highest consistent quality is Apple, which is pretty unexpected.
Apple has the benefit of the original Netflix exclusives model (and the original TV primetime distribution model) that they don't operate their own studios and instead can pick and choose from the cream of the crop of the more expensive projects from the others. (Severance is from Ben Stiller's Red Hour mini-studio, Ted Lasso and Shrinking are from WB Television, Slow Horses and Pluribus are from Sony Television, Foundation and Murderbot are from Skydance/Paramount Television, and so forth.)
I'm sure Apple is contributing significantly to many of those shows' budgets and helping them all reach similar quality bars, but Apple is also certainly benefiting from spreading that budget across multiple studios and not putting all their risk in (micro-)managing their own studio. Whereas a lot of the "streamer X has gone downhill" seems to be directly related to being able to source projects only from sibliing studios creating very simple monocultures of every project feeling the same and risking that bad or unlucky projects tainting other projects in that monoculture stew.
Very hit or miss though. And withs some exceptions like Slow Horses, their productions feel overly produced, oiled by agency crossover and 360 package deals, i.e., manufactured from script to screen. Even Pluribus has that smug sanitized gloss.
Honestly, in these days when pretty much everything is sourced from individual production companies and showrunners, it becomes pretty clear that while some studios have their own brands/budgets/priorities/execs/etc. there's no magic formula to getting it all right. It's been tried before and will be tried again.
I’m pretty sure I would riot if they raise prices more. I’m not paying $30 to one streaming service. Criterion and Kanopy are working great for me as is.
Well all the content costs don't change, and they can combine CDN servers anywhere it makes sense regardless of whether it's one service or two. So revenue and margin numbers should track pretty tightly.
My guess is that eventually they'll merge into a single platform, HBO max will die off, and netflix will just keep jacking up people's rates until they're well above what netflix and HBO Max cost separately today
They would never cannibalize an existing revenue stream, they'll keep them separate as long as it's profitable and maybe bundle for marketing (we're slowly rebuilding cable)
I don't know. I never really had a sensible option to watch Game of Thrones legally, it's a little late for that now but presumably this would mean it's on Netflix which would be significantly better for me. (I guess useful for House of the Dragon now). I don't think I care much about the upcoming Harry Potter show but if I did want to watch that, I'm not sure what my options would be, and Netflix seems better than me having to take out _another_ subscription.
Obviously having one monopoly streaming service would be bad, but in the meantime having more of them is also not great for consumers since they each charge a flat fee so you have to pay more to see shows from different studios. The ideal would be something more akin to music streaming where you can more or less pick a provider these days, but video streaming doesn't seem to be moving there in any hurry.
This is so silly. It's like saying "Sweet manufacturers all had the chance to sell the same sweets, and they blew it. So I just nick most sweets." Just say "I don't like paying for things and can get away with this, and my ethics only work in public or when I'm forced to obey them." And then we're done.
Far better for consumers to be able to binge Game of Thrones/Silicon Valley/whatever and cancel HBO Max than to have to pay twice as much for a subscription to both libraries to get either.
Yeah until Netflix adds tiered pricing for content and you end up paying more than what Netflix + HBO Max together would have cost because Netflix is the only game in town for that content..
I think like all media consolidation this will send a lot of people back to the seven seas..
I'm actually a little surprised that, some discounts for annual subscriptions notwithstanding, the streaming services haven't done more to discourage short-term jump on/jump off subscriptions.
But they have the data and I don't. I assume there's enough stickiness and inertia that most people are not canceling and restarting services all the time. I know I don't. I just decide I don't care enough about most content (and don't really watch much video or binge watch anyway).
A big part of the reason I keep my Paramount+ subscription month-to-month despite mostly just watching Star Trek on it is that they sold me a pretty good annual plan discount.
Annual plans are a big factor in the stickiness of Amazon's efforts. Especially with Amazon's dark patterns around trying to make people forget they pay it (and making it hard to cancel).
It is curious there aren't more explorations in increasing stickiness. Though admittedly cable's biggest trick (long term contracts) is maybe thankfully out of reach for most of the streamers.
Bundles, where they exist, are a big stickiness factor. Especially during COVID, getting stuff delivered to my door before I'd have gotten around to the hassle of going to the store, was a big factor in making Prime more useful to me than it already was.
Apple is less pronounced but I'm very much in the Apple ecosystem so TV+ isn't really a big adder.
>Though admittedly cable's biggest trick (long term contracts) is maybe thankfully out of reach for most of the streamers.
Yeah. You make too much of an on/off ramp for just a streaming service and that's a hard pass for me.
As you say, most users probably don't bother stopping/starting subscriptions. Besides, if they make it harder to cancel some users might not subscribe in the first place in fear of being locked in.
They're probably making more with users saying "I'll subscribe now but cancel when I'm done watching this show" then don't bother cancelling.
Which is why it won't happen, what would the revenue benefit of that be?
In the medium term you'll get a D+/Hulu-esque split with maybe a discounted bundle of Netflix and HBO Max together - the evidence is pretty strong that bundles reduce churn.
If they ever do go to one library, it'll be because Netflix feel they are able to push prices to the same level as both services combined.
The Crown is absolutely a prestige TV show. Stranger Things is also high quality and high budget. You could probably include Bridgerton in there too, it's not my kind of show but I can still recognize that it's a well put together one.
Its subjective, and full of nuance, but I do feel that Netflix has its own style that is very different to HBO's style. Consider the witcher vs game of thrones or black mirror pre-netflix vs post netflix. Its not black and white though, as Netflix animations (Castlevania, Pluto etc.) are amazing TV, but personally I would much rather watch a HBO show than a Netflix one - especially if its a fantasy/science fiction one where Netflix's style isn't one I find appealing.
The problem is all the crap kills the prestige. HBO remains what HBO is because they don't put out 600 other shows besides Game of Thrones that are utter garbage.
Netflix is the Walmart of entertainment at this point. Yeah you can find basically anything there- and VERY occasionally, you'll find something damn good- but you're wading through a sea of mediocre shit to do so.
And like, personally I unsubbed forever ago because I'm not interested in subsidizing all the garbage to get the occasional Frankenstein. Meanwhile I've maintained an HBO subscription for that entire time.
Obviously I am but one data point here and I know my opinion is in the minority, but yeah. I don't pay attention much to Netflix.
Until Disney killed it because "they didn't like the numbers" the Avengers series, including Dare Devil, Luke Cage, etc were highly regarded by all my friends at the time. I don't know why Disney screwed that up colossally outside of wanting the show within Disney Plus.
On the other hand, if we're not going to have a music situation where the vast majority of mainstream content is available on most of the major platforms, fragmentation is pretty consumer unfriendly.
Netflix is pretty much a studio at this point. Not sure that back-end infrastructure or client apps is really a differentiator for anyone. An individual may find that one service is "better" in whatever respect but it's really about exclusive content.
As a consumer I certainly hope that this means there's one less streaming service to deal with (though I'm no longer an HBO subscriber at the moment) so long as pricing doesn't go up too much.
On the pure technical side of their streaming services, Netflix refuses to play ball with platform owners to integrate with services. Netflix on Apple TV has zero conceit for the platform. WB on the other hand is very typical of other streaming services. I wonder what will win out?
The exact same road that generally leads to the same sort of problematic consolidation?
At best, WBD could have gone bankrupt and a court order could require it to be sold as parts with no one studio getting a significant chunk, scattering WBD's IP moat across many competitors.
But most likely it just means someone like Netflix would have the chance to make a smaller offer for the same kind of deal on a WBD with a worse negotiating position. Same consequences, different day.
Netflix Plus (Netflix+) which is a side subscription to all of that which lets you syncopate different playback screens to one account, or some other esoteric value add which muddies the waters
Let's be honest, all the netflix plans will have ads just like they do now. They might not interrupt your show while you're in the middle of it, but you'll get ads no matter what. Ads as soon as the credits roll, a barrage of full screen ads if you pause a show for more than 10 seconds, full screen ads the moment you open the app, etc.
I don't find Netflix "live action" movies to be super violent and there are a lot of non-violent shows. Its animations can be quite violent though (and those are good quality). From the little I know, it, like every other big platform, does shy away from sex. This has been a theme for decades - its ok to be violent but sex is a no no.
They are not acquiring CNN. They are interested in hbomax and content IP. All the other news and talk shows will be spun off to a new company called discovery global which is to be sold off separately.
Good news is more Warner Bros content, bad news is, only 2 seasons worth per IP. Netflix drives me up a wall with how often they cancel interesting shows, reminds me of SyFy, you find something interesting and then they just cancel it. Sometimes people take a break from watching a show, but they always come back. At least end it cleanly damn it. It's why I don't bother with Netflix original shows unless they've got like four seasons.
What would be wrong with Larry buying it? He doesn't own a media empire, and would be incentivized to compete. Larry buying it seems like it would have been better from a consumer perspective
Technically Skydance is led David Ellison, Larry's son.
Though, he's a trustfund kid and you can make a case that Larry owns it indirectly. (But if you want to make that case then it implies that Larry owns two media empires given his daughter Megan Ellison owns slightly less successful Skydance rival Annapurna.)
Here in the EU it’s great news if this means HBO contents are coming on Netflix. WBD has had so fare the absolute worse policy for international rights distribution for their shows, with policies varying wildly from season to season.
That would connect the companies. If they're keeping them separate it could be an anti-trust move or more that these companies are going to start trading studios which has been seen in other industries where they trade markets, like the food delivery company you've been ordering from for years has probably changed hands a few times during that time period and probably name too.
You could make the connection a formal one. Years back HBO’s streaming services were actually provided by MLB, they had a contract together. No reason the same couldn’t happen with Netflix and Warner. Could have happened pre-merger too but it wouldn’t have been in Netflix’s interest.
Don’t count the Ellisons out. Firstly, they control the White House. If the American government doesn’t give approval for this merger Netflix pays Warner Bros $5 billion and walks away. That leaves them open to a future Ellison takeover.
Second, even if the purchase goes through they can still get a win, just a smaller one. Their goals of creating a Fox News like media empire are still alive. CNN doesn’t fit with Netflix and will be spun out and when it is they can submit a bid for that company. The Ellisons will then control CBS and CNN.
Meanwhile, as Netflix customers we can all look forward to paying more, but without the quality content that’s HBO’s trademark. The theatre goers among us will have to accept fewer movies getting to the theatre and going straight to streaming instead. Creative folks will have one fewer major employer, giving them less bargaining power.
For voters, viewers and workers there was no winning no matter who made the winning bid.
I don't like this. Netflix rarely creates excellent content; instead, it frequently produces mediocre or worse content. Will the same happen for Warner? Are cinemas now second behind streaming?
Edit: I agree Netflix has good Originals. But most are from the early days when they favored quality over quantity. It is sad to see that they reversed that. They have much funding power and should give it to great art that really sticks, has ambitions and something to tell, and values my time instead of mediocrity.
It feels like a race to the bottom. Movie and TV content quality has taken a nose dive in the past decade.
Yes, there are exceptions, but it’s hard to find these days.
Maybe it’s because producing movies/TV is so much easier and cheaper that there is now so much low quality noise, that it makes finding the high quality signal so difficult.
But it seems like you used to be able to go to the theater and you’d have to decide between several great options.
Now, I almost never care to go because it’s only about 2-3 times a year that anything comes out worth seeing.
Cinema is indeed second behind streaming. The theatrical window is now so short (~40) days that audiences are happy to wait for the increased benefits and reduced cost of watching at home.
This was inevitable. Technology was bound to catch up. Hollywood actually panicked in the 1960s. But those screens were tiny. Nobody wants to see the Godfather on a cheap 1974 Panasonic.
But TV today is at least 55 inch and in crisp 4k resolution. A modern TV is good enough for most content.
It is not Netflix that killed the movieplex. They were just the first to utilise the new tools. The movie theater became the steam locomotive.
55” TV’s have been out for decades they really aren’t a replacement especially when put in a normal living space.
The issue IMO is so few movies are worth any extra effort to see. Steam a new marvel movie and you can pause half way through when you’re a little bored and do something else.
55” TVs have been available for decades but not affordable. I purchased a 60” plasma TV about 2 decades ago but it cost about $2500 dollars. Now I can pick up a 55” 4K TV from Best Buy for $220.
The widespread affordability of large screen TVs has absolutely eroded the value of a movie theater.
A 55” Rear-projection television was way less than a 60” plasma TV back then. Like you I went a little upmarket but from what I recall budget 1080i options were well under a grand.
What matters is the premium over a normal TV and how long it lasts. Spending an extra few hundred for something that lasts 5+ years wasn’t going to break most families budgets. As demonstrated by just how many of those TV’s where sold.
Rear projection TVs always looked like garbage. They were just the best option at the time. There’s a reason no one sells them anymore.
> What matters is the premium over a normal TV and how long it lasts.
I think what matters for this conversation is how close the experience is to a theater. Rear projection 1080i is pretty far.
> Spending an extra few hundred for something that lasts 5+ years wasn’t going to break most families budgets. As demonstrated by just how many of those TV’s where sold.
Do you have some stats for how many were sold? Because I have hunch that sales of large screen TVs had absolutely skyrocketed over the past 20 years.
I had an awesome 1080p rear projection DLP TV in a dark room. A brighter screen works better in a bright room, but you really want a dark room for an optimal experience anyway.
The technology got quite good but inherently took up more space and eventually couldn’t compete on price. Though that also means you’re sitting closer to the screen which made replacement flatscreens in the same space look smaller.
Yeah, these things take a long time to shake out. We still have cable subscriptions because older people watch TV that way, but no one would tell you that linear television is thriving. We're only now seeing sports start to somewhat move to streaming services, when the writing's on the wall for a while.
And would you entertain the idea that few movies are worth seeing because going to the movie theatre is a hard sell for audiences, and studios produce movies that try and adapt to that reality?
Living rooms are not that big to start with. I don't think you actually asked anyone's opinion on this! :D
Small TVs are not comfortable to watch. No one I know is okay with getting a smaller TV and moving their sofa closer. That sounds ridiculous. If there's any comfort to this capatilistic economy, it is the availability of technology at throw away prices. Most people would rather spend on a TV than save the money.
As for the theatre being obsolete, I do agree with you, atleast to some extent. I think everyone is right here. All factors combined is what makes going to the theatre not worth the effort for most of the movies. It's just another nice thing, not what it used to be.
Also, the generational difference too. I think teen and adolescents have a lot of ways to entertain themselves. The craze for movies isn't the same as it used to be. And we grew old(er). With age, I've grown to be very picky with movies.
> Screen size makes little difference for an individual they can just sit closer
This is silly. Most people don’t want to sit in a chair 3 feet from their TV to make it fill more of their visual area. A large number of people are also not watching movies individually. I watch TV with my family far more than I watch alone.
Tell that to every streaming on their tablets sitting on their stomachs. People even watch movies on their phones but they aren’t holding them 15’ away.
No one says the experience of watching on their tablet matches the experience of watching a movie in the theater.
But this isn’t the point. TVs are furniture. People generally have a spot where the TV naturally fits in the room regardless of its size. No one buys a TV and then arranges the rest of their furniture to sit close enough to fill their visual space. If the couch is 8 feet from the TV, it’s 8 feet from the TV.
People watching their tablet on a couch in from of a 55+” TV with a surround sound speaker system says on some level it’s a better experience. I’ve seen plenty of people do this to say it’s common behavior.
> No one buys a TV and then arranges the rest of their furniture to sit close enough to fill their visual space. If the couch is 8 feet from the TV, it’s 8 feet from the TV.
It’s common on open floor plans / large rooms for a couch to end up in a completely arbitrary distance from a TV rather than next to a wall. Further setting up the TV on the width vs length vs diagonal of a room commonly provides two or more options for viewing distance.
For many of the families I know it's less about the quality of movies than the cost and effort of going to the movies.
Going to the movies costs an extra hour for the round-trip to the theater, ~$40 for adult tickets, ~$60 for the kids (2h babysitter or movie tickets), ~$20 for concessions. Whereas watching at home on our 75" TV with homemade popcorn costs a tiny fraction of that, even including electricity and popcorn kernels and the amortized cost of the TV.
As nice as it can be to see a good movie in a theater, it's typically not so much better than watching at home that it's worth an extra hour and more than a hundred dollars.
Well, I'd say that the standard movie format just isn't what people want anymore.
The problem movies have is they have a relatively short amount of time to deliver a complete story. 90 to 120 minutes just isn't a lot of time to be compelling. That's why some of the best movies are split into parts.
Consider Andor as an example. It's some of the best media ever made (IMO) and it simply would not work in the movie format. What makes Andor work is the excellent character development and the time spent building and shaping the universe under a fascist government.
Andor had no length constraints per episode. That allowed it to tell complete satisfying stories with the promise that you'll get more in the next episode.
Telling a detailed story is different than telling a compelling story.
Andor isn’t as compelling as the original movie or significantly longer than the Harry Potter series of movies. Babylon 5 is probably the poster child for a long running space opera series with a planned story arch, but they added plenty of filler because you don’t actually need that much time.
If anything movies tend to be better than TV shows because of the time constraints rather than the budget.
Probably many underestimate the importance of the sound.
A home theater arguably is as much about the subwoofer and surround speakers as it is about the screen.
Especially the subwoofer has a big impact. When you feel the sound it's literally impactful. At other times, it really helps immerse yourself in the scene, even if it's not a typical bass sound, but like background noise in a busy city street.
The properly configured subwoofer makes you feel like you're there, while it just falls flat on a regular speaker.
That said, the fewest people have a home theater setup, so it's probably irrelevant to why people stopped going to the cinema.
I remember being amazed when the Michael Keaton’s Batman movie was released on VHS in the same year as the theatrical release. I had never seen a movie come out for home use that fast.
Movie theaters can compete by installing LED screens. My company has a movie screen sized LED screen and it looks so much better than modern digital projectors.
I believe the Academy Awards and a few other things too also influence this. The rules to be eligible still very much favor legacy studios IIRC. But, with this that may change? Hard to say. I know that quite a few Netflix movies have had theatrical runs at random mom and pop theaters in Cali so they could meet eligibility requirements for the various awards.
> Frankenstein and Death by Lightning were two standout successes recently.
IMHO Frankenstein" was pretty terrible. The makeup was awful, the effects were cheap, the monster... wasn't a monster! The entire premise depends on him being a monster, not some sort of misunderstood, sympathetic EMO.
> The entire premise depends on him being a monster, not some sort of misunderstood, sympathetic EMO.
This is a misconception on a similar level to thinking the monster's name is Frankenstein: "As depicted by Shelley, the creature is a sensitive, emotional person whose only aim is to share his life with another sentient being like himself."
Netflix has always had one or three stand-out projects over a year, but is that what we want from studios? It is like the tech model: 1 big success for 10+ duds (the VC show) or another superhero installment (the Google/Meta cash cow movie).
> If WB was any good, would they have been snatched up by Netflix?
Yes because the situation of WB has nothing to do with their performance.
In 1990s they merged with TIME publishing right before the internet killed all magazines. In 2000s with AOL right before th dot com bubble. In 2010s with AT&T who realised they needed a shit ton of money to roll out 5G so they took a massive loan and charged it to Warner debt.
So WARNER keeps performing and the business side keeps adding debt from horrible decisions
Honestly Warner would have been fine if they hadn't been saddled with the debt that AT&T used to buy them. It wasn't an issue of Warner's business performance.
It's about all the other projects that would have had great quality but did not secure funding because Netflix prefers to fund mass-produced mediocrity.
In Germany we have a saying "Even a blind hen sometimes finds a grain of corn".
> It's about all the other projects that would have had great quality but did not secure funding because Netflix prefers to fund mass-produced mediocrity. In Germany we have a saying "Even a blind hen sometimes finds a grain of corn".
In parallel, they're also starting to downgrade their quality. In the latest season of Stranger Things there's a wild amount of in-scene exposition, where the characters explain what's happening while it's happening. I did some digging and learned that they may be dumbing down their shows because they know users typically look at their phones while watching Netflix and users are more likely to drop off of a show if they don't know what's going on.
Frankenstein looks oddly cheap and fake with really bad lighting in many scenes. You can tell they used the volume virtual production to shoot scenes and it doesn't look great.
They have a “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.” Sure it has a lot of crap but they also have major hits like Squid Games, Stranger Things, (both became cultural phenomena) and Daredevil.
i dont think this should matter, plenty of conglomerates have brands across quality levels.
think old navy, gap, banana republic.
the quality difference is important for the conglomerate same with netflix vs hbo, the corporate benefit is being able to save on costs around like amortizing the corporate side of things (accounting, marketing, real estate, research ect)
Same with Extraordinary Attorney Woo and a lot of "originals" on netflix. They'll just buy the rights to air something and then slap their name on it like they made it. That said, I actually appreciate them looking for good media produced overseas and buying up the rights to those shows to bring them to the US. It's a good thing (although it'd be nice if put some effort in making sure there are always quality subs) but it can cause some people to think netflix is producing more good shows than they actually are.
I have 459 titles on my IMDB watchlist and a tiny percentage of it is available on Netflix (if at all), but this is anecdotal and might have to do something to where I live.
Netflix outside of the US is a very different experience.
In the US, it's mostly their own productions and older content they explicitly acquired, but elsewhere, especially in markets that don't have a local HBO or Disney streaming service, they have incredible backlogs.
I remember finding basically everything I could wish for on there when traveling in SE Asia almost a decade ago, compared to a still decent offering in Western Europe, and mostly cobwebs in the US.
I don't want you to think I'm picking on you; but, I've been thinking about the MBA-bullshittism "consolidation" for a while. It's really a euphemism for "trust formation", right? It seems like we fought tooth-and-nail just 100 years ago to set up real antitrust laws, with real teeth... and now every industry is "consolidated". What's going on in health and seed and cars makes me seethe.
Apple is at least trying to fill their old niche. It seems quite telling that the only company truing to do the whole “prestige TV” thing is a kind of side-project for a hardware company. At least nobody can buy them, though.
Warner Bros has had their best summer in years (Sinners, Superman, etc). HBO still makes highly regarded prestige TV series (The Last Of Us, Task, etc). This is just false.
The Crown, Stranger Things, Unbelievable, Russian Doll (wow, just wow), Orange Is The New Black, Narcos, Narcos: Mexico, GLOW, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Ozark, Nobody Wants This, Altered Carbon, Dirk Gently, Mindhunters, The Queen's Gambit, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
And that's just what I can remember off the top of my head. And that's my taste, there's more not to my taste like Squid Game, Wednesday, Bridgerton, etc. And not including the films, documentaries, shorts, etc. they done like Love, Death and Robots.
The majority of that list is quite old. Have you seen what they're doing now? Not saying every single thing they make anymore is bad, but the average quality is far lower than it used to be.
> The majority of that list is quite old. Have you seen what they're doing now?
Adolescence (which won big at the Emmy's this year), Stranger Things, The Beast in Me, Last Samurai Standing, A Man on the Inside, The Gentlemen, Absentia, Baby Reindeer, Ripley, Arcane, Squid Game, Dynamite Kiss, Delhi Crime, etc.
imo, that's the worst thing about Netflix. its not that they don't produce good series, its that when they do they have a high peobability of getting cancelled.
I feel like people who say this never watched a lot of TV before Netflix. Every popular show overstays its welcome and gets cancelled once people get bored. That's just how TV works. Netflix isn't even the worst offender.
