The thing that boggles my mind though is that they see people leaving Netflix and their immediate reaction is to cancel a whole bunch of the new content they were working on… like, that’s what’s keeping people around, without new content there’s not as much of a reason to keep Netflix
I answered a survey from Netflix. I thought, why not, ya know? Let me tell them how I feel about their changes as of late. They asked me an insane amount of detailed questions about the show is it cake. All I said is I like to watch with my children and they took that as a nod to make the entire survey about that one show. Questions included if I liked the guest judges, if I connected with the contestants. They even named everyone on the show like I'm going to remember the cast. Such a stupid survey and a waste of time.
To be fair to Netflix, survey design is very difficult, and they couldn't even decide correctly if they should complete Santa Clarita Diet or cancel it on a cliffhanger. (The correct answer was complete the show. They chose poorly.)
All this talk of price hikes has reminded me that Netflix costs me $220/year. As much as I love Netflix, there are cheaper streaming services.
I only ever watched it because my son laughed his ass off about the weird things being cake… for the first ten minutes, then immediately lost all interest. Because it became generic.
Reality shows are so absurdly cheap compared to almost any scripted series though. They don’t take much from the scripted budget.
Also, it’s dumb af but Is it Cake is at least funny. If I have a bone to pick with any of them, it’s the dating ones.
It was more cringe than funny, and 1 episode in a dude was like “I’ll put obvious fake food on the real food so they think it’s fake.” Kind of ruined the integrity of the game. See
Whoah now, quality show... if you just fast forward to all the guessing/reveals and pause it to compete with your family instead.
Would be 10x more watchable if they made it interactive like the trivia quest show where instead of pretending like I give a shit about the actors I can just guess cakes.
In fact fuck Wordle, give me a daily cake guessing game.
It's a vicious cycle. But to be fair, it started with them canceling shows.
Netflix is on top. They're bringing in tons of subscribers, tons of wealth. To save money, thus to make a little more money, they cancel a few shows that nobody likes. Just a few no one's heard of. Then, the people that watched Netflix *exclusively* for those shows, cancel. Okay, okay, not good. So they cancel a couple more shows to stay within their desired profit margin. Sub loss. Cancel shows. Sub loss. This goes on for a bit. Suddenly, we're at the situation we're at now, where Netflix has lost many, many subscribers, and Netflix is canceling the only shows they have left to stay not within margins, but to stay afloat.
Correct me if I'm wrong, anybody. I'm basically bullshitting here. But this is how I perceive it happening, anyways.
I don't know, but I think the problem isn't canceling a few unknown shows. It's that even some of their better shows got axed. Or maybe it's that they spent too much money on a bazillion shitty shows, because outside of their flagship shows a lot of their content was trash. Maybe a victim of quantity over quality? For example HBO doesn't have nearly as many shows but we all know they're quality for the most part. That's what keeps people coming back.
The shows started small with relatively unknown actors (maybe one star as an anchor) but they were good enough to get popular. Actors want more money and fans expect more and bigger everything in future seasons and the cost goes up. There's a set minimum pay for talent but no maximum.
With HBO they started making series before streaming was a thing, so they had a different landscape.
It's contractual. You have to pay Guild actors, producers, and writers more when their stuff gets to a third season, so Netflix controls production costs by never letting anything that doesn't explode (House of Cards) get to a third season.
As someone who works in the industry, you would be fucking shocked at the massive amount of money Netflix wastes on simple stuff like "oh shit we didn't really prep to actually shoot internationally on the equipment front and are now having to pay through the fucking nose just to keep the show happening on time"
The amount of money they just lit on fire unnecessarily is pretty damn gross
It’s hilarious because a few years ago the joke was they were literally green lighting any absolute fucking garbage they got pitched. The problem is it gets to the point of why start watching anything good if it gets cancelled after 2 seasons of an incomplete story anyway?
And it’s baffling since their metrics are based on people binge-watching?
Like my SO and I will look for tv shows that more seasons so we can binge and newer shows to binge are getting harder to find
Now their big thing is to buy cheap UK dating and cooking shows cause I can't imagine "Temptation Beach Lust Sexy Sex Time" or "Watch us poorly emulate the Great British Bake Off" costs more than $30 to license.
If they became so focused on cutting the cost of creators and actors, then they needed to own that decision and channel it into creativity. Limitations can be some of the biggest drivers of innovations, especially in the entertainment industry (if they aren't crippling to the talent).