Netflix doesn't wait for people to get bored. It canceled Kaos the same month they released it! It had good reviews and a lot of binges but that didn't save it from the axe.
Dead Boy Detectives was canceled less than 5 months after it was released.
With so much competing for our time there's no way everyone is going to jump on every show immediately after it gets released and watch it several times over so whatever bullshit metrics netflix is using look impressive enough for them to give the show's fans a satisfying conclusion.
If you watched TV before netflix you might remember that sometimes it took two or more entire seasons before a show became popular. Some extremely popular and successful shows were like that and would never have happened if netflix had put them out.
If you unsubscribe for more than a year then Netflix will delete your profile data entirely and discoverability gets so much worse. I signed up for a month to watch Star Trek: Prodigy S2 right when it dropped and was so offput by the "vanilla" recommendations of a fresh profile I really didn't see any point but to cancel it as soon as I finished that one exact show I knew I cared to watch and could find only with the search feature despite it being a new release.
Of course Jessica Jones is on Disney+ now. I think most of those others are still on Netflix, but it is a bit of a problem for them - when they don't own the content they eventually lose the ability to stream it, especially as the content owners have entered the streaming space too.
Man a second season would be so great. They could even recast the main character, given their personality lives in a brain disk. But I'd rather they didn't.
How are Netflix created contents profitable? I guess Netflix pays shows based on user time spent, and a Netflix show is profitable if users spend time on it, and not on other shows?
I actually think that’s the opposite of Netflix. TV shows rarely make it past a second season, as soon as there’s even a mild drop in viewing figures they drop a property like a hot potato.
Note the OP's algo was *while* profitable. You're focused on shows that never make it. I think this is true of the cash cows, while dogs are historically (with only one or two channels so limited broadcast bandwidth) networks could be far more brutal while Netflix needs a much bigger catalog.
>it frequently produces mediocre or worse content. Will the same happen for Warner?
HBO hasn't produced good content in years at this point. Since before the last season or two of Game of Thrones, I should think. The other brands in Warner didn't even really have that much prestige.
It is probably not just a Netflix issue. But it is also quite a philosophical question as to who is to blame. The consumers who watch and pay, or the ones who fund the mediocrity.
It is definitely sad to see Netflix turn from their early phase, where they valued quality over quantity, and since have reversed that.
I just want to see more great art that really sticks, has ambitions and something to tell, and values my time.
>I just want to see more great art that really sticks, has ambitions and something to tell, and values my time.
Its out there, there just isn't great curation and in a world of ever increasing content more people just dont ever find it and accept whatever mediocrity they find.
I'd have to be younger, 3 notches to the left of Lenin, and in a perpetual billionaires-are-evil rage mode to find it compelling. Got through most of the first season, which is a rare point to quit a show... we either quit after the first episode, or make it all the way to the end. Painfully bad, and not half as much as the stupid Sex and the City way either.
In 2009 a Turner Broadcasting executive stood in front of employees and said they are not worried about Online streaming because it only covered 15 minutes of watching time among consumers. TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, HBO, Time Inc were all under the same ownership umbrella along with the entire MGM catalog Ted Turner had acquired at the cost of losing control of his company. There were executives who knew what they were doing but some were performative - using buzz words and bravado to hide that they had no idea. Many were trying to extract as much as possible from both ends - 50% of revenue from consumers and 50% from advertisers. Even when those two were in direct conflict with each-other’s interests. They believed content was king and so they invested in content, instead of distribution. They hoarded their back catalog for years.
In the mean time Netflix started with 3 CDs per month plans and when they began streaming on 2007 we didn’t use it at start because we assumed that it would cut out of the 3 movies allotment. So we were scared to use it for a while. Yet we used it regularly - because unlike the cable service, streaming didn’t have ads. And ads were massive massive abuse and waste of time for consumers. You can benchmark the level of abuse by the types of ads in the super bowl: Alcohol, crypto, gambling, cars…
The reality is that cable was a paid premium service, unlike broadcast TV, which was free and littered with ads. Mix the two and you lose the golden goose.
That said, the bravado of that executive stuck with me since then.
Everything is now re-consolidated under different media companies now. Instead of Ted Turner we have Larry Ellison, and Netflix, and Disney.
So I think the biggest question is, what form of entertainment will eventually supplant streaming services? Whatever it is (or will be) will almost certainly be disregarded by most people.
AI generated by demand, most likely. Or AI generated by indie creators who have a vision but not a budget, and are provided with a platform to create content easily.
> The reality is that cable was a paid premium service, unlike broadcast TV, which was free and littered with ads.
The reality is, most cable channels had ads from day one. Less ads than most broadcast stations (which made up most of the channels you had on cable at the start anyways) but still a lot of the first cable-only channels had ads from the start. WTBS had ads on cable in 1976. MSG/USA had ads on cable starting in 1977. CNN had ads on day one in 1980. MTV had ads on day one in 1981.
I cancelled all my content subscriptions and I'm back to torrenting. I barely watch anything made my Netflix regardless. I think either Dark or the 3rd season of Stranger Things was the last time. Snyder's SciFi movie wasn't much good either. By now the streaming services are en route to become as terrible as whatever they were set out to replace. Once one of them started heavily advertising their own productions everywhere inside their apps I would've cancelled any remaining subscription at the latest.
I torrent too, but I think it makes sense to buy/rent or sub to a service in many cases. Companies look at views and revenue to decide what content to actually make. So, especially for ongoing series that I'm enjoying I want them to keep renewing it.
I subscribe to ad-free versions of services so I don't really run into ads a lot unless I'm trying to watch something live on TV.
Irrelevant to me. The amount of TV shows I enjoyed that got canned after S01 has burnt me so much that I wait until I know if there's a sensible finale at the end or if it ends on a cliffhanger that'll never be resolved before I even dive into a new show.
It’s better than ever with stuff like jellyfin/plex and all the sonarr/radarr… apps. I’ve been running bitmagnet too which has been great for actually finding torrents.
In a society that’s built on the foundations of perpetual profit growth it is. Sometimes you just can’t innovate, so instead of improving the product you cut the costs and enshittify. We’re in an enshittification regime right now.
Why are there alternating cycles of innovation and enshittification? I think it’s because investors are always trying to pull forward profit, but because they only have a 10 year horizon on investment strategy they tend to create cycles that are around that same period. If there was less investment, the innovation would be slower but the reactionary enshittification would be lessened too.
What's funny is that Onion article uses "a blockbuster $112 billion deal" because in 1998 a figure that high was so preposterous it helped with the parody. They'd need to add a few zeros today.
I never imagined that a service that ships DVD via mail would one day buy Warner Brothers. It is amazing how innovation and focus can change the game. Someday a new startup will piggy bank on Netflix and probably buy it later.
More like how did these companies drop the ball so bad. Most notably Sony which produced TVs, Computers, DVD players, Media Centers. They owned a movie studio and record label. They also have in house expertise with cloud content distribution via PlayStation.
Unfortunately for them around the time of Netflix's ascent they were embroiled with all kinds of financial issues but still the mind boggles
> Most notably Sony which produced TVs, Computers, DVD players, Media Centers. They owned a movie studio and record label. They also have in house expertise with cloud content distribution via PlayStation.
I feel like some of those very diversified company tend to be the one who struggle to evolve and adapt because some part of their business are worried about being cannibalized by the new business opportunity (like how streaming “killed” physical media). I.e, if you are the director of the “DVD player division” you have an active interest in killing any potential streaming division. Reality is of course more complex than this, but this is the kind of story we sometimes hear off when "too big to fail" companies end up missing a major shift.
> Most notably Sony which produced TVs, Computers, DVD players, Media Centers. They owned a movie studio and record label.
They still do all those things? And they're still successful in most of them? They haven't "failed" or "dropped the ball" based on any metric I can think of. I'm not sure what you're referring to here to be honest.
They have a streaming platform though! Sony Pictures Core. Seems half the comments in this submission is just straight up guessing and assuming whatever guesses they make are correct. Would take like 30 seconds to just fact-check what you're about to write.
It looks like it’s mostly focused on renting and buying movies on demand. We are talking about pay a fee and streaming all you want.
That’s a completely different market. They are not trying to compete with Netflix and in fact have a deal with them that Netflix has first right of refusal to stream any Sony film
> It looks like it’s mostly focused on renting and buying movies on demand. We are talking about pay a fee and streaming all you want.
Then you might have to look a bit closer :) There are plans out there that give you a fixed monthly fee and stream all you want, so that effectively makes it a streaming service even by your definition.
Not saying they are trying to compete with Netflix, but they do have a streaming service.
No you’re being pedantic. Compare Amazon Prime Video subscription content to Sony’s subscription content.
Is Amazon creating new content and giving other streaming services first dibs on it? Are they putting their back catalog content on other streaming services en masse?
Is Sony spending billions of dollars to produce content to go on their own streaming service like Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Peacock, HBO Max (for now)?
Heck is HBO releasing theatrical movies and giving first run streaming rights to other streaming services?
You’re not making serious arguments if you don’t see the difference between every other streaming service and what Sony is doing or seeing what companies with both streaming services and movie studios like Warner Bros, Disney, and Paramount are doing.
You're making this way more complicated than it is, no need to compare against others to understand if what Sony is doing is a streaming service or not.
So I guess back to basics:
> A streaming media service, also known as streaming service, is an online provider that allows users to watch or listen to content, such as films, TV series, music, or podcasts, over the Internet
Fairly simple, I think at least. So with that, is what Sony is doing a streaming service, regardless of what HBO/Amazon/their mother is doing? Yes, in my humble opinion, what Sony is offering lets users "watch or listen to content, such as films, TV series, music, or podcasts, over the Internet", so it is a streaming service.
I disagree it's pedantic, it's just understanding what terms mean, in this particular case, what "streaming service" means.
These are two businesses, both under the Sony name: content production and content distribution. Very likely they are two different divisions with different P&Ls.
Every “streaming service” is a distributor. Some of them are also content producers.
Content production is also a bizarre mini world of VC-type funding and shell/temporary production corporations. Some companies lean heavily into that, some do a more traditional in-house studio model, some do both.
I'm sure everybody with a Bravia TV is super excited. If you have a streaming service no one knows or cares about do you even have a streaming service?
Yeah and how many of those are subscribing to Sony’s streaming service where they don’t even put their releases on during the initial streaming release window and doesn’t have any of their popular backlog content?
There isn’t an iOS app or a Roku app. Even AppleTV+ is on Roku. This isn’t a serious streaming service.
Sony bought Crunchyroll + Funimation but I have to admit that I'm sick of normie anime like Bleach and I crave the kind of things that you find on HDIVE like Backstabbed in a Backwater Dungeon: My Trusted Companions Tried to Kill Me, but Thanks to the Gift of an Unlimited Gacha I Got LVL 9999 Friends and Am Out for Revenge on My Former Party Members and the World. [1]
[1] If the Anime News Network finishes reviewing it doesn't make the cut
Companies didn't, leadership did. For a big, fat check. And they're happily retired now, sitting in their expensive villas with millions on their balance.
They couldn't care less about your happy childhood memories that the content produced by their predecessors engraved in your mind.
> Someday a new startup will piggy bank on Netflix and probably buy it later.
I think what history shows us is that the modern monopolies managed to destroy antitrust to the point where nobody will ever do to them what they did to others.
People said that a generation ago as well, and the one before that. Yeah monopolies make it hard, but every one of them eventually crumbles to the next wave of innovation.
They have to as a stop gap before going on generating full feature film on demand. Those streaming service are all struggling to have an attractive enough catalog for an extended period of time for a lot of folks with their shitty pricing policies.
That's absolutely not the case. Demand for physical media not only continues to exist but it's growing as streaming services prove undependable at keeping shows available, and are willing to censor/edit shows at a whim.
Not sure how many of you have WBD shares with its rather tumultuous past (spin off from ATT, the Bill Hwang mess), but if you've picked up shares on the cheap in the past few years sub $10, congratulations.
"Under the terms of the agreement, each WBD shareholder will receive $23.25 in cash and $4.501 in shares of Netflix common stock for each share of WBD common stock outstanding at the closing of the transaction. "
Note: this is after completion of the current splitting of WBD; as you'd expect Netflix wants the catalog and production but they're not taking the sports and some other pieces. The left over / newly revived Discovery Global will likely be a hollowed-out shell of less desirable properties saddled with a bunch of debt.
Thing is that Netflix didn't really succeed at that goal. HBO was and still is the gold standard for premium cable content. Netflix instead decided to go for the bottom 70% of the market, and the quality of their shows reflects that.
In fact the very reason for this purchase is that they desperately need help on the creative side.
Netflix is what it is today because all the studios trying to compete with their tech was an even bigger disaster than Netflix competing on content.
I don't think the Netflix vs HBO comparison is fair.
HBO was always one channel in a home. They produced a limited amount of high-quality content. You watch it a few times a week and network TV reality shows or whatever other trash the rest of the week.
Netflix wanted/wants to be the only channel in cord-cutting and cord-never homes. When that's your goal you have to produce mostly crap and some good stuff.
The "Max" fiasco was pretty much the strangest branding mistake ever. Not just an obvious mistake but it was honestly kind of a mystery that anyone would even be tempted to do that.
Remember when Netflix almost split its brand with "Quickster"? It was the dying DVD by mail service, but the whole debacle did nothing but confuse people.
It's always great to read about how the people the own the means of distribution aquire also the means of production, trying to create a meta-monopoly. /sarcasm
I'm rooting for someone on the regulary side disliking all the crap that Netflix produces, and just shuts the whole thing down. Those 5 billion they'd have to pay for a breakup fee in that case would have me feeling better that I couldn't cancel their service, since my family pesters me to keep it.
If this goes like all the other media mergers this year, the only regulatory scrutiny will involve Netflix allowing the executive branch to install a censor / ombudsman that has final say on their news and documentary content.
Technically, you're right. I feel like there needs to be new terms to describe though the staleness of the industry. "Oligopoly" just doesn't have the same ring to it.
How many competitors do you need? Apple, Disney, Netflix, Comcast, and Paramount are five major competitors.
If you as a hypothetical video content creator want to get your content distributed to a wide audience, you have five companies to go to, you can publish it to any of the video on demand services, try to monetize it through ads on YouTube, etc.
We aren’t in the 30s anymore where the only way you could see content was by going to the movie theater.
Before HBO Max was a thing, they were already selling distribution rights of content to Netflix. No one said that was a monopoly.
> How many competitors do you need? Apple, Disney, Netflix, Comcast, and Paramount are five major competitors.
I actually already agree that the number is not the problem. I can't articulate better, but somehow these don't actually feel like "competitors" in the classical market sense, but rather as stars orbiting the same center, as they're all moving in the same direction, and from time to time merging with one another.
> IMO I think we are going to see Paramount, STARZ and AMC bought up soon.
You do know that David Ellison (Larry Ellison's son), through his Skydance Media, acquired Paramount Global (including its parent, National Amusements) in a merger completed in August 2025.
This deal is an indicator of huge changes in global film & TV production.
Hollywood's struggles amplified after the writer's strike with a perfect storm of issues around unionisation, technology, fragmenting audiences, new formats, asset liabilities and enormous competition to the east.
Now LA soundstages are empty while production centres in Europe, UK, India, China, Nigeria are booming and vast new studios cropping up in the Middle East.
Proposed tariffs will do little to stem this tide as the money has moved on already.
In addition, traditional production methods are unsustainable and decision-making is opaque in an era where sustainability, transparency and democratisation are taking over.
The main benefit to Netflix is of course the IP, but the traditional studio assets of WB have their days numbered.
Heard of one production needing to do a one day reshoot on something. Something that could easily have been done in LA. It was cheaper to fly everyone out to some European country for 3 days and do the pickups.
The business side of Hollywood has been imploding for the past few years. It just costs too much to film there vs other places. Tariffs will not change that. The tax incentives are gone and the must have on set is too high.
Not sure how netflix is going to digest that pill they just swallowed. 83 billion is a lot. Is is about 3x their total gross per year. I do not think they can raise prices too much with out shedding subscribers. WB has already taken out AOL, ATT (recovering), and Discovery. Netflix could be next.
The deal also spins out the linear TV into a different company. Can that company survive? Its going to be tough going. Havent looked but I would bet a good portion of the debt they took on to do the divestiture from AT&T is being pumped into that company.
You know that meme of Jack Sparrow riding a sinking ship to shore?
That's how I imagined WBD. David Zaslav gets to transition from the leader of a reality show slophouse to one of the biggest power players in Hollywood, and all be has to do is let the slophouse sink and declare himself captain of the next ship.
The value of the back catalog is still substantial for years to come. But you are right about the landscape changing dramatically for new productions.
Hollywood was premised on economies of scale. Concentrate a lot of talent in one place and then put infrastructure in place for block buster productions to happen (studios, tech, money).
That's being disrupted by several things:
- LA and the US are no longer cheap places to be. A lot of blockbuster content is filmed outside the US at this point. Canada, Europe, and elsewhere. LA and Hollywood are still important but mainly because that's where the money is. It's not necessarily where the money is being spent.
- Independent content producers self publishing content on platforms like Youtube and growing audiences rivaling those of popular TV shows.
- AI is starting to drive down the cost of special effects, digital processing, etc. And it's probably also going to erode the value of needing actors at all for especially a lot of the less glamorous roles (think all the extras in big movie productions). This is a sensitive topic in particularly Hollywood. But not enough to delay the inevitable by very long.
All this is driving down the cost of creating decent quality things that people still want to pay for. That's a critical distinction. There's a lot of ad sponsored stuff that people don't really pay for as well. To make money, you need quality. AI is working its way up the chain here, with increasingly better stuff. But most of it is still pretty low value.
But things like soap operas, third rate series that Netflix bulk purchases from places like South Korea, etc. are all fair game for AI.
Netflix adding the WB back catalog is a great move for them. Their own back catalog isn't strong enough to keep people and expanding with newly created production it is a very slow and expensive process. And they've had some flops and cost control issues. There just isn't enough there to keep me permanently. I tend to sign up for just a few months and then cancel. I'm probably going to cancel soon again. HBO did not actually offer their streaming services in Germany until recently. And I was considering trying that for a while. Now I might not have to.
Consolidations like this were bound to happen. In the mid 2010s we had a good thing, only one streaming platform with pretty much every movie and tv show. Then every studio got greedy and spawned their own platform, forcing netflix to produce their own shows.
Now you have 20 tv networks all with their own subscription and all losing money.
This is the issue with content production being owned by the distributors too. It's too profitable to own the vertical because each piece of content is an effective monopoly, because to participate in culture requires watching it (piracy notwithstanding). Therefore, the "fix" is to regulate this monopoly - by making sure that monopoly cannot exist without cost. One "simple" way is, imho, to make content production and ownership of distribution strictly prohibited in the same entity, and to also enforce mechanical licensing of content (such that you cannot have content exclusives in the distribution platforms).
Movie theatres have similar restrictions with film studios in the past - to prevent this very monopoly. It's high time we brought it back.
Yeah the best way to fix this would be to enforce the separation of distribution and production via the Paramount Decree. Separate content production from the streaming service itself. Get rid of the vertical integration plaguing the industry and we'll get better content since quality will be the territory on which studios have to compete with each other again.
>only one streaming platform with pretty much every movie and tv show
doesn't this move reduce the number of streaming services by one? we'll see how the details turn out, but if I was paying for netflix and hbo max, now I only need to pay for netflix
Yes but it doesnt increase the amount of shows or movies on any of them. This new amount of content will just feed into the rotating library, not create one big library of content always available. So in fact you are loosing providers and loosing content at the same time, yet prices will still keep going up...
>Consolidations like this were bound to happen. In the mid 2010s we had a good thing, only one streaming platform with pretty much every movie and tv show.
This has been the narrative about the state of streaming services for years now. People upset that content is too fragmented across services. Now we get some significant consolidation and people are upset. They just ignore that angle and find a different one to gripe about.
House of Cards is the original Netflix Original, and it came out in 2013. Prime started competing with Netflix the same year.
But the other platforms - Disney+ (2019), Apple TV (2016/2019), HBO Max (2020), Peacock (2020), Paramount+/CBS All Access (2021 / 2014) - are all later.
> Combination Will Offer More Choice and Greater Value for Consumers, Create More Opportunities for the Creative Community and Generate Shareholder Value
No doubt about the last part, but how does merging two giants create "More Choice"? I know corporate double-speak is already out of control and I know they're writing whatever they can do avoid regulators who surely are looking into the acquisition, but surely these executives cannot believe acquisitions lead to more choice, right?
I guess you are in the US. For you, WB content was already available.
But you see, they never bothered to make that content available for most of the rest of the world. Netflix, on the other hand, is available most anywhere. This is exactly what it says on the can - more choice and greater value for me.
What's written on the can reads "please don't sue us, we're not a monopoly, and we will not gouge users".
On the other hand Netflix will make its subscribers fund everything without reducing their income, and will not give these subscribers at least half of that content, because, why not?
Netflix acquiring WB’s content will not necessarily lead to all of it being available for streaming to you in any given country. Content licensing is complicated, to put it mildly.
Well if I can cancel my HBO Max it will probably be a zero-sum thing (all the crappy "discovery" content they tacked on was just annoying and I have little interest in their "sports" offerings)
The unfortunate reality is that HBO may have less content but there's also less garbage. I'm constantly blown away by how mediocre everything on Netflix is. I only have it because it's bundled into myobile bill at a legacy discount which makes it only a few dollars a month. I wouldn't pay full price for Netflix now and I will likely remove it altogether if they do another price hike that adds a few more dollars beyond my current discount (~70%).
> HBO may have less content but there's also less garbage
If you leave the featured areas and venture into any of the categories, you will see that HBO is also full of junk. HBO -> Browse by Genre -> A-Z -> any of them are full of junk.
The Netflix featured pages are more geared to showing you stuff you haven't seen yet, while HBO is geared toward showing you popular stuff, even if you have watched it on HBO.
I am not, and WB was available via local options here (Southern European country).
For me who isn't a Netflix customer (the group which is larger than the group of people who have Netflix, obviously), the choice gets less.
And obviously anti-trust regulation doesn't care about the amount of choices for Netflix customers specifically, it cares about amount of choices for consumers at large, which will decrease with this change.
I think it's unlikely to change because most likely the content was not available for legal reasons, not technical. That's why for example when they re-release some shows they have to switch out to completely different music – the rights were not cleared in the first place and it'd be a huge hassle to go back and negotiate with every rightholder
I don’t know what do you mean by “most of the rest of the world” but it’s widely available in the American continent and Europe coverage will be almost complete in the next month(s):
Netflix buying WB doesn't mean that licensing immediately becomes available worldwide.
Netflix can provide its own content everywhere around the globe because they are the sole owner of it. The distribution rights to WB properties outside of the US will belong to completely different legal entities (even if those entities have WB in them).
There should be never any talk about "Shareholder Value". Shareholders do not create content, they do not subscribe at scale. Once your customer is no longer the focus, it's downhill from there, and it's been downhill for a WHILE.
I killed my Netflix sub over a year ago and I never even think about it. It's all dull, empty-calorie background TV.
The sad part is how the iconic HBO brand, already beaten by WBD into a pulp, is just going to merge with this average-ness and fade. End of an era, indeed.
So when they say "Consumers", it should really have been "Netflix Customers", as for everyone else there is less choice, only already paying Netflix users get more content.