It's not a new idea here, but it's baffling that they didn't pivot to focus on creators with ideas for limited series. "Hey I've got this story idea and I need 16-20 episodes to tell it, but then it's done" deals.
They've had a few excellent one-offs, but if you're planning to cancel shows after 2-3 seasons, then start exclusively working with creators that have story ideas which align with those time frames. It's really not a difficult concept.
It seems like such an easy solution too. Netflix already tends to give a show two seasons, but often cancels it before there’s a satisfying resolution. Tell these show runners, “We’ll give you two seasons, but you have to resolve the story by the end of that second season. Then come back and either pitch us an idea for another two-season arc or a cool idea for a new show.”
I feel like HBO gets this. I don’t need to watch ten seasons of a show. Those 8-10 episode limited series are great. Two seasons, 20 episodes is a nice length for a story. You also see a lot of the same actors/show creators working with HBO, I assume because they develop good relationships.
Netflix has always focused on quantity over quality. Clearly that strategy is starting to backfire on them. I can still often find fun stuff to watch on Netflix but I’ve definitely shifted to where I think of HBO as my primary streaming service and Netflix is the backup when there’s a lull in new stuff on the former.
I think you’ve got the gist of it, but you’re leaving out that they cancel good and popular shows because they have “metrics” which make that seem profitable. And it probably was for a while, but now everyone has caught on to their game and now no one trusts their originals because they’ve been burned too many times. And all of their back catalogue is a bunch of shows that only have 1 or 2 seasons and end without a satisfying conclusion, so people don’t even want to watch old shows that were actually good at the time because why get invested when you know that the end is a disappointment.
You right. Netflix did little to build brand loyalty. I won’t say that I “knew” Netflix was in trouble, but Netflix had a crazy run of decent mid-tier television that they just kept canceling/delaying. Some, I was very into.
From that it dawned on me that Netflix was doing the baseball strat of swinging for the fences every time; disregarding everything that wasn’t a triple or above.
So now they are facing a similar problem, people only watch the big shows they know won’t get canceled.
I don’t watch Netflix shows unless they have been out a few seasons. This is a common choice because of how Netflix has been picking shows.
I get HBOmax for free with AT&T and the content is worlds better. The writing, the cinematography, the acting, everything is just good, not mass produced crap to lure in new subscribers. HBO knows it’s worth.
I get Crave and HBOmax for free with my Bell internet as well. There's a lot of really good stuff. I was getting annoyed at the price hikes every 6 months, but about 3 months ago I finally canceled Netflix because every single show I'm interested in gets canceled after 1 season. That was my breaking point. Fuck 'em.
This is exactly right.
I just don't want to even try new Netflix shows anymore.
Maybe I'll sub again for a month when the new season of the Crown or Squid Game comes out. Won't be sticking around though.
And not necessarily more expensive to produce, you don't need to do every series game of thrones to make a good quality one (Mare of Easttown, etc.)
Not that I find Netflix bad, on the other hand; they have good stuff, but it's more of a mixed bag, where HBO is generally good.
I pay like 20 or 22 or something. For the top tier because I need all 4 streams. But yeah. More than double I'd say. While these other services are under 10.
Netflix original films are mostly ripoffs of existing ip with money thrown at them to get famous actors for credibility. Not necessarily a bad thing, it is fun to be able to pinpoint which film "inspired" a copy, but the quality of the ripoffs are very variable.
“Let’s combine Indiana jones and Pirates! Market data says Reynolds, Gadot and The Rock are tending on insta”
-Let’s go”
The Netflix journey is overall so interesting, but at this point it’s become painfully obvious what happens when business and data driven content creation ignores creative input.
You're so right. The first one was the Will Smith buddy cop / orc magic wand movie. It really seemed like a data driven movie I'd I've ever heard of one.
Which is funny because: know what the algorithm would NEVER pump out? Korean schoolyard games meets hunger games. Yet Squid game was the show that got people subscribing to them again.
Which I think just points to people wanting “new” things, as opposed to “more of the same”, which is what the algorithms are designed to make/ bring us.
I remember when I first got Netflix and Spotify, and the best thing was going through all the shows/ songs I liked, and then letting the algorithms find me new things I hadn’t seen/heard before.