I'd really prefer better quality over quantity. Everything just feels like slop now and I find myself mostly only enjoying older movies. I find it's incredibly rare when I can actually find something half decent that's new on Netflix.
Edit: Btw I find Max is like a better quality version of Netflix. But after a while I have the same problem there too. I find myself just watching something on YouTube instead most times
I cancelled my NetFlix subscription already, what, 7 years ago, for that reason... However, it is not just NetFlix. Most newish movies don't do anything for me. I prefer a movie from the 90s (or even earlier) over almost anything produced in the last 5 to 10 years. It is likely a generational thing, and a case of old man yelling at clouds. If studios think effects are more important then the actual story, well then, so be it.
It’s fun to pick a year and do a deep dive on everything that was released to theaters (old newspapers with movie times are great for this) - so much crap you never heard about, unless it was phenomenally bad.
HBO isn't available at all on it's own. It's exclusively sublicensed (until the end of this year) to Sky which has a terrible terrible user experience and of course is another subscription.
Two days ago there was an announcement that HBO Max is to start in Germany in January. Let's see how that develops after the acquisition.
Now they don't have to go negotiate for every WB content item. As it stands, subscribers might or might not get WB things, same as all the other IP holders that are playing hard to get. Otherwise, they might have to contract some seasons of a show from one holder and some from another, and maybe not at all sometimes.
Maybe they mean more content will be produced, which I believe. But I'd also argue that we really don't need more content on Netflix, we need higher quality. Netflix is drowning in a sea of mediocrity to the point where I have almost given up on investing in a new show because almost all of them reek of lazy writing and good-enough-but-not-outstanding direction. There are exceptions, but they are damn hard to find.
> No doubt about the last part, but how does merging two giants create "More Choice"?
This is performative marketing for the regulators to allow the merger. No one (including the regulators) believes this, and it won't come to pass. ("More choice" won't, I mean, the merger will and a lot of regulators and politicians involved will end up with new cars, boats, and kids' college tuitions paid.)
Adding Warner Bros. catalog will naturally lead to more titles to choose from for Netflix users. The choice of streaming services will be slimmer though. It will be interesting to see how regulators see it.
Hopefully I'll finally get to see Chernobyl and Game of Thrones. It's virtually impossible outside of US or Europe to legally stream so many movies and series.
Does anyone who's participated in M&A know how they come up with a breakup fee? I believe this one is $5 Billion (per Bloomberg), and Adobe <-> Figma was $1 Billion.
Interested to understand the modeling that goes into it.
Based on some experience, it's like a bond to appear in court. The number is mostly an arbitrary calculation designed to discourage you from not following through.
Like everything else it's just a negotiated figure. Arguments to and fro would include the likelihood of breakup (such as regulatory risk, unforeseen events), how disruptive the whole process is and also simply how desperate the buyer or seller is.
There's no modeling, it's a punishment or incentive. The intention is to inflict financial pain.
There’s a rough baseline of “cost to be acquired” and you start there, and do some doubling or other increases.
Basically, being acquired is a pain in the assets and you want it to be worth your while to pursue it, even if it falls through, otherwise the board is looking at getting replaced.
This should never have been allowed to happen by the regulators, but in this administration there are no checks, it’s a free for all and Netflix knows it. It saw the opportunity and went for it
Netflix seems to hate theatrical releases, so I hope this doesn't affect any small cinemas that want to screen older WB titles. I know when Disney bought Fox, it got a bit harder to book films.
I'm a fan. Injecting a huge catalog into Netflix is a win for consumers who want just one subscription. And injecting studio talent into Netflix (assuming the merge gives WB creatives influence) can only help.
HBO's tech sucks. Apple is (in my experience) hard to get running in the Android ecosystem. Most of the other options are too narrow in catalog, or ad ridden.
Consolidating streaming services down to a handful of offerings will make price competition more fierce because they'll have richer catalogs to do battle with.
Netflix have never been a streaming service to put loads of good content on their service and keep it there. I would imagine they will use this injection of content to drip feed and slowly rotate movie franchises in order to keep users interested.
> Consolidating streaming services down to a handful of offerings will make price competition more fierce because they'll have richer catalogs to do battle with.
On one hand it is good that the maybe the streaming will be split into less subscriptions, but on other hand, I think the only way forward is to simply prohibit exclusive streaming rights. I.e. any movie streaming rights should be sold to anyone who wants to buy them for the same price. That is only way to enable competition in streaming.
This is going to be an off the wall statement given this audience, but WWE signed an exclusive deal with NetFlix for 10 years I think in an effort to counter their main competitor AEW, which signed a deal with HBO Max shortly before that. Now they'll both potentially be on the same platform, which WWE will hate as it will be interesting in having two competitive pro wrestling promotions on the same platform.
WWE dont have the clout they used to. I remember when they were the number 1 viewed website on the internet. Nowadays the MMA & UFC is much more valuable.
How does this work? I assume there would be one parent company at the end and if that's an American company what does any other country can say about it? Sure if they incorporated a child company there they might interfere, but they could also just close the company to deal with the situation and go forward with the merger.
If a US company operates in a different country as well, it has to abide by the laws of that country, or leave it. For example, Adobe's acquisition of Figma was blocked by the UK and EU regulators, despite them both being US companies headquartered in San Francisco. They could have chosen to leave the UK and EU markets entirely, in which case their merger would have been able to proceed, but they wouldn't have been able to sell anything to UK/EU citizens.
Considering the words they're using across the announcement, it seems they're well aware what this will trigger, everything seems carefully chosen so someone can later point at this announcement and say "See, we think this will add MORE user choice, not less, which is good for competition!".
Great re-iteration of my point :) Written for anti-trust regulators, intentionally misusing the words they'd use, but with very different meaning. Hopefully professionals will see through their thin veil.
It is not a lie though. WB content is not globally available, Netflix content is.
I for one, welcome access to stuff that WB has been sitting on without letting me pay them for it.
It is a lie. You are holding on a possible short time gain while ignoring history proven long-term harm of reduced competition, which will lead to higher prices, less innovation, and fewer choices for consumers.
USA anti-trust process is a joke, it is shame that so many company with global footprint relies on that.
> WB content is not globally available, Netflix content is.
Neither are "globally available" as "globally" includes countries that are currently under US embargo, and both those companies are US companies who (supposedly) follow US law.
What you're welcoming isn't "I didn't have access before, now I do!" but rather "I could give Company A money to see this, now I can give company B money to see the same!" which I guess you're happy about, but other's obviously see it for what it is, no practical change except for shareholders.
When all is said and done there’s going to be a few players left and they’re all going to be American by the current looks of things. You could argue movies were already like this, but for television that’s quite the change as most countries had many television production companies and stations.
Now it seems like they’ll be a few global media companies and maybe some local production houses that have to sell their stuff to these guys or setup their own services like the BBC does with iPlayer in the UK, with somewhat limited success compared to these giants.
They won't be American. The balance of power has already shifted east. There are now more productions, more money and more facilities east of Madrid than west of it.
You might be referring to the remnants of broadcast television. I'm referring to the screen-based productions capturing the eyeballs of tomorrow.
One serious strand of America's whip of many thongs is the inability or refusal to acknowledge the rise in power and influence elsewhere.
As Gandalf - the last remaining talkshow host - gets pulled off the bridge into the abyss, he looks up to see a motley brigade of multi-cultural hobbits dashing for the surface with their wits and wallets thankfully intact.
Please excuse my excruciating reimagining of your wild fantasy metaphor.
Something doesn't happen until it happens. And even when it happens, it might fail.
So far China hasn't broken down many walls, for example I'm fairly sure they can't do what TSMC does.
And for media... guess what, they need to open a lot of things up. There's a lot more freedom of speech in the US, so US media can be about a lot of things interesting to the rest of the world. The US even has a lot media catering to other countries (for example media targetting Chinese audiences).
I mean, China could try that, we have the examples of Japanese and South Korean media, but both of those are democratic, and even then, it took them a long time to develop. Plus neither of them are near the levels of influence US media has.
Look I get how Ne Zha 2 was a big success and showed signs of good production quality, but lets be honest: The movie was boring. I'm sure the mostly Chinese audience that sat with me in the theater enjoyed it but I fell asleep halfway in.
The "east" has more work to do to capture that magic that the western imperial order (Hollywood) has wrought upon the world.
I will continue to watch and observe how things play out.
So the companies in charge of distributing the content are American-based multinationals; production leaks out of the US toward prettier places and more amicable laborers; if you’re American and want to tag along—in or behind the scenes—you’re going to need a passport or a visa.
Ne Zha 2 comes to mind. One of the largest box offices ever and it came out this year. In my opinion: Good attempt but I dont see them supplanting Western media yet.
The cycling fans among us were quite bashed around over the past few years getting access to cycling coverage in Europe. The were the glory years where GCN Plus was extremely cheap (it was too cheap) and the coverage was ad-free and excellent. Then we got bashed around to Eurosport which was fine, more expensive but still ad-free. Then we got moved to Discovery+. They weaseled out of their ad-free coverage for a bunch of races and jacked up the price because they bundled the cycling in with football and we suffered a price hike from $3-5 per month to $30+ a month, yes a 1000% hike, over the past 5 years.
At this rate Netflix isn’t building a streaming service, it’s building a monopoly starter pack. Give it a few more acquisitions and the “Are you still watching?” prompt will legally qualify as a government notice.
2023: "A Party in Cannes Announces a New Hollywood Power Player". Something like ~300 attendees, probably $10 million. Zaslav and Graydon Carter co-hosted. There were rumored to be thousands of bottles of Dom champagne, which is probably inexpensive in bulk.
I didn't really understand why they'd want this, but I think now its strategic protection from someone else consolidating with them. One company with that huge of a library could put a lot of pressure on them by withholding content and with their competing unified streaming service.
So WB buys/merges w/ discovery to break it back off as part of a merger. Seems sort of silly. Curious if this means pretty much all WB/Disc/HBO content will end up on Netflix.
The gov will block this for the wrong reasons(they want Ellison to win this) but here’s hoping this and Paramount both get blocked, this level of concentration is not good.
I hope that this means that the Netflix app on AppleTV will finally become a “first class citizen.”
The Netflix app has always been treated badly by Apple. No idea why, but it means that I can’t have Netflix content in the “What’s Next” queue (among other things, like Netflix actors’ work not showing up in show information).
that is _purely_ netflix's decision; they have decided not to integrate. in fact, earlier this year netflix accidentally rolled out their internal version which has full integration with the APIs and then said "oopsie" and removed it again.
Yep. The APIs have always been publicly available for streaming services to use, Netflix just refuses to use them.
The reason is pretty obvious. Netflix would rather have users open their app directly so there’s opportunity to shove things in their faces, collect data from their browsing, and ideally become positioned as the user’s “main” streaming app. The user having a hub app and treating Netflix as one of several services directly opposes their aims.
The situation shares a lot of similarities with Spotify, which also refuses to take advantage of native APIs for the same reasons. Though in their case, there’s an added layer of irony with how they make all a big ruckus about how Apple needs to open their platforms up only for them to pretend APIs don’t exist after Apple adds them. As an example Apple had to hardcode a hack into HomePods to enable Spotify to work with them; where most services (Pandora, Tidal, etc) hook the official HomePod streaming APIs which pull directly from the service to the device, for Spotify Apple has to automatically AirPlay Spotify playing on the user’s phone to the HomePod. It’s ridiculous.
Those acquisition numbers will just keep becoming larger and larger until one day, when I'm old enough, someone will just acquire the only other player left in the field and Earth will be one single megacorporation.
AOL-Time-Warner-Pepsico-Viacom-Halliburton-Skynet-Toyota-Trader-Joe's but I guess it's AOL-Time-Netflix-Pepsico-Viacom-Halliburton-Skynet-Toyota-Trader-Joe's now.
Love the difference in the two connotations here that leads to the confusion. "Netflix just bought HBO (a moment ago)" vs "Netflix just bought HBO (previously)".
I was in one seminar, and someone asked a question about future to Harish Mehta (one of the founder of NASSCOM), and he said that big companies will become bigger for at least next 10 years.
If someone wants "film school" you can do a lot worse than ticking off the film from the "1001 Movies to See Before You Die" [1].
It may take you the next decade to complete. There are some real oddballs in there that lean toward "art film" (but what do you expect from Andy Warhol). A lot of "foreign" films (foreign for this U.S. viewer). In short a lot of surprises.
Definitely feel like a student of film now (for whatever that's worth).
"Priced in" I guess. I mean look at Warner Bros stock, steadily climbing the last couple months until it hit basically exactly the price shareholders will get in exchange for their shares as part of this deal.
Whenever one of my friends says they're thinking about getting into daytrading, all I can think is good luck beating the funds... they either can predict the future or just write it themselves.
Almost definitely not this FTC. And I'm not sure the FTC would in general considering there is a plethora of mainstream streaming providers outside of just Netflix and HBO Max.
Apple, Amazon, Google, Disney all have their hands in that bag. Not to mention all the old cable providers are practically streaming services now too. I don't even use my spectrum cable box, I use the Roku app to watch live TV and access all their on demand library
> Netflix expects to maintain Warner Bros.’ current operations and build on its strengths, including theatrical releases for films.
If Netflix is committing to releasing WB films in theaters, I wonder if they’ll also release shows under the WB/HBO label in the traditional weekly format. With the staggering amount of content that just exists and continues to grow, the “release everything at once and make people binge” model has had zero appeal to me. And seems quite detrimental to how the shows are paced — they seem heavily incentivized to end each episode with a cheap cliffhanger
As someone who has recently begun exploring physical media, I find this quite disappointing. The volume on 4K Blu-Rays is often low, prices are high, and Netflix isn't doing much to support physical media.
When you're just unwinding in front of a 65-inch screen, you might not notice the quality loss from compression. However, if you're actively watching on a 110-inch projector with an excellent sound system, every little detail becomes clear.
And that doesn't even address the most frustrating part: owning less and less.
I mean, no one needs to become a physical distributor, but it's disheartening that we lack consumer-friendly ownership of entertainment media when it comes to movies. I would love to see something like Bandcamp, but specifically for studios to release their movies to.
> When you're just unwinding in front of a 65-inch screen, you might not notice the quality loss from compression.
this has little to do with the resolution, though. maybe 4k just gets the benefit of being compressed with better codecs.
for me at least, watching shows/movies at typical viewing distance, a well-encoded 4k->1080p mkv is only very slightly less sharp and is vastly smaller to store on the media server.
I'm curious, because I've had an interest in physical media, especially videogames, but what I keep coming back to is, "why would I bother when I can just pirate it?"
What's the attraction to the physical media given the availability of these versions online?
Pirating doesn't help sustain the very thing being pirated, if you want a tangible rather than moralistic reason.
4K (Ultra HD) Blu-Ray is likely the last physical home video media generation to be produced. Disney has pulled physical out of the Asian market, Best Buy stopped releasing any physical media beside games, Target stopped selling them beside certain DVDs.
If you want any chance of actually having high quality releases continue it needs to be supported. An issue though is certain less mainstream releases in Ultra HD Blu-Ray can be rather pricey (if they get a release at all). However I still buy those I'm interested in since I don't want lower quality streaming-tier video to be the only option available in the future, apart from concerns about the volatile nature of online-only libraries (various of which have been wholly removed in the past when licensing/ownership changes).
don't be discouraged. 4k/UHD BR is still alive and well, even though it never can beat price of comparatively worse streaming versions. I just bought a relatively expensive UHD player and there are a lot of movies, and what I've noticed there are also boutique offerings and remasters going on in the market which I haven't noticed before. Going forward though, I'm not sure if there will be future for releases of new movies outside of big productions.
There are a whole bunch of choice quotes from 1984 that apply to this situation, but my favorite is still this one: “The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”
Whole deal sounds Looney Tunes to me. Though Warner does have a substantial catalog, I dumped Netflix because I wasn't impressed with their offerings. After Paramount took all its toys home with them leaving the platform without Star Trek, I had little reason to stay. I'm not a big TV or film buff anyway.
In terms of people who actually like movies and music it’s not a great time.
Unfortunately it’s pretty clear that the true business model of music and content streamers is about “putting something on in the background” and not actually about the quality level of the content.
Thus you get inoffensive cheap netflix series and AI generated chill beats to study to, and no one really notices as long as it’s above a certain quality threshold.
And this isn’t exactly Netflix’s problem- they know what their users want. When you’re cooking dinner it doesn’t make much difference to you if it’s a Judd Apatow romantic comedy and one that’s some Hallmark knockoff romcom bullshit.
I’m not really sure how to solve the problem of this very siloed video content landscape. No one wants to subscribe to 4 streaming services.
I would think the original netflix model of being mailed bluray discs might be viable, but without independent studios like Warner around, why would anyone produce physical media?
My blood always boils a little whenever I read about Netflix's "Not second-screen enough" business model.
What shitty point we've enshittified to, where we prioritise passive slop consumption over active enriching one.
All of this is a result of the algorithmic media addiction people have been engineered into, in my opinion. Every moment you're not consuming something is a moment you're wasting, and a moment you have to spend alone with your thoughts (which is too terrfying for people now apparently).
A proper solution to current video content landscape used to be piracy - Netflix literally succeded early on in streaming because they were more convenient than pirating stuff. But with these Media Moguls lobbying hard to crack down on piracy (at the risk of privacy), it does look pretty bleak.
I found out that there's a backlog of content going back over 100 years (a lot of it at the public library) and have been happily consuming that for about 6 or 7 years now.
(I still have about 4 decades to go to catch up with today—which will probably take me another 3 years or so).
That's my thinking. I get the argument for "reduced competition" but Netflix and HBO aren't competitors. They are just two companies in the same line of business, but with different production lines.
I do wonder what it will do for their sports deals. HBO have had the rights to a lot of sports, including Tour de France and the olympics and is the only way to get EuroSport, as well as a number of TV channels, including some country specific ones.
You don't see reduced competiton? HBO Max and Netflix are director competitors, post acqusition Netflix no longer had to compete hard with shows like Succession. The expanded catalog makes it even harder for smaller streamers to compete.
On sports rights Netflix no longer has to bid and compete with HBO, and same story having a bigger live sport inventory.
This is not unlike consolidation of food distributors where the end up wielding strong pricing power, farmers have fewer options to sell to and restaurants have few options to buy from. The middleman profits.
I disagree. Spotify and YouTube Music are competitors, because I can switch freely between them, and expect more or less the same catalog. HBO and Netflix are supplementary and many will just get both, because switching from one to the other makes no sense. For example I can't watch Star Trek on HBO and the rights deals made with the studios ensure that I'll never be able to watch it one both.
Assuming that Netflix, Disney, Paramount and HBO where competing, then why aren't pricing at rock bottom? There's zero competition and removing HBO won't change a damn thing, other than removing one subscription for a large number of people (potentially).
Pretty soon all media will be owned by 4 tech billionaires. They have done so well with preserving a free and open internet I cannot see why people are concerned they are gobbling up all the alternative legacy communications platforms.
I haven't been a Netflix user for years, the quality of their stuff went past a level I was no longer comfortable supporting. It became a platform that is designed to keep you watching (literally anything) as opposed to a platform to find interesting/relevant entertainment. So much low quality, low effort content. Wonder which of AI wrong-but-instant answers or Netflix' empty entertainment will contribute more to genpop enshitification.
Exactly. Netflix is doing a total opposite of HBO content. Also HBO has been great at localization for european regions (subs, local content) unlike Netflix which cannot be bothered to even make subtitles for markets they sell to.
IMO,Netflix wants to acquire their main competitor in europe.
Its been going around in cicles between "WB is fine, just rejected 2 other offers, whats the worst that could happen" and "Netflix buy out any day now WB is in the toilet"
This may be a hot take but maybe some consolidation in this streaming industry is beneficial, might save some people searching for content they want to see only to find they have to pay for another streaming service because right holders decided to launch their own streaming app.
Netflix prices will probably increase though, and they will probably ruin a lot of golden IP like always, so there's that to complain about.
Netflix’s content selection has always felt weaker than traditional studios. Sometimes it even looks like filmmakers take Netflix’s massive budgets but don’t give them the same level of serious, polished work they deliver elsewhere.
So, if Netflix ends up managing Warner Bros or HBO, it’s hard not to worry. HBO and Warner Bros are known for premium, high-caliber content, and Netflix’s track record suggests the overall quality could easily take a hit.
The sad thing is the WB Studio had a successful year and is healthy.
It's all the other idiotic stuff that's been attached to WB over the years that has broken the business. Time Warner AoL Discovery... is a poster child for what goes wrong when merger after merger happens.
A restructured WB Studio + HBO might be a good business.
Nice of them to start the conversations with a probably lie, that it will be less expensive for consumes because they can now bundle HBO/Netflix. Except this has never been true for more than enough time that for people to forget and past the time to change it, if at all. It will be less selection and cost more, like the usual.
The US government made it illegal for movie studios to own movie theaters to prevent studios from only showing movies in theaters they own. Similar laws need to be passed to force streaming content to be shown on all services.
Three wishes - looney tunes and animatics full and uncensored. Don't update them for modern sensibilities. No new looney tunes content unless made by very talented people that love the old ones.
WB was another legacy media empire being run by a megalomaniac hell-bent on destroying their legacy.
I wouldn't normally support this kind of move, but unlike the Skydance deal, Netflix is actually a real company that, like, makes use of IPs and publishes back catalogues.
Things like Looney Tunes will now be in the hands of someone who doesn't hate Looney Tunes.
Supergirl and The Batman 2 are releasing relatively soon so I don’t think that will be affected much by all this. Same with Clayface since that just entered post production. It’s the movies coming after (Superman 2, Batman movie thats not tied to “The Batman”) that will be affected by all this.
My opinion of James Gunn has changed recently (especially after the ending of Peacemaker S2) but I still think he’s the best person possible to be in charge of live action DC. I really hope he keeps some form of control but I doubt it…
Oh cool, knock-on price hikes across not just the streaming industry, but all the other industries that decided they needed to bundle streaming subscriptions with their products.
Can't wait to pay even more for my cell bill because they give me "free" Netflix!
> You'll care when there will be no physical media
Physical media is on the way out for the most part, where it isn't already gone, and Netflix & co are the reason, not piracy.
> and you're left with compressed shit shown down your throat.
WRT “compressed shit”: the quality of ahem copies is often no worse than you'd get from an official streamed source. For those that have 4K-capable eyes it is often better as it JustWorks™ without quality dipping out due to bandwidth issues at the streamer, your ISP, or somewhere between, or for local playback needing a long fight to convince your Sony TV to accept that Sony media player connected via a Sony brand cable is legit.
I actually pay for a couple of streaming services (though Prime largely begrudgingly as it got rolled into the delivery service I use), but still get media from ahem other sources because the playback UX is often preferable.
Or if by “compressed shit” you are referring to the intellectual quality of the content not the technical merits of the medium, if it all turns to mush I'll just watch even less than I already do the same way I practically never game these days (though that is due to both content quality and technical matters). I've got other hobbies competing for my attention, I can just live without TV if TV quality falls further.
Whether or not this deal gets regulatory approval depends entirely on whether or not Reed Hastings sufficiently kisses the ring when it comes to Donald Trump.
I'm personally against this. We've had too much consolidation. It's subscribers who will pay for this with hiked subscription fees.