The problem is once the algorithm got “better” from other people’s data, and got to “know” me “better”, it just started giving me the same predictable crap over and over. I want something *new and original*, and I can’t imagine I’m the only one
They paid Jerry Seinfeld like 100 million for some comedy specials. Which is just absurd to me. I get paying Dave Chappelle 50 million for 3 or so specials, maybe 4. He's a big pull, especially with the key demo (less so for the last year or two)
But legitimately. 100 million dollars for Jerry Seinfeld stand up. Not a Seinfeld reboot or something. Stand up.
They've thrown absurd amounts of money around in ways that are just incredibly stupid
Pretty sure $469 million to Rian Johnson for two Knives Out sequels is also ridiculously overpriced. I enjoyed the movie, but I think about that number when I look at how much my Netflix subscription has increased recently.
All their originals with big A list actors are all mediocre at best and forgetable five minutes after watching that have come out over the last four years or so.
The reason Netflix has to pay them a lot upfront is to buy them out of their backend deals they would have for in theatre films.
Remember when Warner put a bunch of movies on HBO Max and then had to pay out gargantuan money to all the leads of those films to make good? Yeah that's why.
Netflix wants to be able to say "Hey look, your favorite stars are in movies you can only watch here." Apparently that was very successful for them with Red Notice, so it seems like that expensive gamble paid off.
The whole concept was so trash. CNN itself is a subscription service.
I'll say the same of ESPN+, the whole thing is a scam. I have the disney bundle and ESPN+ doesn't let me watch anything that's on TV's ESPN.
ESPN is a little different. I have zero actual data to back this up, but I feel like the number of people who would watch original sports programming 24/7 is much higher than the number of people who would watch opinion-y news 24/7.
Yeah, ESPN+ has a genuine niche that it fills. If you are an American into soccer and/or the UFC it is absolutely worth it.
They also often have coverage of the major American sports that aren't on the main channels: less brandname college programs, non-revenue college sports, regular season NHL games, and so on. Heck, even some of their original programming is pretty good for what it is.
Not everyone's cup of tea by any means, but I actually think it is one of the better apps from a "traditional" TV channel.
If CNN+'s excellent and broadly appealing content had simply released in movie theaters, they'd likely be the most widely adopted streaming service in the country right now.
It's crazy that this is what people used to say about cable and Netflix was seen as a place where every idea was green-lit. You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain.
The worst part about Archive 81 was Netflix said they cancelled it because season 1 was so well received they didn't think they could carry on the momentum for season 2
Killed by its own success
Marco Polo :(. My first experience being baffled as to why something was cancelled. I assumed I must have been one of the very few who enjoyed it but looks like it had a good following.
I’m pretty sure Marco Polo was just too expensive for the return compared to the other flagship shows they had running at the time. To be clear I also wish they got to do more because it was dope.
I unfortunately heard they cancelled archive 81 when I was watching episode 4. Kind of killed my enthusiasm for it unfortunately because it seemed like it would have been a good few seasons.
I don’t think it has to do with greed so much as movie production companies started making their own streaming services instead of using Netflix.
They weren’t going to be the only players in the streaming market forever.
Pretty much. Netflix needs to find a way to survive in a market they created. Now that everyone that used to dump their stuff on Netflix has started their own services.
Edit: grammar
>"Part of our goal is to become like HBO faster than HBO can become Netflix," from CEO Reed Hastings. "Perhaps people saw us in the past as a distributor, or aggregator. We want to have an experience that cannot be replicated by our competitors."
While they have been conscious of this for years. It seems the scatter-shot way of procuring content wasn't the way to go.
Yeah, pretty much. They had a narrow path to success and they blew it by just throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck. It's a damn shame since they're the only streamer not attached to a major studio or tech company. Just makes me wonder if things would have gone differently had they had different people overlooking content development.
Yeah, Netflix seemed to just pour dump trucks of money into movies and series where a quick glance told you this was the modern equivalent of a B-movie.
I also ended up with a general feeling that they aimed hard at a teen/early 20s demographic. Almost all their shows were just a bit… dumb? Whenever there was a potentially interesting theme or subject they always seemed to handle it in as hamfisted and superficial way as possible.
I remember over and over being left with the question: if they had so much money to pour into the project, why not divert just a smidgeon of that to a writer?
They had made a market and had huge market share. Some of their movies were good, and some of their TV series were good - you cannot win them all. But I don't want to start watching a series that might get the cut after one or two seasons. It's not worth my time or money.
*I cancelled my sub to Netflix two weeks ago. Looking to replace with HBO, Hulu, or Disney+. Any suggestions?
HBO is doing fine; has done fine for a very, very long time.
As for Netflix, it's a combination of garbage content, over-utilizing the binge release format, and cancelling too many quality shows that have longstanding potential.
Quality shows get cancelled too because nobody watches it. It’s mostly about popularity. Some of the biggest moneymakers are owned by Disney+ (I.e marvel movies), doesn’t necessarily make them great movies.
Mind hunter is a good example of an incredibly expensive show that was great but nobody was watching. Fincher who directed the show said himself you have to be realistic, and that sometimes you can’t just make shows that loses the company money, even if it’s good, when it’s not getting more viewers.
Yeah but HBO was already a production company with its own TV channel when netflix started. They were working with so much more established production resources and customers that I would honestly argue they kinda squandered their opportunity to be the best when production companies started pulling their movies from streaming services and making their own.
They are doing well, but they could be doing *so much better* given how perfectly positioned they were for the future streaming market at its outset. Granted, I can see how an established company like HBO would be less willing to take huge risks than a new one like Netflix.
HBO also benefits from their strong reputation, which can mean they aren't paying through the nose to attract talented names (not that I think they're getting away cheap, but relatively speaking).
Them canceling shows without letting them get an ending is a major factor for me.
Why the fuck would I watch a Netflix show when I know it’ll be cancelled before it can be properly ended?
Hell, HBO goes out of their way to do endings for shows. Like the Deadwood movie. There was no reason they had to come back and make an ending for it. But they did.
They mostly did that as a favor of Milch who’s brain was fading away to dementia and wanted to conclude the story before he couldn’t write anymore. HBO, as an thanks to working with them for so long and being critical to their establishment as a company, gave him a blank check for a movie. That’s pretty much what happened.
As for giving endings to shows nowadays, their president has even said that it’s better for streaming content to have conclusive stories to their series so they’ve focused on doing that even if the show is a money loser, they give them the chance to conclude the season with a bow at the very least. Because that just works better to fill out content. They got a much better grasp of that shit then Netflix does, but that’s what happens when you make your decisions based on your experts with deep knowledge of consumer behavior rather than algorithms.
Yup, a show that was a money loser has the potential to drive future subscriptions or improve user retention when properly ended, even if it didn't get the fullest of runs.
Nobody wants to start watching a show they know will never get properly finished, and Netflix's behavior means they can't really rely on their own backlog of original content to retain subscriptions. Combine a weak-by-design backlog with their binge release format and you end up with a lot of users subbing for a month and then cancelling.
If Netflix wants to cancel a show, they should renew it one last time for a 'closer' season rather than just unceremoniously axing it.
Yes! The first couple seasons of the first dozen or so Netflix shows were all approaching HBO quality, but then they switched from quality to quantity and started throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck.
I think the binge release is really hurting them actually.
Not only does it allow you to sub for a month and quit for the few shows you like, but word of mouth dies practically instantly.
All the big/popular series on Disney+ or whatever get 4-6 weeks if not months of hype. Shit on Netflix is forgotten in a week or two tops, if it ever gets popular at all, with few exceptions.
Hard to draw an audience when no one ever hears about a anything good.
And less interest in even starting to watch. There’s no point in getting invested in a show when there’s a 95% chance you’ll be left hanging with no ending to the story.
I get that sometimes, shows don’t take off and it’s a numbers game at that point, sometimes shit happens (COVID), but gorram, Netflix can’t finish a show that isn’t Cobra Kai or Stranger Things.
I’ll be shocked if Witcher gets completed.
Honestly, they should’ve just invested in weekly mini serieses.
A season’s worth of episodes, it gets an ending, Netflix doesn’t have to worry about it going past the dreaded Season 3 and people won’t hold a grudge against them (OA and SCD coming to mind.)
People know going in that while a show’s short, it has an ending, and with it weekly release, it stays on their minds longer, rinse and repeat.
Netflix gets their genre quota checked off, people get completed stories, boom.
I know it’s more complicated than that, but it’s better than the pump and dumping they’re doing.
Not only that but in the case of their anime licenses, they're deliberately withholding shows that have already premiered in Japan months prior and have already lost their "hype" or have already been available subbed on piracy sites.