Any pretense of government regulation is basically gone. Everything is for sale. What determines outcomes is corruption and loyalty. This is really no different to the Russian oligarchs under Putin. The SEC, FTC and DOJ are a joke, just tools to punish ideological foes and people who don't pay up.
All these companies are a consequence will become more ideologically conservative and that's a real problem for media companies because conservatives can't produce good content. Good content challenges the status quo and asks questions, two things conservatives simply don't tolerate. This will do nothing good for HBO.
This was a very foolish choice on Netflix's part. Most if the iconic IP from WB/HBO has gone down hill in a dramatic fashion over the last decade.
Game of Thrones was good for a few seasons, but half way through the fans started dropping almost as quickly as main characters. DC movies have had very few genuine successes, even if they've technically turned a profit.
Putting all that content up on Netflix would be unlikely to pull in that many more subscriptions, and would require dropping the existing streaming service(s) and agreements to allow for exclusivity.
This doesn't bring significant talent or IP to Netflix, it's just an attempt to grab market share. I doubt they'll try to move anything out of WB/HBO's existing streaming platforms or agreements. This just looks like an attempt to increase profits by simply buying a profitable company and letting them mostly continue to function with minimal changes.
In other word, this probably isn't the worst acquisition possible for consumers, but it certainly won't improve life for anyone to let it happen, and it does consolidate market share and control when it comes to media. This probably won't be hugely evil, but it won't be good either.
Any consolidation like this seems like a negative for consumers. But at least it wasn’t bought by Larry Ellison, as was considered very likely (assuming this merger gets approved, in the current administration you never know).
From a Hacker News perspective, I wonder what this means for engineers working on HBO Max. Netflix says they’re keeping the company separate but surely you’d be looking to move them to Netflix backend infrastructure at the very least.
This particular one could be ok for them? A major cost for Netflix in the modern era is licensing contracts that never adjusted to the streaming world. As such, consumers may actually get access to some backlog of WB stuff that is otherwise not worth offering?
My guess is you are right for some properties that WB owns outright, but legacy IP that has rights shared, especially pre-streaming rights will still have a lot of barriers/untangling to do.
I think Netflix is the most well run media company today by a mile, but also on the spectrum of quality/art -vs- straight money/tech domination they fall into the latter category, and they are the among the least friendly to creators as far as contract/rights.
We will see.
In their books (e.g. "No Rules Rules" Netflix seems extremely attractive to creators because they pay top dollar, as a general policy, and have the internal decision-making processes that support making bold bets on art without committees that push "safer" creative choices.
Totally fair. The rights around a lot of media is a giant mess. Is why songs used on some movies are not the same as the ones that were used in theaters. And is just baffling for people from the outside to consider.
Equally if not more baffling is that songs used in one region for DVDs might not be the same as other regions because of the same licensing issues
> Any consolidation like this seems like a negative for consumers
This is a very common narrative to this news. But coming into this news, I think the most common narrative against streaming was essentially "There is not enough consolidation." People were happy when Netflix was the streaming service, but then everyone pulled their content and have their own (Disney, Paramount, etc.)
I want a separation between the streaming platform companies and the content making companies, so that the streaming companies can compete on making a better platform/service and the content companies compete on making better content.
I don't want one company that owns everything, I want several companies that are able to license whatever content they want. And ideally the customer can choose between a subscription that includes everything, and paying for content a la carte, or maybe subscriptions that focus on specific kinds of content (scifi/fantasy, stuff for kids, old movies, international, sports, etc.) regardless of what company made it.
I think you're right, but I've always been a bit skeptical of that vision -- it implicitly relies on the assumption that "THE streaming service" will choose to make as much content available as technically and legally possible; they're imagining something like "Spotify but for movies and TV shows". But I was always worried about "Apple's App Store but for movies and TV shows": one company with ultimate gatekeeper status over what you can and can't legally watch. (The movie and television business is not like the music business; the financial incentives don't, as far as I can tell, support the same kind of distribution models.)
I'm not particularly thrilled about this kind of consolidation, but given that Warner was going to be bought by somebody, Netflix may be one of the least worst outcomes.
The problem is content exclusivity. It would be great if all the content or at least most would be available on all platforms. At least eventually. That would be great for consumers. Mergers like this typically not.
Like we had for music on the radio, compulsory licensing
Netflix was also still in the “grow users at all cost” phase. They have since moved to “grow revenue at all costs.”
Everyone likes a service when it’s subsidized by VC dollars. Until they inevitably start turning the screws.
>Everyone likes a service when it’s subsidized by VC dollars.
Netflix went public in 2002. It was +8 years later that the streaming-only service was launched in 2010. It wasn't "subsidized by VC".
Netflix had more content from everybody back then because the other studios licensed their content for cheap prices to Netflix. But those studios then realized that Netflix was growing rapidly on the backs of their content. Once those multi-year contracts expired, studios like Disney didn't renew with Netflix and instead, started their own platform (e.g. Disney+).
These content library contracts are only for a couple of years, and each time one lapses, some terms get negotiated. Nobody in the streaming industry is successful because they have a long term lock on someone else’s content. It’s all about eyeballs and margins.
Netflix had a 4 year deal with Starz, which is where a significant chunk of their early streaming content came from (Including all the Disney films).
Sure, that was very early though. You could argue that was crucial for establishing their brand, but the industry has caught up and doesn't do that very much now.
The assumption back then was that other companies would be making shows. Consolidating even more show production in one company is not something we should want.
> There is not enough consolidation
This is an absolutely wild (and incorrect) thing to assume. The problem of content lock-in is anti-competitive and it would be better solved without mergers
We just need to end all exclusives.
Make it like music streaming, where all services have the same catalog so you can choose on price, features, etc.
That only happened because the content libraries decided to exit the music streaming game.
It also helped that the largest player in the music content library game (Sony) was not really as adept at software as Comcast, Disney, and NBCU were.
People were happy when Netflix was cheaper that total sum of what they were paying on cable.
Lower prices is the last thing we'd expect from that deal.
Consumers don't care so much about consolidation as they care about not getting ripped off. When Netflix and Hulu were the only streaming platforms you paid a pretty low price to get virtually everything you wanted. Now you pay more for a worse experience.
Netflix at least has technical chops. Other studios (looking at you, Paramount-) put out barely functional apps because they know consumers ultimately will pay for their content.
>you paid a pretty low price to get virtually everything you wanted
Depends what you wanted.
Both a deep back catalog of TV and film more generally were always pretty lacking on all-you-could-eat streaming services. Frankly, my biggest complaint with Netflix is that they basically drove local video rental out of business and then shut their own rental down.
As a rule of thumb, consolidation is never good. There are exceptions where consolidated services can improve (eg arguably physical infrastructure, healthcare), but in general this will not benefit the consumer.
As a rule of thumb maybe, but in this case it might well.
People were happy because they only needed one subscription and one app. Buying Warner Bros won't bring that back. If anything, it makes it less likely.
Maybe there are licensing restrictions or other things that prevent it, but wouldn't it make more sense to combine HBO Max and Netflix into a single app? Or at least make all HBO Max content also available in Netflix (and then eventually sunset HBO Max). That would make a Netflix subscription a much more compelling purchase for a ton of people.
Not attacking you in particular, but I've always hated how we talk about "licensing restrictions" as if they're some kind of vague law of nature, like gravity. Oh, Studio X can't do Y... Because Licensing. "Licenses" are entirely conjured up by humans, and if there was an actual desire by the people who make decisions to change something, those people would find a way to make the "licensing restrictions" disappear. Reality is, the people making these decisions don't want to change things, at least not enough to go through the effort of changing and renegotiating the licenses. It's not "licensing restrictions" that is stopping them.
Same always comes up when we talk about why doesn't Company X open source their 20 year old video game software? Someone always chimes in to say "Well they don't because of 'licensing issues' with the source code." as if they were being stopped by a law of physics.
Speaking as someone who once worked at a company where these were real issues that came up - it's very often the case that intermediate parties in the contracts have dissolved.
Renegotiating the contracts would require lengthy and expensive processes of discovering the proper parties to actually negotiate with in the first place.
Although the contracts that were already executed can be relied upon, it truly is a can of worms to open, because it's not "Renegotiate with Studio X", it's "Renegotiate with the parent company of the defunct parent company of the company who merged with Y and created a new subsidiary Z" and so on and so forth, and then you have to relicense music, and, if need be, translations.
Then repeat that for each different region you need to relicense in because the licenses can be different for different regions.
The cost of negotiation would be greater than the losses to piracy tbh.
> Reality is, the people making these decisions don't want to change things, at least not enough to go through the effort of changing and renegotiating the licenses.
Which is a perfectly sensible reason for a business decision.
> "Well they don't because of 'licensing issues' with the source code." as if they were being stopped by a law of physics.
So laws should just be ignored? Issues created by human social constructs are very real.
We can change the laws. Radio stations don't have "licensing issues" with playing songs.
From another angle, if copyright were more like it was originally in the US, every single show I watched as a kid would be in the public domain, since I haven't been a kid for 28 years.
I'm with you in spirit, but I think you are underestimating how wide and complex the dependency trees can be in content licensing. And simplifying those licensing structures often mean removing control from individual artists, which we tend to consider a Bad Thing.
The issue is that Netflix doesn't control those restrictions, the content creators (well, rights holders) do, and their incentives don't always align.
Yea, what I mean by "people who make decisions" is everybody involved: studios, distributors, rights holders, and the maze of middlemen who have inserted themselves into the business: If all of them decided that more money could be made, if not for those pesky licenses, the "licensing problems" would immediately disappear.
And if any of them decide they are better served by the current arrangement, the licensing problems remain.
You seem to be making incredibly banal observations.
Licensing is really complicated and requires lot of paper work. The best example is the music soundtracks of old TV series. They even get substituted if they don't get the proper license to stream them. So some old show get new soundtrack or background music and they don't feel the same.
That would be amazing if we could watch both Netflix and HBO Max content at the price of one subscription. At least for me, these two platforms covers 95% of my video content needs.
"The price of one subscription" being the price of Netflix plus the price of HBO. Streaming is turning back into cable where everything is trapped in one bill, no matter how expensive and uninteresting some part of that bill is.
Having Discovery's awful content push out quality HBO content was already a major blow.
Well, I guess one more significant price jump would be a sign to finally replace streaming with reading
Yeah but there is 0 chance that the cost would remain similar to what it is now
> Netflix and HBO Max content at the price of one subscription
Yes, the price of one subscription. I think some cable packages in the US are $200 per month?
The cable thing in US is something Im struggling to wrap my mind around. I can’t imagine someone deliberately paying so much money for such a bad content.
The only explanation I can think of is that most of the subscribers are elderly folks who signed up long time ago and didn’t bother to look into current bills.
Also maybe some ardent sport fans?
Internet/TV bills can be negotiated, but it is usually something you have to do annually and most people, rightly so, hate it. The companies make it hard to do, so most people would rather pay an extra $5-10 rather than spending an hour or two on the phone. After 5-10 years, those fee bumps really add up.
The only way to keep Internet/TV costs low is to threaten to cancel or switch every year, and actually be willing to do it. For some that isn't an option because there is only 1 provider, and others I've talked to hate that idea because you have to learn a new channel lineup. It's amazing how much people will pay to not be slightly inconvenienced.
The question is why to keep TV subscription at all? Is there some very unique content which is not available on digital?
Your last point is the stronger one. Live events, including sports, are a heavy driver of these subscriptions.
Another is broadband deployment. Choice is low in many parts of the country, and bundled service offerings are frequently priced near the "internet only" offerings to nudge customers into a "might as well" posture.
For me it's sports.
Easy way to get rid of the few remaining "lifetime 50% discount" HBO Max subscriptions.
I quit my 50% discount after realizing that if I don't watch it anyways.
Funny thing though. When I cancelled my subscription, they offered me 50% off for a month or something like that.
Oh no I am reminded of my dead physical Rolling Stone lifetime subscription!
Hulu and Disney Plus have taken centuries in this endeavor. There's a lot of content licensed to Hulu that is not necessarily licensed to Disney Plus, though Disney Plus seems to be showing more Hulu content, but I assume it has to do with licensing.
> Hulu and Disney Plus have taken centuries in this endeavor.
Only in the US. Everywhere else Hulu has always been integrated into Disney+).
Part of that is because Disney didn’t outright own Hulu until recently. It was a joint ownership.
They might make less money with one super subscription than two separate ones.
Everything about these big moves in the streaming space is basically to re-create the "good old days" of cable subscriptions and pay-per-view.
I think we can expect HBO streaming to continue as a premium subscription for movies and high-production-value shows. That would let everything else to land on Netflix with no conflict.
Pirate everything.
I can imagine an internal analysis that says:
Move show X, Y, and Z from Netflix to HBO Max because those profiles are likely to add the second subscription.
---
Piracy seems like the only thing that keeps prices/practices in check.
I wonder how much piracy really impacts their pricing strategy? I honestly don't know.
Yeah, I can easily see something like 2 separate at $20/month vs 1 super at $35/month (make-believe figures).
Assuming all WB and Netflix customers move to the super platform, that's a loss for Netflix (assuming the super platform doesn't significantly reduce their costs).
And the $35 might be more than some set of current Netflix subscribers want to pay, so they drop the service, so an even bigger potential loss.
Certainly, I have no desire to subsidize sports fans via a higher Netflix super package.
We're reinventing cable!
The irony is that a lot of people complained loudly about the cable bundle then complained loudly about streaming service fragmentation even when it at least offered a choice to cut their monthly bill.
When Netflix started losing shows did they lower their price to allow users to sign up for competing services? The price just went up for everyone in reality.
No but there's very little I deeply care about watching, including live TV. I definitely pay less for video content than I was paying 5 years or so ago. Netflix has been on my bubble for a while. We'll see what happens with this news.
And I already have Amazon Prime and Apple TV+ through other bundles I have for other reasons. We'll see.
I don’t see how this is ironic at all. Doesn’t this just make sense that people are complaining about the same business model? Or are you saying people should be more grateful we don’t have to watch ads anymore?
Yup. All of them combined would probably be ~$100-120/mo. which is, lo and behold, the price of a cable package
Cable failed at millennial+ user experience.
Many on-demand viewing experiences still play ads through atrocious “cable box apps.”
Entrenched cable bureaucracy disrupted by app culture. For the better.
Netflix also will some day be disrupted, as the wheel turns.
We deserve to divorce the content from the service. Can you even purchase Netflix content?
I’ve just gone cold turkey from watching any streaming tv or movies until the situation improves. Blu Ray works better than ever.
I'm regularly a bit surprised at how many people don't even consider purchasing a la carte content or Blu Rays. For films it's often a pretty reasonable option for occasional viewing.
Maybe we could come up with another ludicrous suite of names for HBO/HBO Go/HBO Max once it's merged with Netflix.
Why is this a negative for consumers? Doesn't everyone complain how they have to subscribe to 5 different streaming services, and plenty of people have to pay for a service just to enjoy one or two series?
I don't think consolidation is necessarily bad. It makes sense from a cost perspective too. I guess they could just license out the content, but this will probably grow the catalog a lot.
What happens to HBO Max? Will you be able to watch all that with a regular Netflix subscription? Seems the business doesn't make sense unless
Also: is Netflix going to take the theatrical and traditional TV businesses seriously at all?I imagine it’ll end up looking very much like the Disney + Hulu + ESPN bundle. Minor savings but still more expensive than an individual subscription.
> traditional TV business
This was actually excluded from the deal. CNN, TNT, Discovery and the rest are being spun off into their own company. Presumably to wither and die.
No, that was going to happen next year, but it never did and this deal has been agreed for the whole company.
WB pitched that to make it easier for them to be acquired by shunting all the debt to the channels entity - but it was unlikely the debt owners were ever going to go for that as presented, there would have been quite a significant chance of the channels group going under and them losing all the money.
But ultimately it turned out that enough entities were willing to bid now, before that split, that there was no point continuing to work out how to do it. Netflix will, presuming this deal completes, be the owner of CNN/TNT/Discovery at al.
Now, I am very sure they will look to sell several parts of those off - there is absolutely no way Netflix leadership wants to continue to own TNT - but that will have to come later.
FTA:
> In June 2025, WBD announced plans to separate its Streaming & Studios and Global Networks divisions into two separate publicly traded companies. This separation is now expected to be completed in Q3 2026, prior to the closing of this transaction.
>> Netflix will, presuming this deal completes, be the owner of CNN/TNT/Discovery at al.
^^This isn’t accurate based on the multiple articles I’ve read, including this OP article. The entities they are acquiring are clearly laid out. Your statement is complete speculation at best, and plainly false and at odds with the current facts we know about the deal.
> The transaction is expected to close after the previously announced separation of WBD’s Global Networks division, Discovery Global, into a new publicly-traded company, which is now expected to be completed in Q3 2026.
Second paragraph of the article.
If they like money, they'll just roll HBO into Netflix and raise prices. I really doubt Disney's complex bundling/pricing scheme is helping their bottom line.
I think it is. ESPN is a totally separate vertical than the rest of what Disney offers, and it’s subject to compulsory high rate licensing.
Excluding it from the bundle lets Disney be price competitive.
It also underlines in the US that sports is probably the last interest in linear programming. It would be interesting to get a picture of how many US customers will pay for ESPN in a Disney+ bundle but not Linear Hulu. I'm sure Disney will be tracking it, and probably made a smart move making the more interesting bundle the one with ESPN but not Linear Hulu.
There's a huge interest in sports in the US (and elsewhere). And broadcast rights reflect that. But there are also a bunch of people who would happily take a discount on all their other video to not include sports.
I dunno about that. They introduced the ad supported tier as a way to reach consumers at a lower price point and apparently it’s been very successful. I don’t think they want to lose those customers by jacking up prices now.
Netflix has raised prices about 25% at the premium tier since they released the ad-free version in 2022. The with-ads plan has also seen increases since launch.
Their prices have been inching up. I pay for the lowest non-ad tier, and it's $17.99/mo. If I wanted 4K & HDR, it's up to $24.99/mo. At $7.99/mo for the ad-supported tier, they could easily bump that to $9.99/mo if it included HBO/Hulu/ESPN.
I suspect you are right, but I’m not alone in walking away from this trend.
They lost me as a longtime customer after too many price hikes and low programming quality.
Netflix shows are “have it on in the background” quality whereas HBO has released some of the best TV of all time. This merger has enshittification written all over it.
I agree, but HBO has also gone downhill as they lost talent to other services. Currently the streamer with the highest consistent quality is Apple, which is pretty unexpected.
Apple has the benefit of the original Netflix exclusives model (and the original TV primetime distribution model) that they don't operate their own studios and instead can pick and choose from the cream of the crop of the more expensive projects from the others. (Severance is from Ben Stiller's Red Hour mini-studio, Ted Lasso and Shrinking are from WB Television, Slow Horses and Pluribus are from Sony Television, Foundation and Murderbot are from Skydance/Paramount Television, and so forth.)
I'm sure Apple is contributing significantly to many of those shows' budgets and helping them all reach similar quality bars, but Apple is also certainly benefiting from spreading that budget across multiple studios and not putting all their risk in (micro-)managing their own studio. Whereas a lot of the "streamer X has gone downhill" seems to be directly related to being able to source projects only from sibliing studios creating very simple monocultures of every project feeling the same and risking that bad or unlucky projects tainting other projects in that monoculture stew.
Very hit or miss though. And withs some exceptions like Slow Horses, their productions feel overly produced, oiled by agency crossover and 360 package deals, i.e., manufactured from script to screen. Even Pluribus has that smug sanitized gloss.
I don’t completely disagree with you, although For All Mankind has become a top 20 all time show for me.
Honestly, in these days when pretty much everything is sourced from individual production companies and showrunners, it becomes pretty clear that while some studios have their own brands/budgets/priorities/execs/etc. there's no magic formula to getting it all right. It's been tried before and will be tried again.
I’m pretty sure I would riot if they raise prices more. I’m not paying $30 to one streaming service. Criterion and Kanopy are working great for me as is.
Your model might be too simplistic.
It’s more like Net Margin (Netflix + HBO) > Net Margin (Netflix | separate HBO)
Well all the content costs don't change, and they can combine CDN servers anywhere it makes sense regardless of whether it's one service or two. So revenue and margin numbers should track pretty tightly.
> Also: is Netflix going to take the theatrical
Hopefully? I don't have time for yet another 10 episode limited series (best case) that could have been a 2 hour movie.
> and traditional TV businesses seriously at all.
Do you mean the stuff that occasionally interrupts the regular pharmaceutical ads?
My guess is that eventually they'll merge into a single platform, HBO max will die off, and netflix will just keep jacking up people's rates until they're well above what netflix and HBO Max cost separately today
Yeah to be honest i see approaching 45-50/mo coming at some point in the next few years easily.
They would never cannibalize an existing revenue stream, they'll keep them separate as long as it's profitable and maybe bundle for marketing (we're slowly rebuilding cable)
I don't know. I never really had a sensible option to watch Game of Thrones legally, it's a little late for that now but presumably this would mean it's on Netflix which would be significantly better for me. (I guess useful for House of the Dragon now). I don't think I care much about the upcoming Harry Potter show but if I did want to watch that, I'm not sure what my options would be, and Netflix seems better than me having to take out _another_ subscription.
Obviously having one monopoly streaming service would be bad, but in the meantime having more of them is also not great for consumers since they each charge a flat fee so you have to pay more to see shows from different studios. The ideal would be something more akin to music streaming where you can more or less pick a provider these days, but video streaming doesn't seem to be moving there in any hurry.
Just have one subscription at a time and then pirate the rest of it.
They all had their chance. They blew it.
Or...don't pirate and rotate streaming services. Just because a new show drops doesn't mean you need to watch it next week
> They all had their chance. They blew it.
This is so silly. It's like saying "Sweet manufacturers all had the chance to sell the same sweets, and they blew it. So I just nick most sweets." Just say "I don't like paying for things and can get away with this, and my ethics only work in public or when I'm forced to obey them." And then we're done.
The comment you're replying to said "legally".
It's legal until you get caught. Schrodinger's download.
Far better for consumers to be able to binge Game of Thrones/Silicon Valley/whatever and cancel HBO Max than to have to pay twice as much for a subscription to both libraries to get either.
Yeah until Netflix adds tiered pricing for content and you end up paying more than what Netflix + HBO Max together would have cost because Netflix is the only game in town for that content..
I think like all media consolidation this will send a lot of people back to the seven seas..
The seven seas can't stop netflix from canceling good shows though.
I'm actually a little surprised that, some discounts for annual subscriptions notwithstanding, the streaming services haven't done more to discourage short-term jump on/jump off subscriptions.
But they have the data and I don't. I assume there's enough stickiness and inertia that most people are not canceling and restarting services all the time. I know I don't. I just decide I don't care enough about most content (and don't really watch much video or binge watch anyway).
A big part of the reason I keep my Paramount+ subscription month-to-month despite mostly just watching Star Trek on it is that they sold me a pretty good annual plan discount.
Annual plans are a big factor in the stickiness of Amazon's efforts. Especially with Amazon's dark patterns around trying to make people forget they pay it (and making it hard to cancel).
It is curious there aren't more explorations in increasing stickiness. Though admittedly cable's biggest trick (long term contracts) is maybe thankfully out of reach for most of the streamers.
Bundles, where they exist, are a big stickiness factor. Especially during COVID, getting stuff delivered to my door before I'd have gotten around to the hassle of going to the store, was a big factor in making Prime more useful to me than it already was.
Apple is less pronounced but I'm very much in the Apple ecosystem so TV+ isn't really a big adder.
>Though admittedly cable's biggest trick (long term contracts) is maybe thankfully out of reach for most of the streamers.
Yeah. You make too much of an on/off ramp for just a streaming service and that's a hard pass for me.
As you say, most users probably don't bother stopping/starting subscriptions. Besides, if they make it harder to cancel some users might not subscribe in the first place in fear of being locked in.
They're probably making more with users saying "I'll subscribe now but cancel when I'm done watching this show" then don't bother cancelling.
Which is why it won't happen, what would the revenue benefit of that be?
In the medium term you'll get a D+/Hulu-esque split with maybe a discounted bundle of Netflix and HBO Max together - the evidence is pretty strong that bundles reduce churn.
If they ever do go to one library, it'll be because Netflix feel they are able to push prices to the same level as both services combined.
lol at the idea that Netflix would ever produce something as high-quality as GoT or HotD. Those days will soon be over.
The Crown is absolutely a prestige TV show. Stranger Things is also high quality and high budget. You could probably include Bridgerton in there too, it's not my kind of show but I can still recognize that it's a well put together one.
Its subjective, and full of nuance, but I do feel that Netflix has its own style that is very different to HBO's style. Consider the witcher vs game of thrones or black mirror pre-netflix vs post netflix. Its not black and white though, as Netflix animations (Castlevania, Pluto etc.) are amazing TV, but personally I would much rather watch a HBO show than a Netflix one - especially if its a fantasy/science fiction one where Netflix's style isn't one I find appealing.
Nothing that Amazon has produced comes even close to what HBO produced between 1995-2015. Netflix programming is cargo cult TV.
The problem is all the crap kills the prestige. HBO remains what HBO is because they don't put out 600 other shows besides Game of Thrones that are utter garbage.
Netflix is the Walmart of entertainment at this point. Yeah you can find basically anything there- and VERY occasionally, you'll find something damn good- but you're wading through a sea of mediocre shit to do so.
And like, personally I unsubbed forever ago because I'm not interested in subsidizing all the garbage to get the occasional Frankenstein. Meanwhile I've maintained an HBO subscription for that entire time.
Obviously I am but one data point here and I know my opinion is in the minority, but yeah. I don't pay attention much to Netflix.
The HBO Max that had "Fboy Island" yeah?
HBO was never what you thought it was, and HBO Max definitely wasn't.
Until Disney killed it because "they didn't like the numbers" the Avengers series, including Dare Devil, Luke Cage, etc were highly regarded by all my friends at the time. I don't know why Disney screwed that up colossally outside of wanting the show within Disney Plus.
It's probably a mixed bag.
On the one hand, competition good I guess?
On the other hand, if we're not going to have a music situation where the vast majority of mainstream content is available on most of the major platforms, fragmentation is pretty consumer unfriendly.
Netflix is pretty much a studio at this point. Not sure that back-end infrastructure or client apps is really a differentiator for anyone. An individual may find that one service is "better" in whatever respect but it's really about exclusive content.
As a consumer I certainly hope that this means there's one less streaming service to deal with (though I'm no longer an HBO subscriber at the moment) so long as pricing doesn't go up too much.
David Ellison, not Larry. (David is Larry’s son and CEO of Paramount Skydance.)
On the pure technical side of their streaming services, Netflix refuses to play ball with platform owners to integrate with services. Netflix on Apple TV has zero conceit for the platform. WB on the other hand is very typical of other streaming services. I wonder what will win out?
If the provider isn’t huge, they obey the house rules, and those rules will probably lead to better results than their silly ideas.
If the provider is big and experienced, they negotiate to get to do what they want, and they have their own opinions that work.
The acquirer wins.
> Any consolidation like this seems like a negative for consumers.
WBD was on an increasingly unprofitable path, and we know where that road leads.
The exact same road that generally leads to the same sort of problematic consolidation?
At best, WBD could have gone bankrupt and a court order could require it to be sold as parts with no one studio getting a significant chunk, scattering WBD's IP moat across many competitors.
But most likely it just means someone like Netflix would have the chance to make a smaller offer for the same kind of deal on a WBD with a worse negotiating position. Same consequences, different day.
Surely the move now would be to rename the app to Netlfix Max
To keep it more in line with other brands:
- Netflix Max: basic subscription with ads, no 4K
- Netflix Max Ultra: basic subscription with ads, but with 4K
- Netflix Pro Max: standard subscription without ads, no 4K
- Netflix Pro Max Ultra: standard subscription without ads, with 4K
You can add a Mobile VIP package for one extra viewer outside your house, but only for Pro plans.
Netflix Plus (Netflix+) which is a side subscription to all of that which lets you syncopate different playback screens to one account, or some other esoteric value add which muddies the waters
Let's be honest, all the netflix plans will have ads just like they do now. They might not interrupt your show while you're in the middle of it, but you'll get ads no matter what. Ads as soon as the credits roll, a barrage of full screen ads if you pause a show for more than 10 seconds, full screen ads the moment you open the app, etc.
And for shows they produce, product placements galore. Like when characters suddenly started saying "just bing it!" to each other.
There's still the one layer that comes with Dolby Atmos and access to the WB back catalogue
If we're doing suggestions, I vote for "Maxflix"
MaxNet if you want to go final form Fortune 100
"Maxflix" sounds like a name for a pornstudio but it is i guess better than the alternative of "NetB.O."
Very close to Netflix's core business: violence.
I don't find Netflix "live action" movies to be super violent and there are a lot of non-violent shows. Its animations can be quite violent though (and those are good quality). From the little I know, it, like every other big platform, does shy away from sex. This has been a theme for decades - its ok to be violent but sex is a no no.
And then to Max
And then to X
then to NetMax
Endgame: Netflix renames itself to HBO
If it turns out that Netflix is more interested in Warner Brothers' IP than in things like CNN, they'll just sell those less-interesting pieces off.
Quite possibly (and quite unfortunately) to the Ellisons.
They are not acquiring CNN. They are interested in hbomax and content IP. All the other news and talk shows will be spun off to a new company called discovery global which is to be sold off separately.
I am paying for both the services right now. I dont mind consolidating that payment and hopefully pay a slightly lower price.
> But at least it wasn’t bought by Larry Ellison
There are already noises about FCC or DOJ leaning on things in order to 'correct' that.
Hm… I don’t know, I can at least cancel my separate HBO Max subscription on Prime Video now (since I already paid for Netflix).
I think it's extremely unlikely that they combine the two services in the next five to ten years.
They will probably do a Disney+/Hulu bundle at some point.
> Any consolidation like this seems like a negative for consumers.
I tend to see much more discussion about how the main downside is for sellers of content. Why is this bad for consumers?
Good news is more Warner Bros content, bad news is, only 2 seasons worth per IP. Netflix drives me up a wall with how often they cancel interesting shows, reminds me of SyFy, you find something interesting and then they just cancel it. Sometimes people take a break from watching a show, but they always come back. At least end it cleanly damn it. It's why I don't bother with Netflix original shows unless they've got like four seasons.
What would be wrong with Larry buying it? He doesn't own a media empire, and would be incentivized to compete. Larry buying it seems like it would have been better from a consumer perspective
> He doesn't own a media empire
He just bought Paramount?
Technically Skydance is led David Ellison, Larry's son.
Though, he's a trustfund kid and you can make a case that Larry owns it indirectly. (But if you want to make that case then it implies that Larry owns two media empires given his daughter Megan Ellison owns slightly less successful Skydance rival Annapurna.)
That’s David Ellison, not Larry. (Same family, though.)
You’re right, apologies, I forgot and now can’t edit my original post. Point still stands, just with a different name!
Here in the EU it’s great news if this means HBO contents are coming on Netflix. WBD has had so fare the absolute worse policy for international rights distribution for their shows, with policies varying wildly from season to season.
FreeBSD to the moon!
That would connect the companies. If they're keeping them separate it could be an anti-trust move or more that these companies are going to start trading studios which has been seen in other industries where they trade markets, like the food delivery company you've been ordering from for years has probably changed hands a few times during that time period and probably name too.
You could make the connection a formal one. Years back HBO’s streaming services were actually provided by MLB, they had a contract together. No reason the same couldn’t happen with Netflix and Warner. Could have happened pre-merger too but it wouldn’t have been in Netflix’s interest.
As a Canadian many people here say, “At least we aren’t American” as cope for the rot and corruption of our country.
It’s a very toxic way to view things.
Don’t count the Ellisons out. Firstly, they control the White House. If the American government doesn’t give approval for this merger Netflix pays Warner Bros $5 billion and walks away. That leaves them open to a future Ellison takeover.
Second, even if the purchase goes through they can still get a win, just a smaller one. Their goals of creating a Fox News like media empire are still alive. CNN doesn’t fit with Netflix and will be spun out and when it is they can submit a bid for that company. The Ellisons will then control CBS and CNN.
Meanwhile, as Netflix customers we can all look forward to paying more, but without the quality content that’s HBO’s trademark. The theatre goers among us will have to accept fewer movies getting to the theatre and going straight to streaming instead. Creative folks will have one fewer major employer, giving them less bargaining power.
For voters, viewers and workers there was no winning no matter who made the winning bid.
I don't like this. Netflix rarely creates excellent content; instead, it frequently produces mediocre or worse content. Will the same happen for Warner? Are cinemas now second behind streaming?
Edit: I agree Netflix has good Originals. But most are from the early days when they favored quality over quantity. It is sad to see that they reversed that. They have much funding power and should give it to great art that really sticks, has ambitions and something to tell, and values my time instead of mediocrity.
> Are cinemas now second behind streaming?
It feels like a race to the bottom. Movie and TV content quality has taken a nose dive in the past decade.
Yes, there are exceptions, but it’s hard to find these days.
Maybe it’s because producing movies/TV is so much easier and cheaper that there is now so much low quality noise, that it makes finding the high quality signal so difficult.
But it seems like you used to be able to go to the theater and you’d have to decide between several great options.
Now, I almost never care to go because it’s only about 2-3 times a year that anything comes out worth seeing.
Cinema is indeed second behind streaming. The theatrical window is now so short (~40) days that audiences are happy to wait for the increased benefits and reduced cost of watching at home.
This was inevitable. Technology was bound to catch up. Hollywood actually panicked in the 1960s. But those screens were tiny. Nobody wants to see the Godfather on a cheap 1974 Panasonic.
But TV today is at least 55 inch and in crisp 4k resolution. A modern TV is good enough for most content.
It is not Netflix that killed the movieplex. They were just the first to utilise the new tools. The movie theater became the steam locomotive.
It's the sound that's missing from a home viewing setup
55” TV’s have been out for decades they really aren’t a replacement especially when put in a normal living space.
The issue IMO is so few movies are worth any extra effort to see. Steam a new marvel movie and you can pause half way through when you’re a little bored and do something else.
55” TVs have been available for decades but not affordable. I purchased a 60” plasma TV about 2 decades ago but it cost about $2500 dollars. Now I can pick up a 55” 4K TV from Best Buy for $220.
The widespread affordability of large screen TVs has absolutely eroded the value of a movie theater.
A 55” Rear-projection television was way less than a 60” plasma TV back then. Like you I went a little upmarket but from what I recall budget 1080i options were well under a grand.
What matters is the premium over a normal TV and how long it lasts. Spending an extra few hundred for something that lasts 5+ years wasn’t going to break most families budgets. As demonstrated by just how many of those TV’s where sold.
Rear projection TVs always looked like garbage. They were just the best option at the time. There’s a reason no one sells them anymore.
> What matters is the premium over a normal TV and how long it lasts.
I think what matters for this conversation is how close the experience is to a theater. Rear projection 1080i is pretty far.
> Spending an extra few hundred for something that lasts 5+ years wasn’t going to break most families budgets. As demonstrated by just how many of those TV’s where sold.
Do you have some stats for how many were sold? Because I have hunch that sales of large screen TVs had absolutely skyrocketed over the past 20 years.
I had an awesome 1080p rear projection DLP TV in a dark room. A brighter screen works better in a bright room, but you really want a dark room for an optimal experience anyway.
The technology got quite good but inherently took up more space and eventually couldn’t compete on price. Though that also means you’re sitting closer to the screen which made replacement flatscreens in the same space look smaller.
Also 220 is in the same ballpark as going to two movies as a family with snacks. Three would already be a stretch.
Yeah, these things take a long time to shake out. We still have cable subscriptions because older people watch TV that way, but no one would tell you that linear television is thriving. We're only now seeing sports start to somewhat move to streaming services, when the writing's on the wall for a while.
And would you entertain the idea that few movies are worth seeing because going to the movie theatre is a hard sell for audiences, and studios produce movies that try and adapt to that reality?
I got a 4k 55" TV for $299 earlier this year. It weighs maybe 10lbs, and is super thin and fits on the wall.
Large 4k TVs being this accessible/affordable for most households has not been an option for "decades"..
Screen size makes little difference for an individual they can just sit closer, viewing angels are the problem for a family where 55” doesn’t cut it.
4k also makes little difference here, most people really don’t care as seen by how many people use simple HD vs 4k streaming.
Living rooms are not that big to start with. I don't think you actually asked anyone's opinion on this! :D
Small TVs are not comfortable to watch. No one I know is okay with getting a smaller TV and moving their sofa closer. That sounds ridiculous. If there's any comfort to this capatilistic economy, it is the availability of technology at throw away prices. Most people would rather spend on a TV than save the money.
As for the theatre being obsolete, I do agree with you, atleast to some extent. I think everyone is right here. All factors combined is what makes going to the theatre not worth the effort for most of the movies. It's just another nice thing, not what it used to be.
Also, the generational difference too. I think teen and adolescents have a lot of ways to entertain themselves. The craze for movies isn't the same as it used to be. And we grew old(er). With age, I've grown to be very picky with movies.
37+” isn’t a small TVs. Resolution was an issue in the 90’s but midsized TV’s have been around for a long time.
Also, I see plenty of people use tablets to watch stuff laying on the couch in front of a big screen TV. So viewing distance is plenty relevant.
> Screen size makes little difference for an individual they can just sit closer
This is silly. Most people don’t want to sit in a chair 3 feet from their TV to make it fill more of their visual area. A large number of people are also not watching movies individually. I watch TV with my family far more than I watch alone.
> This is silly.
Tell that to every streaming on their tablets sitting on their stomachs. People even watch movies on their phones but they aren’t holding them 15’ away.
Also you don’t need to sit 3’ from a 37” TV.
No one says the experience of watching on their tablet matches the experience of watching a movie in the theater.
But this isn’t the point. TVs are furniture. People generally have a spot where the TV naturally fits in the room regardless of its size. No one buys a TV and then arranges the rest of their furniture to sit close enough to fill their visual space. If the couch is 8 feet from the TV, it’s 8 feet from the TV.
People watching their tablet on a couch in from of a 55+” TV with a surround sound speaker system says on some level it’s a better experience. I’ve seen plenty of people do this to say it’s common behavior.
> No one buys a TV and then arranges the rest of their furniture to sit close enough to fill their visual space. If the couch is 8 feet from the TV, it’s 8 feet from the TV.
It’s common on open floor plans / large rooms for a couch to end up in a completely arbitrary distance from a TV rather than next to a wall. Further setting up the TV on the width vs length vs diagonal of a room commonly provides two or more options for viewing distance.
I mean... there's a ton of movies worth the effort. Just take a look into the big festivals every year: Cannes, Venice, Berlin... Many amazing movies.
For many of the families I know it's less about the quality of movies than the cost and effort of going to the movies.
Going to the movies costs an extra hour for the round-trip to the theater, ~$40 for adult tickets, ~$60 for the kids (2h babysitter or movie tickets), ~$20 for concessions. Whereas watching at home on our 75" TV with homemade popcorn costs a tiny fraction of that, even including electricity and popcorn kernels and the amortized cost of the TV.
As nice as it can be to see a good movie in a theater, it's typically not so much better than watching at home that it's worth an extra hour and more than a hundred dollars.
Well, I'd say that the standard movie format just isn't what people want anymore.
The problem movies have is they have a relatively short amount of time to deliver a complete story. 90 to 120 minutes just isn't a lot of time to be compelling. That's why some of the best movies are split into parts.
Consider Andor as an example. It's some of the best media ever made (IMO) and it simply would not work in the movie format. What makes Andor work is the excellent character development and the time spent building and shaping the universe under a fascist government.
Andor had no length constraints per episode. That allowed it to tell complete satisfying stories with the promise that you'll get more in the next episode.
Telling a detailed story is different than telling a compelling story.
Andor isn’t as compelling as the original movie or significantly longer than the Harry Potter series of movies. Babylon 5 is probably the poster child for a long running space opera series with a planned story arch, but they added plenty of filler because you don’t actually need that much time.
If anything movies tend to be better than TV shows because of the time constraints rather than the budget.
You're replying to ChatGPT
Probably many underestimate the importance of the sound.
A home theater arguably is as much about the subwoofer and surround speakers as it is about the screen.
Especially the subwoofer has a big impact. When you feel the sound it's literally impactful. At other times, it really helps immerse yourself in the scene, even if it's not a typical bass sound, but like background noise in a busy city street.
The properly configured subwoofer makes you feel like you're there, while it just falls flat on a regular speaker.
That said, the fewest people have a home theater setup, so it's probably irrelevant to why people stopped going to the cinema.
I remember being amazed when the Michael Keaton’s Batman movie was released on VHS in the same year as the theatrical release. I had never seen a movie come out for home use that fast.
Begone, bot
Movie theaters can compete by installing LED screens. My company has a movie screen sized LED screen and it looks so much better than modern digital projectors.
It’s only older contracts and studio holdovers that are preventing simultaneous release (which has already been done at times).
I believe the Academy Awards and a few other things too also influence this. The rules to be eligible still very much favor legacy studios IIRC. But, with this that may change? Hard to say. I know that quite a few Netflix movies have had theatrical runs at random mom and pop theaters in Cali so they could meet eligibility requirements for the various awards.
A current example (although not Netflix) is The Secret Agent with an award qualification run in NYC and LA before wider release.
Now I'm envisioning WB movie pass combined with streaming subscriptions. The business models can get quite funky in this paradigm.
They're starting to up their quality. Frankenstein and Death by Lightning were two standout successes recently.
That said, I'm more uncomfortable with the continued consolidation of media ownership and more outsize influence of FAANG tech over media.
> Frankenstein and Death by Lightning were two standout successes recently.
IMHO Frankenstein" was pretty terrible. The makeup was awful, the effects were cheap, the monster... wasn't a monster! The entire premise depends on him being a monster, not some sort of misunderstood, sympathetic EMO.
> The entire premise depends on him being a monster, not some sort of misunderstood, sympathetic EMO.
This is a misconception on a similar level to thinking the monster's name is Frankenstein: "As depicted by Shelley, the creature is a sensitive, emotional person whose only aim is to share his life with another sentient being like himself."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein%27s_monster#Perso...
> The entire premise depends on him being a monster
Have you read the book? She emphasises how pretty all the body parts that Victor picked were.
> The entire premise depends on him being a monster, not some sort of misunderstood, sympathetic EMO.
Uh, the "monster" is definitely the most sympathetic character in the original novel.
I was surprised at how many shots that I thought were terrible CGI were in fact practical effects.
Netflix has always had one or three stand-out projects over a year, but is that what we want from studios? It is like the tech model: 1 big success for 10+ duds (the VC show) or another superhero installment (the Google/Meta cash cow movie).
By the definition of "stand out" you can't have very many right?
If all of them "stand out" then none of them do.
You're describing TV and movies since forever.
Ever year there are a few good shows and movies and a lot of mid-to-bad shows and movies.
This is not a Netflix thing, nor is it new.
If WB was any good, would they have been snatched up by Netflix?
All these studios fought the good fight against big tech over many years but the writing was on the wall.
Hopefully a future Progressive presidency reviews all these mergers and breaks up big tech big time.
> If WB was any good, would they have been snatched up by Netflix?
Yes because the situation of WB has nothing to do with their performance.
In 1990s they merged with TIME publishing right before the internet killed all magazines. In 2000s with AOL right before th dot com bubble. In 2010s with AT&T who realised they needed a shit ton of money to roll out 5G so they took a massive loan and charged it to Warner debt.
So WARNER keeps performing and the business side keeps adding debt from horrible decisions
Honestly Warner would have been fine if they hadn't been saddled with the debt that AT&T used to buy them. It wasn't an issue of Warner's business performance.
AT&T was able offload a bunch of debt on to them, and cash out at about what they paid in 2016. Not shabby.
At this point why would you consider WB as an entity at all. Thry were just another IP bundle
It's about all the other projects that would have had great quality but did not secure funding because Netflix prefers to fund mass-produced mediocrity. In Germany we have a saying "Even a blind hen sometimes finds a grain of corn".
U.S. version: "Even a blind squirrel (or pig) finds an acorn every now and then."
> It's about all the other projects that would have had great quality but did not secure funding because Netflix prefers to fund mass-produced mediocrity. In Germany we have a saying "Even a blind hen sometimes finds a grain of corn".
Did you see the show Dark?
In parallel, they're also starting to downgrade their quality. In the latest season of Stranger Things there's a wild amount of in-scene exposition, where the characters explain what's happening while it's happening. I did some digging and learned that they may be dumbing down their shows because they know users typically look at their phones while watching Netflix and users are more likely to drop off of a show if they don't know what's going on.
See here: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/jan/17/not-sec...
Edit: I did really enjoy Frankenstein.
Frankenstein looks oddly cheap and fake with really bad lighting in many scenes. You can tell they used the volume virtual production to shoot scenes and it doesn't look great.
They have a “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.” Sure it has a lot of crap but they also have major hits like Squid Games, Stranger Things, (both became cultural phenomena) and Daredevil.
They're fourth now. Video games are first, then books, streaming, then cinema, and music after that. If I'm not mistaken.
Warner makes a lot of crap too. They both make what sells.
This was clear many years ago when I opened up the HBO app and saw the full screen background ad for Fboy Island.
i dont think this should matter, plenty of conglomerates have brands across quality levels.
think old navy, gap, banana republic.
the quality difference is important for the conglomerate same with netflix vs hbo, the corporate benefit is being able to save on costs around like amortizing the corporate side of things (accounting, marketing, real estate, research ect)
Netflix also created "Netflix lightning" where there are zero shadows to make lighting scenes faster but is really ugly.
Lots of good lesser-known stuff on Netflix if you wade through the crap:
* The Devil's Plan
* Alice in Borderlands
* Extraordinary Attorney Woo
* Brassic
* Back to Life
* Intelligence
* Black Doves
* Top Boy
* Mo
* The Breakthrough
* Borgen
* Love Death & Robots
* Scavenger's Reign
As well as well-known stuff like Stranger Things and Squid Game as a sibling comment mentioned.
[Edit: replies point out some of these are bought rather than produced but I think it still counts for overall quality]
> Scavenger's Reign
Oddly enough, this was originally an HBO Max production.
Some foreign series gems also like The Asset, Mercy for None.
And some newer ones, American Primeval and the Beast in Me.
They licensed Brassic, it was filmed for Sky One, not Netflix.
Same with Extraordinary Attorney Woo and a lot of "originals" on netflix. They'll just buy the rights to air something and then slap their name on it like they made it. That said, I actually appreciate them looking for good media produced overseas and buying up the rights to those shows to bring them to the US. It's a good thing (although it'd be nice if put some effort in making sure there are always quality subs) but it can cause some people to think netflix is producing more good shows than they actually are.
Honestly speaking Netflix has good catalog, much more comparable to Hollywood. Take the latest Frankenstein for example.
Don't look at only series. They also have recipes repurposed. But they acquire good titles and also produce some good ones.
I have 459 titles on my IMDB watchlist and a tiny percentage of it is available on Netflix (if at all), but this is anecdotal and might have to do something to where I live.
Netflix outside of the US is a very different experience.
In the US, it's mostly their own productions and older content they explicitly acquired, but elsewhere, especially in markets that don't have a local HBO or Disney streaming service, they have incredible backlogs.
I remember finding basically everything I could wish for on there when traveling in SE Asia almost a decade ago, compared to a still decent offering in Western Europe, and mostly cobwebs in the US.
459!? It must take a while to check your list…
Is it actually worse than the status quo though? I'm not so sure.
I hate this era of consolidation but Warner and HBO have already degraded, so this may be the least bad outcome here.
I don't want you to think I'm picking on you; but, I've been thinking about the MBA-bullshittism "consolidation" for a while. It's really a euphemism for "trust formation", right? It seems like we fought tooth-and-nail just 100 years ago to set up real antitrust laws, with real teeth... and now every industry is "consolidated". What's going on in health and seed and cars makes me seethe.
If you want some considered thoughts on consolidation and antitrust implications, Cory Doctorow's writings are interesting. Some relevant examples:
"Hate the player AND the game (10 Sep 2025)" https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/10/say-their-names/#object-p...
"The one weird monopoly trick that gave us Walmart and Amazon and killed Main Street (14 Aug 2024)" https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/14/the-price-is-wright/#enfo...
"End of the line for Reaganomics (13 Aug 2021)" https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down
"10 Oct 2022 Antitrust is – and always has been – about fairness" https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/10/play-fair/#bedoya
And his archives for more:
https://pluralistic.net/tag/monopoly/
https://pluralistic.net/tag/antitrust/
The laws only exist if people are willing to apply them.
Yeah, HBO has moved decidedly down market.
Apple is at least trying to fill their old niche. It seems quite telling that the only company truing to do the whole “prestige TV” thing is a kind of side-project for a hardware company. At least nobody can buy them, though.
> Apple
do we really want big tech to also control our media?
Warner Bros has had their best summer in years (Sinners, Superman, etc). HBO still makes highly regarded prestige TV series (The Last Of Us, Task, etc). This is just false.
Seriously?
The Crown, Stranger Things, Unbelievable, Russian Doll (wow, just wow), Orange Is The New Black, Narcos, Narcos: Mexico, GLOW, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Ozark, Nobody Wants This, Altered Carbon, Dirk Gently, Mindhunters, The Queen's Gambit, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
And that's just what I can remember off the top of my head. And that's my taste, there's more not to my taste like Squid Game, Wednesday, Bridgerton, etc. And not including the films, documentaries, shorts, etc. they done like Love, Death and Robots.
The majority of that list is quite old. Have you seen what they're doing now? Not saying every single thing they make anymore is bad, but the average quality is far lower than it used to be.
> The majority of that list is quite old. Have you seen what they're doing now?
Adolescence (which won big at the Emmy's this year), Stranger Things, The Beast in Me, Last Samurai Standing, A Man on the Inside, The Gentlemen, Absentia, Baby Reindeer, Ripley, Arcane, Squid Game, Dynamite Kiss, Delhi Crime, etc.
Interesting that most of the shows you like are +- 10 years old. From the early Netflix days.
I suspect the same would be the case for HBO. Their back catalog is more impressive than their current output.
Discovery really did a number on HBO.
a lot of these projects were cancelled though.
imo, that's the worst thing about Netflix. its not that they don't produce good series, its that when they do they have a high peobability of getting cancelled.
Far more shows go on too long than get cancelled too early.
I feel like people who say this never watched a lot of TV before Netflix. Every popular show overstays its welcome and gets cancelled once people get bored. That's just how TV works. Netflix isn't even the worst offender.
Netflix has shows that absolutely overstayed their welcome.
Stranger things should have been one maybe two seasons.
Netflix doesn't wait for people to get bored. It canceled Kaos the same month they released it! It had good reviews and a lot of binges but that didn't save it from the axe.
Dead Boy Detectives was canceled less than 5 months after it was released.
With so much competing for our time there's no way everyone is going to jump on every show immediately after it gets released and watch it several times over so whatever bullshit metrics netflix is using look impressive enough for them to give the show's fans a satisfying conclusion.
If you watched TV before netflix you might remember that sometimes it took two or more entire seasons before a show became popular. Some extremely popular and successful shows were like that and would never have happened if netflix had put them out.
I don't watch Netflix anymore. If a shows on Netflix I just skip it mostly because of two main reasons
1. It's going to get cancelled, so why invest my time. 2. I won't be able to find it.. discoverability is the absolute pits in that app.
If you unsubscribe for more than a year then Netflix will delete your profile data entirely and discoverability gets so much worse. I signed up for a month to watch Star Trek: Prodigy S2 right when it dropped and was so offput by the "vanilla" recommendations of a fresh profile I really didn't see any point but to cancel it as soon as I finished that one exact show I knew I cared to watch and could find only with the search feature despite it being a new release.
Of course Jessica Jones is on Disney+ now. I think most of those others are still on Netflix, but it is a bit of a problem for them - when they don't own the content they eventually lose the ability to stream it, especially as the content owners have entered the streaming space too.
I watched half of those and I haven't had Netflix in 5 years. it's not worth it anymore.
The first season of Altered Carbon was great. It's a shame that they never made a second season. ;-)
Man a second season would be so great. They could even recast the main character, given their personality lives in a brain disk. But I'd rather they didn't.
Pretty subject to personal taste. Half of that list is garbage IMHO
> I don’t like this
please stop them.
Netflix is `while profitable(): make_sequel()` which _always_ ends with shitty content and incomplete stories.
How are Netflix created contents profitable? I guess Netflix pays shows based on user time spent, and a Netflix show is profitable if users spend time on it, and not on other shows?
All TV series on Netflix end in S01. Even if they don't, it's a new show with same characters but lousy writing. Looking at
* The CIA laywer who doesn't know about green passport
* FUBAR
* The Diplomat
Mostly agree but their original k-dramas for the US market are pretty good.
Is it still a K-drama if it's for the US market?
What you're describing is more of an American television problem.
The Simpsons, The Office, Game of Thrones, etc. all managed to go on too long without the help of Netflix.
You're describing the entertainment business.
I actually think that’s the opposite of Netflix. TV shows rarely make it past a second season, as soon as there’s even a mild drop in viewing figures they drop a property like a hot potato.
Note the OP's algo was *while* profitable. You're focused on shows that never make it. I think this is true of the cash cows, while dogs are historically (with only one or two channels so limited broadcast bandwidth) networks could be far more brutal while Netflix needs a much bigger catalog.
They are agile
>it frequently produces mediocre or worse content. Will the same happen for Warner?
HBO hasn't produced good content in years at this point. Since before the last season or two of Game of Thrones, I should think. The other brands in Warner didn't even really have that much prestige.
Succession, Hacks, The Last of Us, White Lotus and Euphoria have all been recent buzzy TV hits for HBO post Game of Thrones
[dead]
It is probably not just a Netflix issue. But it is also quite a philosophical question as to who is to blame. The consumers who watch and pay, or the ones who fund the mediocrity.
It is definitely sad to see Netflix turn from their early phase, where they valued quality over quantity, and since have reversed that.
I just want to see more great art that really sticks, has ambitions and something to tell, and values my time.
>I just want to see more great art that really sticks, has ambitions and something to tell, and values my time.
Its out there, there just isn't great curation and in a world of ever increasing content more people just dont ever find it and accept whatever mediocrity they find.
This is Succession erasure.
I'd have to be younger, 3 notches to the left of Lenin, and in a perpetual billionaires-are-evil rage mode to find it compelling. Got through most of the first season, which is a rare point to quit a show... we either quit after the first episode, or make it all the way to the end. Painfully bad, and not half as much as the stupid Sex and the City way either.
In 2009 a Turner Broadcasting executive stood in front of employees and said they are not worried about Online streaming because it only covered 15 minutes of watching time among consumers. TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, HBO, Time Inc were all under the same ownership umbrella along with the entire MGM catalog Ted Turner had acquired at the cost of losing control of his company. There were executives who knew what they were doing but some were performative - using buzz words and bravado to hide that they had no idea. Many were trying to extract as much as possible from both ends - 50% of revenue from consumers and 50% from advertisers. Even when those two were in direct conflict with each-other’s interests. They believed content was king and so they invested in content, instead of distribution. They hoarded their back catalog for years.
In the mean time Netflix started with 3 CDs per month plans and when they began streaming on 2007 we didn’t use it at start because we assumed that it would cut out of the 3 movies allotment. So we were scared to use it for a while. Yet we used it regularly - because unlike the cable service, streaming didn’t have ads. And ads were massive massive abuse and waste of time for consumers. You can benchmark the level of abuse by the types of ads in the super bowl: Alcohol, crypto, gambling, cars…
The reality is that cable was a paid premium service, unlike broadcast TV, which was free and littered with ads. Mix the two and you lose the golden goose.
That said, the bravado of that executive stuck with me since then.
Everything is now re-consolidated under different media companies now. Instead of Ted Turner we have Larry Ellison, and Netflix, and Disney.
So I think the biggest question is, what form of entertainment will eventually supplant streaming services? Whatever it is (or will be) will almost certainly be disregarded by most people.
AI generated by demand, most likely. Or AI generated by indie creators who have a vision but not a budget, and are provided with a platform to create content easily.
Youtube, TikTok, Sora...
The branding debacle around HBO streaming service was malpractice
HBO Go and HBO Now - simultaneously, for some reason
Then HBO Max
Then Max
Now back to HBO Max
How many committee meetings did it take to get this strategy?
It's frankly amazing WB Studio and HBO quality has survived this insanity.
Time-Warner and its incarnations is whatever the opposite of synergy is (the parts are worse because of the whole)
> The reality is that cable was a paid premium service, unlike broadcast TV, which was free and littered with ads.
The reality is, most cable channels had ads from day one. Less ads than most broadcast stations (which made up most of the channels you had on cable at the start anyways) but still a lot of the first cable-only channels had ads from the start. WTBS had ads on cable in 1976. MSG/USA had ads on cable starting in 1977. CNN had ads on day one in 1980. MTV had ads on day one in 1981.
I dont think I have ever seen a completely ad free cable channel?
I cancelled all my content subscriptions and I'm back to torrenting. I barely watch anything made my Netflix regardless. I think either Dark or the 3rd season of Stranger Things was the last time. Snyder's SciFi movie wasn't much good either. By now the streaming services are en route to become as terrible as whatever they were set out to replace. Once one of them started heavily advertising their own productions everywhere inside their apps I would've cancelled any remaining subscription at the latest.
I'm almost back there at this point given how annoying streaming services are getting.
I torrent too, but I think it makes sense to buy/rent or sub to a service in many cases. Companies look at views and revenue to decide what content to actually make. So, especially for ongoing series that I'm enjoying I want them to keep renewing it.
I subscribe to ad-free versions of services so I don't really run into ads a lot unless I'm trying to watch something live on TV.
Irrelevant to me. The amount of TV shows I enjoyed that got canned after S01 has burnt me so much that I wait until I know if there's a sensible finale at the end or if it ends on a cliffhanger that'll never be resolved before I even dive into a new show.
>Companies look at views and revenue to decide what content to actually make.
Social discourse is also heavily weighted
It’s better than ever with stuff like jellyfin/plex and all the sonarr/radarr… apps. I’ve been running bitmagnet too which has been great for actually finding torrents.
> back to torrenting
lots of people have, and we've come now full circle. I wonder if it was inevitable.
In a society that’s built on the foundations of perpetual profit growth it is. Sometimes you just can’t innovate, so instead of improving the product you cut the costs and enshittify. We’re in an enshittification regime right now.
Why are there alternating cycles of innovation and enshittification? I think it’s because investors are always trying to pull forward profit, but because they only have a 10 year horizon on investment strategy they tend to create cycles that are around that same period. If there was less investment, the innovation would be slower but the reactionary enshittification would be lessened too.
https://theonion.com/just-six-corporations-remain-1819564741...
What's funny is that Onion article uses "a blockbuster $112 billion deal" because in 1998 a figure that high was so preposterous it helped with the parody. They'd need to add a few zeros today.
“Dr. Evil, this is 1969, that kind of money doesn’t even exist! It’s like saying you want a gajillion bajillion dollars!”
Lockheed-Northrop-Boeing-Pepsico is an excellent joke all on its own damn.
Also a pretty subtle one, this article was written after Boeing and McConnell Douglas merged a year prior.
Remember, that's just a subsidiairy of the Sheinhardt Wig Company.
I never imagined that a service that ships DVD via mail would one day buy Warner Brothers. It is amazing how innovation and focus can change the game. Someday a new startup will piggy bank on Netflix and probably buy it later.
More like how did these companies drop the ball so bad. Most notably Sony which produced TVs, Computers, DVD players, Media Centers. They owned a movie studio and record label. They also have in house expertise with cloud content distribution via PlayStation.
Unfortunately for them around the time of Netflix's ascent they were embroiled with all kinds of financial issues but still the mind boggles
> Most notably Sony which produced TVs, Computers, DVD players, Media Centers. They owned a movie studio and record label. They also have in house expertise with cloud content distribution via PlayStation.
I feel like some of those very diversified company tend to be the one who struggle to evolve and adapt because some part of their business are worried about being cannibalized by the new business opportunity (like how streaming “killed” physical media). I.e, if you are the director of the “DVD player division” you have an active interest in killing any potential streaming division. Reality is of course more complex than this, but this is the kind of story we sometimes hear off when "too big to fail" companies end up missing a major shift.
Silo-ing is the biggest brake on human progress
> Most notably Sony which produced TVs, Computers, DVD players, Media Centers. They owned a movie studio and record label.
They still do all those things? And they're still successful in most of them? They haven't "failed" or "dropped the ball" based on any metric I can think of. I'm not sure what you're referring to here to be honest.
Yeah lol, Sony still doing good in Music,Film etc
Sony just focus at their home market more
They purposefully stayed out of the money losing streaming wars and sell their content to the highest bidder
They have a streaming platform though! Sony Pictures Core. Seems half the comments in this submission is just straight up guessing and assuming whatever guesses they make are correct. Would take like 30 seconds to just fact-check what you're about to write.
It looks like it’s mostly focused on renting and buying movies on demand. We are talking about pay a fee and streaming all you want.
That’s a completely different market. They are not trying to compete with Netflix and in fact have a deal with them that Netflix has first right of refusal to stream any Sony film
https://www.sonypictures.com/corp/press_releases/2021/0408
Sony created KPop Demon Hunters and sold the streaming rights to Netflix .
If you look at any of their popular back catalog TV content, it is all being streamed on other services.
> It looks like it’s mostly focused on renting and buying movies on demand. We are talking about pay a fee and streaming all you want.
Then you might have to look a bit closer :) There are plans out there that give you a fixed monthly fee and stream all you want, so that effectively makes it a streaming service even by your definition.
Not saying they are trying to compete with Netflix, but they do have a streaming service.
You can’t watch the full catalog of movies they have for rent or purchase for one price.
You know you’re being pedantic.
Same is true for Amazon, you can't watch 100% of the content unless you "Buy"/Rent, so is Amazon Prime Video not a streaming service?
You know you're trying to be misleading, but not everyone falls for those sort of things.
No you’re being pedantic. Compare Amazon Prime Video subscription content to Sony’s subscription content.
Is Amazon creating new content and giving other streaming services first dibs on it? Are they putting their back catalog content on other streaming services en masse?
Is Sony spending billions of dollars to produce content to go on their own streaming service like Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Peacock, HBO Max (for now)?
Heck is HBO releasing theatrical movies and giving first run streaming rights to other streaming services?
You’re not making serious arguments if you don’t see the difference between every other streaming service and what Sony is doing or seeing what companies with both streaming services and movie studios like Warner Bros, Disney, and Paramount are doing.
You're making this way more complicated than it is, no need to compare against others to understand if what Sony is doing is a streaming service or not.
So I guess back to basics:
> A streaming media service, also known as streaming service, is an online provider that allows users to watch or listen to content, such as films, TV series, music, or podcasts, over the Internet
Fairly simple, I think at least. So with that, is what Sony is doing a streaming service, regardless of what HBO/Amazon/their mother is doing? Yes, in my humble opinion, what Sony is offering lets users "watch or listen to content, such as films, TV series, music, or podcasts, over the Internet", so it is a streaming service.
I disagree it's pedantic, it's just understanding what terms mean, in this particular case, what "streaming service" means.
These are two businesses, both under the Sony name: content production and content distribution. Very likely they are two different divisions with different P&Ls.
Every “streaming service” is a distributor. Some of them are also content producers.
Content production is also a bizarre mini world of VC-type funding and shell/temporary production corporations. Some companies lean heavily into that, some do a more traditional in-house studio model, some do both.
I'm sure everybody with a Bravia TV is super excited. If you have a streaming service no one knows or cares about do you even have a streaming service?
Or anyone who plays online with a PS4 or PS5, which correct me if I'm wrong, probably is more people than the people with Bravia TVs.
Yeah and how many of those are subscribing to Sony’s streaming service where they don’t even put their releases on during the initial streaming release window and doesn’t have any of their popular backlog content?
There isn’t an iOS app or a Roku app. Even AppleTV+ is on Roku. This isn’t a serious streaming service.
My point is that it's included...
Sony bought Crunchyroll + Funimation but I have to admit that I'm sick of normie anime like Bleach and I crave the kind of things that you find on HDIVE like Backstabbed in a Backwater Dungeon: My Trusted Companions Tried to Kill Me, but Thanks to the Gift of an Unlimited Gacha I Got LVL 9999 Friends and Am Out for Revenge on My Former Party Members and the World. [1]
[1] If the Anime News Network finishes reviewing it doesn't make the cut
> how did these companies drop the ball so bad
Companies didn't, leadership did. For a big, fat check. And they're happily retired now, sitting in their expensive villas with millions on their balance.
They couldn't care less about your happy childhood memories that the content produced by their predecessors engraved in your mind.
If everybody is dropping the ball, my first guess is that catching it is actually legitimately difficult.
>They also have in house expertise with cloud content distribution via PlayStation.
Maybe it's better now, but looking at the PS3-era PSN, that expertise had negative value.
It’s exactly the reason why. They focused on proprietary formats/devices to lock consumers in
Hindsight is 20/20 and the Innovator's Dilemma is very real.
And no OS. That certainly helped Apple.
Sony has crunchyroll
They didn't fumble around as much, also Sony still has leverage a lot on Japan Industry
> Someday a new startup will piggy bank on Netflix and probably buy it later.
I think what history shows us is that the modern monopolies managed to destroy antitrust to the point where nobody will ever do to them what they did to others.
People said that a generation ago as well, and the one before that. Yeah monopolies make it hard, but every one of them eventually crumbles to the next wave of innovation.
Well, AOL did ship 1 billion CDs over its heyday and they acquired Warner Brothers in 2000…
> Someday a new startup will piggy bank on Netflix and probably buy it later.
Is that a financialised version of piggybacking?
They have to as a stop gap before going on generating full feature film on demand. Those streaming service are all struggling to have an attractive enough catalog for an extended period of time for a lot of folks with their shitty pricing policies.
Considering WB was once the champion of that format too. Guess that is end of DVD now. Netflix has no interest in that format.
> Guess that is end of DVD now. Netflix has no interest in that format
and neither do consumers. video over the internet is the future that Netflix saw 20 years ago, when others didn't, except YouTube.
That's absolutely not the case. Demand for physical media not only continues to exist but it's growing as streaming services prove undependable at keeping shows available, and are willing to censor/edit shows at a whim.
Not sure how many of you have WBD shares with its rather tumultuous past (spin off from ATT, the Bill Hwang mess), but if you've picked up shares on the cheap in the past few years sub $10, congratulations.
"Under the terms of the agreement, each WBD shareholder will receive $23.25 in cash and $4.501 in shares of Netflix common stock for each share of WBD common stock outstanding at the closing of the transaction. "
Note: this is after completion of the current splitting of WBD; as you'd expect Netflix wants the catalog and production but they're not taking the sports and some other pieces. The left over / newly revived Discovery Global will likely be a hollowed-out shell of less desirable properties saddled with a bunch of debt.
That's $4.50 superscript 1
WBD price at this moment is just $25.28. I think there are some complicated conditions associated with the terms.
The exchanges are also closed.
Premarket open
“The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us.” - Ted Sarandos in 2013
Seems Netflix won that race.
Thing is that Netflix didn't really succeed at that goal. HBO was and still is the gold standard for premium cable content. Netflix instead decided to go for the bottom 70% of the market, and the quality of their shows reflects that.
In fact the very reason for this purchase is that they desperately need help on the creative side.
Netflix is what it is today because all the studios trying to compete with their tech was an even bigger disaster than Netflix competing on content.
I don't think the Netflix vs HBO comparison is fair.
HBO was always one channel in a home. They produced a limited amount of high-quality content. You watch it a few times a week and network TV reality shows or whatever other trash the rest of the week.
Netflix wanted/wants to be the only channel in cord-cutting and cord-never homes. When that's your goal you have to produce mostly crap and some good stuff.
> and some good stuff
which is mostly inexistent on Netflix
That's a matter of opinion. Other people all over this thread have shared what they think are good Netflix shows and movies.
Why would anyone want to be old HBO? Writing good scripts is hard and not rewarded.
The rewards aren’t necessarily monetary.
After that complete fumble of HBO becoming "Max" they were at their last legs
The "Max" fiasco was pretty much the strangest branding mistake ever. Not just an obvious mistake but it was honestly kind of a mystery that anyone would even be tempted to do that.
Remember when Netflix almost split its brand with "Quickster"? It was the dying DVD by mail service, but the whole debacle did nothing but confuse people.
"HBO or Cinemax... um, I wonder which name I should keep."
As I was reading the announcement, that quote popped into my head. I came here to say exactly that.
It's always great to read about how the people the own the means of distribution aquire also the means of production, trying to create a meta-monopoly. /sarcasm
I'm rooting for someone on the regulary side disliking all the crap that Netflix produces, and just shuts the whole thing down. Those 5 billion they'd have to pay for a breakup fee in that case would have me feeling better that I couldn't cancel their service, since my family pesters me to keep it.
If this goes like all the other media mergers this year, the only regulatory scrutiny will involve Netflix allowing the executive branch to install a censor / ombudsman that has final say on their news and documentary content.
There is no “monopoly” on either content distribution or creation. Amazon and Apple are both trillion dollar companies that have streaming services.
Then there is Disney, Comcast (Peacock), Paramount, STARZ (standalone company), and AMC
Technically, you're right. I feel like there needs to be new terms to describe though the staleness of the industry. "Oligopoly" just doesn't have the same ring to it.
How many competitors do you need? Apple, Disney, Netflix, Comcast, and Paramount are five major competitors.
If you as a hypothetical video content creator want to get your content distributed to a wide audience, you have five companies to go to, you can publish it to any of the video on demand services, try to monetize it through ads on YouTube, etc.
We aren’t in the 30s anymore where the only way you could see content was by going to the movie theater.
Before HBO Max was a thing, they were already selling distribution rights of content to Netflix. No one said that was a monopoly.
> How many competitors do you need? Apple, Disney, Netflix, Comcast, and Paramount are five major competitors.
I actually already agree that the number is not the problem. I can't articulate better, but somehow these don't actually feel like "competitors" in the classical market sense, but rather as stars orbiting the same center, as they're all moving in the same direction, and from time to time merging with one another.
That was more or less the case from the advent of TV onwards, though.
IMO I think we are going to see Paramount, STARZ and AMC bought up soon. I don't think they can compete with Disney, Comcast or Netflix in size.
> IMO I think we are going to see Paramount, STARZ and AMC bought up soon.
You do know that David Ellison (Larry Ellison's son), through his Skydance Media, acquired Paramount Global (including its parent, National Amusements) in a merger completed in August 2025.
He also wanted Warner Brothers. I'm super glad that nepo baby isn't getting what he wants. He is using his daddy to talk to Trump to try stop it though: https://nypost.com/2025/12/04/media/paramount-skydances-davi...
You're right, I forgot about that. Paramount with Sky is pretty big.
Netflix has had a large production studio outside Madrid for several years already.
> Netflix has had a large production studio outside Madrid for several years already.
One of several around the world. Albuquerque, Fort Monmouth (New Jersey), Shepperton (UK), etc.
Quite true thanks I was just shifting the discussion further east.
This deal is an indicator of huge changes in global film & TV production.
Hollywood's struggles amplified after the writer's strike with a perfect storm of issues around unionisation, technology, fragmenting audiences, new formats, asset liabilities and enormous competition to the east.
Now LA soundstages are empty while production centres in Europe, UK, India, China, Nigeria are booming and vast new studios cropping up in the Middle East.
Proposed tariffs will do little to stem this tide as the money has moved on already.
In addition, traditional production methods are unsustainable and decision-making is opaque in an era where sustainability, transparency and democratisation are taking over.
The main benefit to Netflix is of course the IP, but the traditional studio assets of WB have their days numbered.
Heard of one production needing to do a one day reshoot on something. Something that could easily have been done in LA. It was cheaper to fly everyone out to some European country for 3 days and do the pickups.
The business side of Hollywood has been imploding for the past few years. It just costs too much to film there vs other places. Tariffs will not change that. The tax incentives are gone and the must have on set is too high.
Not sure how netflix is going to digest that pill they just swallowed. 83 billion is a lot. Is is about 3x their total gross per year. I do not think they can raise prices too much with out shedding subscribers. WB has already taken out AOL, ATT (recovering), and Discovery. Netflix could be next.
The deal also spins out the linear TV into a different company. Can that company survive? Its going to be tough going. Havent looked but I would bet a good portion of the debt they took on to do the divestiture from AT&T is being pumped into that company.
You know that meme of Jack Sparrow riding a sinking ship to shore?
That's how I imagined WBD. David Zaslav gets to transition from the leader of a reality show slophouse to one of the biggest power players in Hollywood, and all be has to do is let the slophouse sink and declare himself captain of the next ship.
The value of the back catalog is still substantial for years to come. But you are right about the landscape changing dramatically for new productions.
Hollywood was premised on economies of scale. Concentrate a lot of talent in one place and then put infrastructure in place for block buster productions to happen (studios, tech, money).
That's being disrupted by several things:
- LA and the US are no longer cheap places to be. A lot of blockbuster content is filmed outside the US at this point. Canada, Europe, and elsewhere. LA and Hollywood are still important but mainly because that's where the money is. It's not necessarily where the money is being spent.
- Independent content producers self publishing content on platforms like Youtube and growing audiences rivaling those of popular TV shows.
- AI is starting to drive down the cost of special effects, digital processing, etc. And it's probably also going to erode the value of needing actors at all for especially a lot of the less glamorous roles (think all the extras in big movie productions). This is a sensitive topic in particularly Hollywood. But not enough to delay the inevitable by very long.
All this is driving down the cost of creating decent quality things that people still want to pay for. That's a critical distinction. There's a lot of ad sponsored stuff that people don't really pay for as well. To make money, you need quality. AI is working its way up the chain here, with increasingly better stuff. But most of it is still pretty low value.
But things like soap operas, third rate series that Netflix bulk purchases from places like South Korea, etc. are all fair game for AI.
Netflix adding the WB back catalog is a great move for them. Their own back catalog isn't strong enough to keep people and expanding with newly created production it is a very slow and expensive process. And they've had some flops and cost control issues. There just isn't enough there to keep me permanently. I tend to sign up for just a few months and then cancel. I'm probably going to cancel soon again. HBO did not actually offer their streaming services in Germany until recently. And I was considering trying that for a while. Now I might not have to.
Hollywood was dying long before the strike.
Consolidations like this were bound to happen. In the mid 2010s we had a good thing, only one streaming platform with pretty much every movie and tv show. Then every studio got greedy and spawned their own platform, forcing netflix to produce their own shows.
Now you have 20 tv networks all with their own subscription and all losing money.
It's a repeat of how cable networks were.
This is the issue with content production being owned by the distributors too. It's too profitable to own the vertical because each piece of content is an effective monopoly, because to participate in culture requires watching it (piracy notwithstanding). Therefore, the "fix" is to regulate this monopoly - by making sure that monopoly cannot exist without cost. One "simple" way is, imho, to make content production and ownership of distribution strictly prohibited in the same entity, and to also enforce mechanical licensing of content (such that you cannot have content exclusives in the distribution platforms).
Movie theatres have similar restrictions with film studios in the past - to prevent this very monopoly. It's high time we brought it back.
Yeah the best way to fix this would be to enforce the separation of distribution and production via the Paramount Decree. Separate content production from the streaming service itself. Get rid of the vertical integration plaguing the industry and we'll get better content since quality will be the territory on which studios have to compete with each other again.
>only one streaming platform with pretty much every movie and tv show
doesn't this move reduce the number of streaming services by one? we'll see how the details turn out, but if I was paying for netflix and hbo max, now I only need to pay for netflix
Yes but it doesnt increase the amount of shows or movies on any of them. This new amount of content will just feed into the rotating library, not create one big library of content always available. So in fact you are loosing providers and loosing content at the same time, yet prices will still keep going up...
>Consolidations like this were bound to happen. In the mid 2010s we had a good thing, only one streaming platform with pretty much every movie and tv show.
This has been the narrative about the state of streaming services for years now. People upset that content is too fragmented across services. Now we get some significant consolidation and people are upset. They just ignore that angle and find a different one to gripe about.
I think this is great.
Daniel Ek got it right, you can all but eradicate piracy with good service. The inverse holds true as well
House of Cards is the original Netflix Original, and it came out in 2013. Prime started competing with Netflix the same year.
But the other platforms - Disney+ (2019), Apple TV (2016/2019), HBO Max (2020), Peacock (2020), Paramount+/CBS All Access (2021 / 2014) - are all later.
HBO has been around for way longer... HBO Go started in 2010.
> HBO has been around for way longer... HBO Go started in 2010.
Netflix started streaming on January 16, 2007.
Just download it as you would download a car if you could.
> Combination Will Offer More Choice and Greater Value for Consumers, Create More Opportunities for the Creative Community and Generate Shareholder Value
No doubt about the last part, but how does merging two giants create "More Choice"? I know corporate double-speak is already out of control and I know they're writing whatever they can do avoid regulators who surely are looking into the acquisition, but surely these executives cannot believe acquisitions lead to more choice, right?
I guess you are in the US. For you, WB content was already available. But you see, they never bothered to make that content available for most of the rest of the world. Netflix, on the other hand, is available most anywhere. This is exactly what it says on the can - more choice and greater value for me.
What's written on the can reads "please don't sue us, we're not a monopoly, and we will not gouge users".
On the other hand Netflix will make its subscribers fund everything without reducing their income, and will not give these subscribers at least half of that content, because, why not?
If approval of this resulted in Netflix being required to release their crap on DVD (eventually) it’s actually be a win for consumers.
DVDs at least keep working.
Yes. However, I'd take a downloadable, well encoded and chapter marked mp4 over any DVD. 1080p SDR is enough.
I can just store it in my NAS and watch it whenever I like it.
> What's written on the can reads "please don't sue us, we're not a monopoly, and we will not gouge users".
No reawwy this time we double-dog super promise
Netflix acquiring WB’s content will not necessarily lead to all of it being available for streaming to you in any given country. Content licensing is complicated, to put it mildly.
Your Netflix bill is about to skyrocket and there's no guarantee you'll have access to those titles.
Well if I can cancel my HBO Max it will probably be a zero-sum thing (all the crappy "discovery" content they tacked on was just annoying and I have little interest in their "sports" offerings)
The unfortunate reality is that HBO may have less content but there's also less garbage. I'm constantly blown away by how mediocre everything on Netflix is. I only have it because it's bundled into myobile bill at a legacy discount which makes it only a few dollars a month. I wouldn't pay full price for Netflix now and I will likely remove it altogether if they do another price hike that adds a few more dollars beyond my current discount (~70%).
> HBO may have less content but there's also less garbage
If you leave the featured areas and venture into any of the categories, you will see that HBO is also full of junk. HBO -> Browse by Genre -> A-Z -> any of them are full of junk.
The Netflix featured pages are more geared to showing you stuff you haven't seen yet, while HBO is geared toward showing you popular stuff, even if you have watched it on HBO.
I always smile at these situations. Yahrrr!
Yeah what I was thinking was ah higher quality low bitrate content. Will need to set the apps to auto update some stuff.
> I guess you are in the US.
I am not, and WB was available via local options here (Southern European country).
For me who isn't a Netflix customer (the group which is larger than the group of people who have Netflix, obviously), the choice gets less.
And obviously anti-trust regulation doesn't care about the amount of choices for Netflix customers specifically, it cares about amount of choices for consumers at large, which will decrease with this change.
I think it's unlikely to change because most likely the content was not available for legal reasons, not technical. That's why for example when they re-release some shows they have to switch out to completely different music – the rights were not cleared in the first place and it'd be a huge hassle to go back and negotiate with every rightholder
I don’t know what do you mean by “most of the rest of the world” but it’s widely available in the American continent and Europe coverage will be almost complete in the next month(s):
https://press.wbd.com/us/media-release/hbo-max/hbo-max-nears...
> more choice and greater value for me
That will exactly follow Netflix's price hikes.
As in "value for money", they silenced the latter part :D
But Netflix content breadth and quality varies a lot from country to country. There's not one Netflix.
Netflix buying WB doesn't mean that licensing immediately becomes available worldwide.
Netflix can provide its own content everywhere around the globe because they are the sole owner of it. The distribution rights to WB properties outside of the US will belong to completely different legal entities (even if those entities have WB in them).
There should be never any talk about "Shareholder Value". Shareholders do not create content, they do not subscribe at scale. Once your customer is no longer the focus, it's downhill from there, and it's been downhill for a WHILE.
I killed my Netflix sub over a year ago and I never even think about it. It's all dull, empty-calorie background TV.
The sad part is how the iconic HBO brand, already beaten by WBD into a pulp, is just going to merge with this average-ness and fade. End of an era, indeed.
I think that wording is targeted at anti-trust regulators.
More choice as in more content available to choose from on Netflix?
So when they say "Consumers", it should really have been "Netflix Customers", as for everyone else there is less choice, only already paying Netflix users get more content.
Already paying Netflix users will get to either agree with a price increase or leave :)
After all, there is more "content" now.
I'd really prefer better quality over quantity. Everything just feels like slop now and I find myself mostly only enjoying older movies. I find it's incredibly rare when I can actually find something half decent that's new on Netflix.
Edit: Btw I find Max is like a better quality version of Netflix. But after a while I have the same problem there too. I find myself just watching something on YouTube instead most times
I cancelled my NetFlix subscription already, what, 7 years ago, for that reason... However, it is not just NetFlix. Most newish movies don't do anything for me. I prefer a movie from the 90s (or even earlier) over almost anything produced in the last 5 to 10 years. It is likely a generational thing, and a case of old man yelling at clouds. If studios think effects are more important then the actual story, well then, so be it.
May be that our tolerance for samey bullshit reduces with age. After all, we’ve seen it all before. The movie industry isn’t that imaginative.
Also, survivor bias. You have to go out of the way to find mentions of crap 3rd rate old movies. We only remember the good ones.
It’s fun to pick a year and do a deep dive on everything that was released to theaters (old newspapers with movie times are great for this) - so much crap you never heard about, unless it was phenomenally bad.
There’s even more content on “gentlemen of fortune”-type sites. Just saying.
That’s their competition. I wonder if they realize it.
> I find it's incredibly rare when I can actually find something half decent that's new on Netflix.
There was recently some link on HN about Netflix and using “AI” for “content creation”.
Not that Netflix scripts didn’t sound like an “AI” wrote them even before “AI”.
... don't paying Netflix customers already have access to the whole HBO back-catalogue?
As a Netflix subscriber, that would be news to me.
Not here (Germany).
HBO isn't available at all on it's own. It's exclusively sublicensed (until the end of this year) to Sky which has a terrible terrible user experience and of course is another subscription.
Two days ago there was an announcement that HBO Max is to start in Germany in January. Let's see how that develops after the acquisition.
I think it will.
Now they don't have to go negotiate for every WB content item. As it stands, subscribers might or might not get WB things, same as all the other IP holders that are playing hard to get. Otherwise, they might have to contract some seasons of a show from one holder and some from another, and maybe not at all sometimes.
Maybe they mean more content will be produced, which I believe. But I'd also argue that we really don't need more content on Netflix, we need higher quality. Netflix is drowning in a sea of mediocrity to the point where I have almost given up on investing in a new show because almost all of them reek of lazy writing and good-enough-but-not-outstanding direction. There are exceptions, but they are damn hard to find.
More choice as in “more revenue streams from which to create shareholder value.”
> No doubt about the last part, but how does merging two giants create "More Choice"?
This is performative marketing for the regulators to allow the merger. No one (including the regulators) believes this, and it won't come to pass. ("More choice" won't, I mean, the merger will and a lot of regulators and politicians involved will end up with new cars, boats, and kids' college tuitions paid.)
Adding Warner Bros. catalog will naturally lead to more titles to choose from for Netflix users. The choice of streaming services will be slimmer though. It will be interesting to see how regulators see it.
More choice for users of Netflix
That is, maybe, until they gate keep the WB content beyond additional premiums.
Hopefully I'll finally get to see Chernobyl and Game of Thrones. It's virtually impossible outside of US or Europe to legally stream so many movies and series.
When you literally cant do something legally, theres always somewhere greyer/blacker to move to!
Does anyone who's participated in M&A know how they come up with a breakup fee? I believe this one is $5 Billion (per Bloomberg), and Adobe <-> Figma was $1 Billion.
Interested to understand the modeling that goes into it.
Based on some experience, it's like a bond to appear in court. The number is mostly an arbitrary calculation designed to discourage you from not following through.
Like everything else it's just a negotiated figure. Arguments to and fro would include the likelihood of breakup (such as regulatory risk, unforeseen events), how disruptive the whole process is and also simply how desperate the buyer or seller is.
There's no modeling, it's a punishment or incentive. The intention is to inflict financial pain.
There’s a rough baseline of “cost to be acquired” and you start there, and do some doubling or other increases.
Basically, being acquired is a pain in the assets and you want it to be worth your while to pursue it, even if it falls through, otherwise the board is looking at getting replaced.
This should never have been allowed to happen by the regulators, but in this administration there are no checks, it’s a free for all and Netflix knows it. It saw the opportunity and went for it
Netflix seems to hate theatrical releases, so I hope this doesn't affect any small cinemas that want to screen older WB titles. I know when Disney bought Fox, it got a bit harder to book films.
I'm a fan. Injecting a huge catalog into Netflix is a win for consumers who want just one subscription. And injecting studio talent into Netflix (assuming the merge gives WB creatives influence) can only help.
HBO's tech sucks. Apple is (in my experience) hard to get running in the Android ecosystem. Most of the other options are too narrow in catalog, or ad ridden.
Consolidating streaming services down to a handful of offerings will make price competition more fierce because they'll have richer catalogs to do battle with.
It's bad for everyone. Fewer buyers = less content made and lower budgets, fewer voices being heard.
Netflix have never been a streaming service to put loads of good content on their service and keep it there. I would imagine they will use this injection of content to drip feed and slowly rotate movie franchises in order to keep users interested.
> Consolidating streaming services down to a handful of offerings will make price competition more fierce because they'll have richer catalogs to do battle with.
this is not how markets usually work.
On one hand it is good that the maybe the streaming will be split into less subscriptions, but on other hand, I think the only way forward is to simply prohibit exclusive streaming rights. I.e. any movie streaming rights should be sold to anyone who wants to buy them for the same price. That is only way to enable competition in streaming.
I… actually like this idea. Similar to the Robinson Patman Act.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson%E2%80%93Patman_Act
This is going to be an off the wall statement given this audience, but WWE signed an exclusive deal with NetFlix for 10 years I think in an effort to counter their main competitor AEW, which signed a deal with HBO Max shortly before that. Now they'll both potentially be on the same platform, which WWE will hate as it will be interesting in having two competitive pro wrestling promotions on the same platform.
I'm pretty sure WWE would have an exclusivity clause that would prevent another pro-wrestling program on Netflix. But who knows!
WWE dont have the clout they used to. I remember when they were the number 1 viewed website on the internet. Nowadays the MMA & UFC is much more valuable.
I wonder if an antitrust suit will be filed, this seems like a pretty significant acquisition.
With the current administration, anything can be legal.
Besides, they still have plans to spin off the cable networks, so this would mostly concern the streaming assets, movie studio, and the IP.
The merger needs to be accepted by other markets, too. No offense but I find it quite amusing how Americans keep forgetting about that.
How does this work? I assume there would be one parent company at the end and if that's an American company what does any other country can say about it? Sure if they incorporated a child company there they might interfere, but they could also just close the company to deal with the situation and go forward with the merger.
If a US company operates in a different country as well, it has to abide by the laws of that country, or leave it. For example, Adobe's acquisition of Figma was blocked by the UK and EU regulators, despite them both being US companies headquartered in San Francisco. They could have chosen to leave the UK and EU markets entirely, in which case their merger would have been able to proceed, but they wouldn't have been able to sell anything to UK/EU citizens.
Either they comply or exit the country. Remember how the UK blocked the Microsoft/Activision merger for a time?
They have production, distribution, and marketing ops in other markets. Those could be flogged until compliance.
Then they lobby Trump who threatens the country with tariffs
Considering the words they're using across the announcement, it seems they're well aware what this will trigger, everything seems carefully chosen so someone can later point at this announcement and say "See, we think this will add MORE user choice, not less, which is good for competition!".
It will lead to more choice ... in videos to watch. It will reduce choice in where to watch them or who to pay for the pleasure.
Great re-iteration of my point :) Written for anti-trust regulators, intentionally misusing the words they'd use, but with very different meaning. Hopefully professionals will see through their thin veil.
Every major merger announcement includes this obvious lie.
It is not a lie though. WB content is not globally available, Netflix content is. I for one, welcome access to stuff that WB has been sitting on without letting me pay them for it.
It is a lie. You are holding on a possible short time gain while ignoring history proven long-term harm of reduced competition, which will lead to higher prices, less innovation, and fewer choices for consumers.
USA anti-trust process is a joke, it is shame that so many company with global footprint relies on that.
> WB content is not globally available, Netflix content is.
Neither are "globally available" as "globally" includes countries that are currently under US embargo, and both those companies are US companies who (supposedly) follow US law.
What you're welcoming isn't "I didn't have access before, now I do!" but rather "I could give Company A money to see this, now I can give company B money to see the same!" which I guess you're happy about, but other's obviously see it for what it is, no practical change except for shareholders.
You keep posting this without any idea whether Netflix will relicense anything at all or if you're going to get the movies you want.
It's just copium fueled corporate bootlicking at this point.
How is this any bigger than Disney and all the media channels they own?
It isn’t. They should have been stopped, too.
[dead]
They got it for cheap. AOL paid $165 billion for Time Warner in 2000. Is Netflix the next AOL?
We’re witnessing the globalization of television.
When all is said and done there’s going to be a few players left and they’re all going to be American by the current looks of things. You could argue movies were already like this, but for television that’s quite the change as most countries had many television production companies and stations.
Now it seems like they’ll be a few global media companies and maybe some local production houses that have to sell their stuff to these guys or setup their own services like the BBC does with iPlayer in the UK, with somewhat limited success compared to these giants.
They won't be American. The balance of power has already shifted east. There are now more productions, more money and more facilities east of Madrid than west of it.
> The balance of power has already shifted east. There are now more productions, more money and more facilities east of Madrid than west of it.
This is wild fantasy.
the global power centers of TV distribution, monetization, and intellectual property ownership remain overwhelmingly American.
You might be referring to the remnants of broadcast television. I'm referring to the screen-based productions capturing the eyeballs of tomorrow.
One serious strand of America's whip of many thongs is the inability or refusal to acknowledge the rise in power and influence elsewhere.
As Gandalf - the last remaining talkshow host - gets pulled off the bridge into the abyss, he looks up to see a motley brigade of multi-cultural hobbits dashing for the surface with their wits and wallets thankfully intact.
Please excuse my excruciating reimagining of your wild fantasy metaphor.
American companies control:
* The largest global streaming platforms (Netflix/HBO/Max, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+)
* The largest content libraries by revenue
* The most extensive international distribution networks
* The vast majority of high-budget scripted shows (budgets > $5M/episode)
* The highest global licensing revenue streams
* The most valuable franchises (DC, Marvel, Star Wars, Harry Potter, LOTR rights distribution through Amazon, etc.)
No European or Asian company has anything close to this global reach.
This a highly focussed western lens but is not representative of global media culture and business.
If you completely discount Tencent Video, iQIYI, Youku, Bilibili, Kuaishou and so on in this outlook then that is the whip of many thongs in action.
I realise some of these platforms operate behind a wall you can't see over but don't think for a minute that wall isn't coming down.
Its nothing to do with the wall they are behind, the market and companies are just smaller.
For example, Tencent Video ranks 4th largest streamer in the world by subscribers after Amazon, Netflix, and Disney+. All American companies.
Your argument doesnt really seem to hold water.
Something doesn't happen until it happens. And even when it happens, it might fail.
So far China hasn't broken down many walls, for example I'm fairly sure they can't do what TSMC does.
And for media... guess what, they need to open a lot of things up. There's a lot more freedom of speech in the US, so US media can be about a lot of things interesting to the rest of the world. The US even has a lot media catering to other countries (for example media targetting Chinese audiences).
I mean, China could try that, we have the examples of Japanese and South Korean media, but both of those are democratic, and even then, it took them a long time to develop. Plus neither of them are near the levels of influence US media has.
Look I get how Ne Zha 2 was a big success and showed signs of good production quality, but lets be honest: The movie was boring. I'm sure the mostly Chinese audience that sat with me in the theater enjoyed it but I fell asleep halfway in.
The "east" has more work to do to capture that magic that the western imperial order (Hollywood) has wrought upon the world.
I will continue to watch and observe how things play out.
So the companies in charge of distributing the content are American-based multinationals; production leaks out of the US toward prettier places and more amicable laborers; if you’re American and want to tag along—in or behind the scenes—you’re going to need a passport or a visa.
Or something like that?
I haven't heard of any of them, which I am open to being because of my own ignorance. Can you give some examples?
Ne Zha 2 comes to mind. One of the largest box offices ever and it came out this year. In my opinion: Good attempt but I dont see them supplanting Western media yet.
Here is some history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2J0pRJSToU
The cycling fans among us were quite bashed around over the past few years getting access to cycling coverage in Europe. The were the glory years where GCN Plus was extremely cheap (it was too cheap) and the coverage was ad-free and excellent. Then we got bashed around to Eurosport which was fine, more expensive but still ad-free. Then we got moved to Discovery+. They weaseled out of their ad-free coverage for a bunch of races and jacked up the price because they bundled the cycling in with football and we suffered a price hike from $3-5 per month to $30+ a month, yes a 1000% hike, over the past 5 years.
Buy those blu-rays while you still can (:
Plenty of blu-rays thrive in the high seas.
If they stop making them its gonna be hard to rip them.
At least so far, some private groups have access to Widevine decryptors.
Widevine L3 are galore. Ahem
The problem is the quality.
Those streams are only like 6-10mbps bitrate. A regular blu-ray is closer to 30, and UHD can be well over 100mbps.
Yarr
Yeah, as a physical media collector, this is pretty devastating.
With this buy Netflix becomes as big as Disney (Disney+Hulu) by market share.
Unwelcome consolidation in the long term.
I wonder what the US administration will demand from Netflix for approving this.
equity stake obviously
At this rate Netflix isn’t building a streaming service, it’s building a monopoly starter pack. Give it a few more acquisitions and the “Are you still watching?” prompt will legally qualify as a government notice.
LLM ahhhh comment
2023: "A Party in Cannes Announces a New Hollywood Power Player". Something like ~300 attendees, probably $10 million. Zaslav and Graydon Carter co-hosted. There were rumored to be thousands of bottles of Dom champagne, which is probably inexpensive in bulk.
https://archive.is/ITc2a
I didn't really understand why they'd want this, but I think now its strategic protection from someone else consolidating with them. One company with that huge of a library could put a lot of pressure on them by withholding content and with their competing unified streaming service.
I was working at HBO when Ted Sarandos said, "The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us.”
I knew then how that would play out, although I didn’t have this exact outcome on my bingo card.
Nearly every media journalist in Hollywood considers this to be the worst outcome for Hollywood.
Does this mean that now I can watch Bugs Bunny on Netflix?
I look forward to all my favorite shows on HBO max ending a season with a cliffhanger and then getting canceled regardless of their popularity
So WB buys/merges w/ discovery to break it back off as part of a merger. Seems sort of silly. Curious if this means pretty much all WB/Disc/HBO content will end up on Netflix.
This should be an illegal aquisition
What is going to happen to all WB/HBO tech? Netflix is obviously not interested in their apps or infra, and that probably means a big layoff soon.
A merger like this takes 1+ year to get approved, and only then the companies can start acting together.
So, layoffs not soonest than in 18 months.
The gov will block this for the wrong reasons(they want Ellison to win this) but here’s hoping this and Paramount both get blocked, this level of concentration is not good.
Smart move to sell before GenAI takes over the entire industry.
I hope that this means that the Netflix app on AppleTV will finally become a “first class citizen.”
The Netflix app has always been treated badly by Apple. No idea why, but it means that I can’t have Netflix content in the “What’s Next” queue (among other things, like Netflix actors’ work not showing up in show information).
that is _purely_ netflix's decision; they have decided not to integrate. in fact, earlier this year netflix accidentally rolled out their internal version which has full integration with the APIs and then said "oopsie" and removed it again.
Yep. The APIs have always been publicly available for streaming services to use, Netflix just refuses to use them.
The reason is pretty obvious. Netflix would rather have users open their app directly so there’s opportunity to shove things in their faces, collect data from their browsing, and ideally become positioned as the user’s “main” streaming app. The user having a hub app and treating Netflix as one of several services directly opposes their aims.
The situation shares a lot of similarities with Spotify, which also refuses to take advantage of native APIs for the same reasons. Though in their case, there’s an added layer of irony with how they make all a big ruckus about how Apple needs to open their platforms up only for them to pretend APIs don’t exist after Apple adds them. As an example Apple had to hardcode a hack into HomePods to enable Spotify to work with them; where most services (Pandora, Tidal, etc) hook the official HomePod streaming APIs which pull directly from the service to the device, for Spotify Apple has to automatically AirPlay Spotify playing on the user’s phone to the HomePod. It’s ridiculous.
This is on Netflix not Apple. They enabled it this by accident and reverted it back https://www.theverge.com/news/613307/netflix-apple-tv-app-su...
Wow that is quite anti-consumer! Surely a monopoly on streaming will help them realize this. /s
Oh you think Apple is treating Netflix bad? No no no.
Netflix refuses to play game, because they want to keep their data to themselves. Apple would LOVE Netflix to integrate into the app.
Ah. That makes sense.
Thanks for the elucidation.
If that's the case, then we'll probably lose another app or two.
:'(
Those acquisition numbers will just keep becoming larger and larger until one day, when I'm old enough, someone will just acquire the only other player left in the field and Earth will be one single megacorporation.
AOL-Time-Warner-Pepsico-Viacom-Halliburton-Skynet-Toyota-Trader-Joe's but I guess it's AOL-Time-Netflix-Pepsico-Viacom-Halliburton-Skynet-Toyota-Trader-Joe's now.
I am still shocked not to see the opposite order -- but those days are long gone.
Memories of AOL-TimeWarner...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarnerMedia#AOL-Time_Warner_me...
Didn't they just buy HBO? Nice shopping spree!
HBO is part of Warner Bros.
Love the difference in the two connotations here that leads to the confusion. "Netflix just bought HBO (a moment ago)" vs "Netflix just bought HBO (previously)".
I was in one seminar, and someone asked a question about future to Harish Mehta (one of the founder of NASSCOM), and he said that big companies will become bigger for at least next 10 years.
I'm excited about getting access to the whole WB catalogue?
Well, for sure the price will go up too.
Well, at least it wasn't Larry Ellison.
Placidly uncaring since long ago I stopped consuming media from either party.
If someone wants "film school" you can do a lot worse than ticking off the film from the "1001 Movies to See Before You Die" [1].
It may take you the next decade to complete. There are some real oddballs in there that lean toward "art film" (but what do you expect from Andy Warhol). A lot of "foreign" films (foreign for this U.S. viewer). In short a lot of surprises.
Definitely feel like a student of film now (for whatever that's worth).
[1] https://1001films.fandom.com/wiki/The_List
Placidly uncaring since long ago as I stopped consuming media full stop.
Exclusively consuming social media like HN for your media sounds way worse than Game of Thrones, The Other Two, Emily in Paris or even Love is Blind
Seems like:
- Netflix gets the movies and contents (HBO, WB) for its streaming service
- The rest (news, reality TV) will be spun off (Discovery Global)
$82.7BILLION
no wonder my subscription keeps going up
I wonder when the ads will come. There probably already is a enshittification roadmap that they’re working against.
Netflix added ad-supported plans in 2022.
Netflix already has a cheap subscription with ads.
You subscription is about to go up.
I'm going to start looking into alternative solutions ;)
Anyone have a solid alternative solution for local streaming?
Definitely the least bad outcome, but how much of this catalogue is going to completely drown in the horrid UI of Netflix's apps.
Sometimes it feels like Netflix has too much in its catalogue without any good tools to sort through and filter it.
I doubt that's an accident. They don't want you discover content you like, they want you to watch what they've put on your home screen.
Please Netflix, green light Westworld season 5
It’s interesting that the stock market has no reaction to this news, after hours.
As of writing this, Netflix is -0.6%
"Priced in" I guess. I mean look at Warner Bros stock, steadily climbing the last couple months until it hit basically exactly the price shareholders will get in exchange for their shares as part of this deal.
Whenever one of my friends says they're thinking about getting into daytrading, all I can think is good luck beating the funds... they either can predict the future or just write it themselves.
Surely the FTC will take issue with Netflix acquiring HBO Max?
Almost definitely not this FTC. And I'm not sure the FTC would in general considering there is a plethora of mainstream streaming providers outside of just Netflix and HBO Max.
Apple, Amazon, Google, Disney all have their hands in that bag. Not to mention all the old cable providers are practically streaming services now too. I don't even use my spectrum cable box, I use the Roku app to watch live TV and access all their on demand library
Until Netflix pays Trump personally $15M like Paramount did
How the mighty have fallen.
I was always wondering why Netflix didn't do some acquisitions for backlogs with how much they spend making mediocre to terrible movies and tv shows.
That was... kind of expected. But the web of cross-interests in the content industry just got another trans-dimensional knot in its topology...
Ads. This is how you get ads in streaming services.
Both Netflix and HBO already have ads.
Not as absurd as back when AOL bought them, but just barely so. I think I'll have an extra frothy latte for breakfast today.
Definitely not great, but at least that means Ellison won't amass even more media control (for now). That is maybe the silver lining.
The Ellison trying to buy WB was the younger one.
I wonder what this means for DC Comics and the current crop of DC films. Will Netflix prefer to start with a clean slate?
Netflix was the worst option, except for all the others who were bidding.
Just buy, buy, buy up the competition. Hope someone stops the big fish before it's the only one left.
> Netflix expects to maintain Warner Bros.’ current operations and build on its strengths, including theatrical releases for films.
If Netflix is committing to releasing WB films in theaters, I wonder if they’ll also release shows under the WB/HBO label in the traditional weekly format. With the staggering amount of content that just exists and continues to grow, the “release everything at once and make people binge” model has had zero appeal to me. And seems quite detrimental to how the shows are paced — they seem heavily incentivized to end each episode with a cheap cliffhanger
As someone who has recently begun exploring physical media, I find this quite disappointing. The volume on 4K Blu-Rays is often low, prices are high, and Netflix isn't doing much to support physical media.
When you're just unwinding in front of a 65-inch screen, you might not notice the quality loss from compression. However, if you're actively watching on a 110-inch projector with an excellent sound system, every little detail becomes clear.
And that doesn't even address the most frustrating part: owning less and less.
I mean, no one needs to become a physical distributor, but it's disheartening that we lack consumer-friendly ownership of entertainment media when it comes to movies. I would love to see something like Bandcamp, but specifically for studios to release their movies to.
> When you're just unwinding in front of a 65-inch screen, you might not notice the quality loss from compression.
this has little to do with the resolution, though. maybe 4k just gets the benefit of being compressed with better codecs.
for me at least, watching shows/movies at typical viewing distance, a well-encoded 4k->1080p mkv is only very slightly less sharp and is vastly smaller to store on the media server.
I'm curious, because I've had an interest in physical media, especially videogames, but what I keep coming back to is, "why would I bother when I can just pirate it?"
What's the attraction to the physical media given the availability of these versions online?
Pirating doesn't help sustain the very thing being pirated, if you want a tangible rather than moralistic reason.
4K (Ultra HD) Blu-Ray is likely the last physical home video media generation to be produced. Disney has pulled physical out of the Asian market, Best Buy stopped releasing any physical media beside games, Target stopped selling them beside certain DVDs.
If you want any chance of actually having high quality releases continue it needs to be supported. An issue though is certain less mainstream releases in Ultra HD Blu-Ray can be rather pricey (if they get a release at all). However I still buy those I'm interested in since I don't want lower quality streaming-tier video to be the only option available in the future, apart from concerns about the volatile nature of online-only libraries (various of which have been wholly removed in the past when licensing/ownership changes).
> What's the attraction to the physical media given the availability of these versions online?
Where do you think they've got the version that circulates the net?
don't be discouraged. 4k/UHD BR is still alive and well, even though it never can beat price of comparatively worse streaming versions. I just bought a relatively expensive UHD player and there are a lot of movies, and what I've noticed there are also boutique offerings and remasters going on in the market which I haven't noticed before. Going forward though, I'm not sure if there will be future for releases of new movies outside of big productions.
I can hardly blame a company for not supporting a product almost nobody wants to go back to.
There are a whole bunch of choice quotes from 1984 that apply to this situation, but my favorite is still this one: “The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”
Nothing like a copyrighted text to use as the bible of freedom
> I can hardly blame a company for not supporting a product almost nobody wants to go back to.
But that logic we should keep only insta, tiktok and youtube shorts.
Unfortunately, that may yet become a reality.
Remind me in 20 years when we have old people complaining nobody is supporting traditional social media
Teen shows with 30 year olds by the fourth season... so that Steve Buscemi bit in 30 Rock will now be the norm.
Whole deal sounds Looney Tunes to me. Though Warner does have a substantial catalog, I dumped Netflix because I wasn't impressed with their offerings. After Paramount took all its toys home with them leaving the platform without Star Trek, I had little reason to stay. I'm not a big TV or film buff anyway.
> from timeless classics like Casablanca and Citizen Kane to modern favorites like Harry Potter and Friends
Holy crap did they actually put Citizen Kane and Friends in the same sentence?
Is this as big as I think it is?
In terms of people who actually like movies and music it’s not a great time.
Unfortunately it’s pretty clear that the true business model of music and content streamers is about “putting something on in the background” and not actually about the quality level of the content.
Thus you get inoffensive cheap netflix series and AI generated chill beats to study to, and no one really notices as long as it’s above a certain quality threshold.
And this isn’t exactly Netflix’s problem- they know what their users want. When you’re cooking dinner it doesn’t make much difference to you if it’s a Judd Apatow romantic comedy and one that’s some Hallmark knockoff romcom bullshit.
I’m not really sure how to solve the problem of this very siloed video content landscape. No one wants to subscribe to 4 streaming services.
I would think the original netflix model of being mailed bluray discs might be viable, but without independent studios like Warner around, why would anyone produce physical media?
My blood always boils a little whenever I read about Netflix's "Not second-screen enough" business model.
What shitty point we've enshittified to, where we prioritise passive slop consumption over active enriching one.
All of this is a result of the algorithmic media addiction people have been engineered into, in my opinion. Every moment you're not consuming something is a moment you're wasting, and a moment you have to spend alone with your thoughts (which is too terrfying for people now apparently).
A proper solution to current video content landscape used to be piracy - Netflix literally succeded early on in streaming because they were more convenient than pirating stuff. But with these Media Moguls lobbying hard to crack down on piracy (at the risk of privacy), it does look pretty bleak.
It would just get ripped and put on pirate streaming sites.
This seems like a chicken and egg downward spiral with consumers pirating and studios producing slop.
Oh sweet, two of my subscriptions now reduced to one. Right?
Neutral here: I subscribe to neither.
I found out that there's a backlog of content going back over 100 years (a lot of it at the public library) and have been happily consuming that for about 6 or 7 years now.
(I still have about 4 decades to go to catch up with today—which will probably take me another 3 years or so).
That's my thinking. I get the argument for "reduced competition" but Netflix and HBO aren't competitors. They are just two companies in the same line of business, but with different production lines.
I do wonder what it will do for their sports deals. HBO have had the rights to a lot of sports, including Tour de France and the olympics and is the only way to get EuroSport, as well as a number of TV channels, including some country specific ones.
You don't see reduced competiton? HBO Max and Netflix are director competitors, post acqusition Netflix no longer had to compete hard with shows like Succession. The expanded catalog makes it even harder for smaller streamers to compete.
On sports rights Netflix no longer has to bid and compete with HBO, and same story having a bigger live sport inventory.
This is not unlike consolidation of food distributors where the end up wielding strong pricing power, farmers have fewer options to sell to and restaurants have few options to buy from. The middleman profits.
But yeah Netflix will probably spin off Cable
> HBO Max and Netflix are director competitors
I disagree. Spotify and YouTube Music are competitors, because I can switch freely between them, and expect more or less the same catalog. HBO and Netflix are supplementary and many will just get both, because switching from one to the other makes no sense. For example I can't watch Star Trek on HBO and the rights deals made with the studios ensure that I'll never be able to watch it one both.
Assuming that Netflix, Disney, Paramount and HBO where competing, then why aren't pricing at rock bottom? There's zero competition and removing HBO won't change a damn thing, other than removing one subscription for a large number of people (potentially).
Pretty soon all media will be owned by 4 tech billionaires. They have done so well with preserving a free and open internet I cannot see why people are concerned they are gobbling up all the alternative legacy communications platforms.
Aaah the race to the bottom accelerates.
I haven't been a Netflix user for years, the quality of their stuff went past a level I was no longer comfortable supporting. It became a platform that is designed to keep you watching (literally anything) as opposed to a platform to find interesting/relevant entertainment. So much low quality, low effort content. Wonder which of AI wrong-but-instant answers or Netflix' empty entertainment will contribute more to genpop enshitification.
Exactly. Netflix is doing a total opposite of HBO content. Also HBO has been great at localization for european regions (subs, local content) unlike Netflix which cannot be bothered to even make subtitles for markets they sell to.
IMO,Netflix wants to acquire their main competitor in europe.
F...k , more forced inclusion on theaters now...
Interesting, that will bring a big production house capabilities within Netflix itself
Unfortunately, Netflix thus far seems to lack the creative vision to fully utilize any size of production house (barring rare exceptions).
Netflix is already the sole client of a huge studio outside Madrid.
Better netflix than than Ellison
This wasn’t on my radar at all. Was this kept quiet or did I just not hear about it?
It's been talked about for like a month now
Its been going around in cicles between "WB is fine, just rejected 2 other offers, whats the worst that could happen" and "Netflix buy out any day now WB is in the toilet"
This may be a hot take but maybe some consolidation in this streaming industry is beneficial, might save some people searching for content they want to see only to find they have to pay for another streaming service because right holders decided to launch their own streaming app.
Netflix prices will probably increase though, and they will probably ruin a lot of golden IP like always, so there's that to complain about.
What happens to my hbo max susbcription?
Netflix’s content selection has always felt weaker than traditional studios. Sometimes it even looks like filmmakers take Netflix’s massive budgets but don’t give them the same level of serious, polished work they deliver elsewhere.
So, if Netflix ends up managing Warner Bros or HBO, it’s hard not to worry. HBO and Warner Bros are known for premium, high-caliber content, and Netflix’s track record suggests the overall quality could easily take a hit.
The sad thing is the WB Studio had a successful year and is healthy.
It's all the other idiotic stuff that's been attached to WB over the years that has broken the business. Time Warner AoL Discovery... is a poster child for what goes wrong when merger after merger happens.
A restructured WB Studio + HBO might be a good business.
Nice of them to start the conversations with a probably lie, that it will be less expensive for consumes because they can now bundle HBO/Netflix. Except this has never been true for more than enough time that for people to forget and past the time to change it, if at all. It will be less selection and cost more, like the usual.
They made the comment and CBC reported on it https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/us-netflix-warner-bros...
The US government made it illegal for movie studios to own movie theaters to prevent studios from only showing movies in theaters they own. Similar laws need to be passed to force streaming content to be shown on all services.
So they can raise the prices again in a few months?
So, the big news has arrived finally
Netflix acquires Warner Bros and uncensored Looney Tunes and uncensored Tom & Jerry were never seen again.
Where's Brendan Carr when you need him?
Paramount can’t be happy
Three wishes - looney tunes and animatics full and uncensored. Don't update them for modern sensibilities. No new looney tunes content unless made by very talented people that love the old ones.
Netflix thwarting David Ellison and his push to pro-Israel-ify everything.
Paramount being the spurned suitor. David Ellison doesn't sound happy.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/par...
WB was another legacy media empire being run by a megalomaniac hell-bent on destroying their legacy.
I wouldn't normally support this kind of move, but unlike the Skydance deal, Netflix is actually a real company that, like, makes use of IPs and publishes back catalogues.
Things like Looney Tunes will now be in the hands of someone who doesn't hate Looney Tunes.
Netflix is buying WB for "friends". That show will be on air for another 50 years.
I think the way they’ll justify it is by framing it as Disney’s empire versus a combined Netflix + Warner Bros empire.
"Who acquires Warner Bros. Wtf" - comments heard over my shoulder as I mention the title of this post.
welp, at least we got 2 or 3 good DC movies before now. It was great while it lasted. I'm so tired of living in hell
Supergirl and The Batman 2 are releasing relatively soon so I don’t think that will be affected much by all this. Same with Clayface since that just entered post production. It’s the movies coming after (Superman 2, Batman movie thats not tied to “The Batman”) that will be affected by all this.
My opinion of James Gunn has changed recently (especially after the ending of Peacemaker S2) but I still think he’s the best person possible to be in charge of live action DC. I really hope he keeps some form of control but I doubt it…
Where's the antitrust enforcement? This seems blatantly illegal.
Too big to fail?
...and the global oligopoly grows ever smaller.
its wabbit season I guess
Oh cool, knock-on price hikes across not just the streaming industry, but all the other industries that decided they needed to bundle streaming subscriptions with their products.
Can't wait to pay even more for my cell bill because they give me "free" Netflix!
Couldn't care less, sailing the high sea is peaceful!
You'll care when there will be no physical media and you're left with compressed shit shown down your throat.
> You'll care when there will be no physical media
Physical media is on the way out for the most part, where it isn't already gone, and Netflix & co are the reason, not piracy.
> and you're left with compressed shit shown down your throat.
WRT “compressed shit”: the quality of ahem copies is often no worse than you'd get from an official streamed source. For those that have 4K-capable eyes it is often better as it JustWorks™ without quality dipping out due to bandwidth issues at the streamer, your ISP, or somewhere between, or for local playback needing a long fight to convince your Sony TV to accept that Sony media player connected via a Sony brand cable is legit.
I actually pay for a couple of streaming services (though Prime largely begrudgingly as it got rolled into the delivery service I use), but still get media from ahem other sources because the playback UX is often preferable.
Or if by “compressed shit” you are referring to the intellectual quality of the content not the technical merits of the medium, if it all turns to mush I'll just watch even less than I already do the same way I practically never game these days (though that is due to both content quality and technical matters). I've got other hobbies competing for my attention, I can just live without TV if TV quality falls further.
That doesn't stop an entire studio's worth of output becoming dumbed down to second screen content like Stranger Things.
What a weird thing to say
and Warner Brothers owns HBO? So potentially, could we get all HBO shows on Netflix?
...If they pay a large enough bribe.
tech company buying warner bros, what could go wrong?
This sucks, now HBO content will disappear from being searchable in Apple TV.
Bring back Silicon Valley?
This is terrible news. Expect enslopification of some of your favorite IPs. Christ.
and here begins the downfall of Warner Bros.
Another dying industry acquiring another dying industry. Reminds me of Oracle buying Sun Microsystems.
Whether or not this deal gets regulatory approval depends entirely on whether or not Reed Hastings sufficiently kisses the ring when it comes to Donald Trump.
I'm personally against this. We've had too much consolidation. It's subscribers who will pay for this with hiked subscription fees.
Any pretense of government regulation is basically gone. Everything is for sale. What determines outcomes is corruption and loyalty. This is really no different to the Russian oligarchs under Putin. The SEC, FTC and DOJ are a joke, just tools to punish ideological foes and people who don't pay up.
All these companies are a consequence will become more ideologically conservative and that's a real problem for media companies because conservatives can't produce good content. Good content challenges the status quo and asks questions, two things conservatives simply don't tolerate. This will do nothing good for HBO.
[dead]
[dead]
[flagged]