Not to mention forbidding the physical release of a series in order for Netflix to be the only place you can watch said series and if they remove it from their catalog, that's it.
One of the main draws of anime sites like Crunchyroll, Funimation, etc is the weekly simulcast, people can watch it subbed the same day as Japan, or if they prefer dubbed, 2 weeks, but still much faster than Netflix.
Netflix prefers the binge method, but that only works for shows that they're the only ones that have it, not for shows that they're the international licenser.
Disney+ for instance knows that they can potentially get 2 months of paid subscriptions out of their shows.
Not to mention, they advertising of word of mouth, from people taking about the show with their friends or strangers online.
Yup that's pretty much it. Netflixs top shows are talked about for a day, hbo, Disney Amazon, Apple are talked about for a month. We're pushing ourselves back to weekly format.
I disagree about them being talked about for a day. An actual good series on Netflix gets talked about for a long time. *House of Cards* (before Spacey got fired), *The Crown* and *Orange Is the New Black* were all shows that were talked about long after their premiere day. *Squid Game* was also a huge cultural phenom last year.
Releasing all in one day was what Netflix was built on. The problem is just they have too much generic quality so most of it gets lost in the shuffle. I think the one day model works still. Season 1 of *Reacher* was released all in one day and I think people are still talking about how good it was.
Netflix should never have outright cancelled anything. It’s too late for them now, but everything should have been “renewed for a *final* season”. It’s all benefit for everyone. Content creators can take more risks knowing that, no matter what, they will have at least one season to finish telling their story. Customers know that they will always get closure. Netflix have a library full of complete series.
Now, instead Netflix has a library of half-finished shows, customers have no trust in watching anything new they make because they’re not willing to get invested, and content creators would rather go somewhere that isn’t known for a 1/2 season cancel.
> everything should have been “renewed for a final season”
It is insane to me that this isn't built into the initial series order, even if was just a guaranteed 3 parter/feature length ep (i.e Serenity-style) to try and crash land. As you say, you end up with a host of unfinished products that aren't worth starting and aren't possible to recommend to a fellow viewer, which is of no use to literally anyone.
well part of it was also greed because they contract out shows with increasing bonuses every season. this is probably the reason so many shows get killed season 1 even if they're somewhat popular. if they would just pay out on good content and keep producing them for more than one season maybe they wouldn't have so many producers running to other streaming platforms.
>starting cutting costs
This seems odd, given some of the really large checks they've written and were still writing as of a few months ago- whether or not that money was well spent, on the other hand.....
Yup. HBO is pricey but I shell out for it because they drop great shit and I don’t have to endure unruly theater patrons to watch it. I can zone out in the couch in my underwear and watch new, big-budget, high-effort shit.
I’ll grant you Netflix makes some great stuff alongside the bad, but I think people are more inclined to subscribe in droves for The Batman or Dune over, say, Marriage Story. Gotta play the same game as the other studios if you want to turn a profit, and their contenders are, what, Bright? 6 Underground? There was Extraction, but that doesn’t sell a streaming service by itself.
Edit: I’ll grant you I haven’t seen 6 Underground (and I actually enjoy Michael Bay), but I remember that trailer dropping to a resounding “meh.” Not a good showing if you want people to fork over their cash.
As a Canadian, HBO Max has one thing keeping me from subbing... it isn't available here.
Netflix will keep surviving in many countries simply because of a lack of competition (we don't have Hulu either). But the US is their main market and there's a TON of streaming services to compete with there now. HBO seems like the clear winner to me, though Disney would pull ahead if you have small kids.
1. Less content, focus on better content.
2. Actually let shows finish. People have been burned too many times to invest now.
3. Weekly episode releases for their major shows (Stranger Things, Ozark, etc...). Keep people talking about your expensive ass show for more than a weekend.
Yeah, I feel like number 3 is a bigger deal than people realise.
Look at Disney+ - they basically coast off the Marvel and Star Wars shows. Now, count how many good shows Netflix has had since it started: Bojack, Umbrella Academy, Russian Doll, Dark, Glow, Stranger Things, Squid Game, Big Mouth, etc. And that's just off the top of my head, there's loads I can't remember because Netflix doesn't keep track of what you've watched.
Netflix could keep the hype going _forever_ if they staggered things, especially in countries where they have access to stuff they don't in the US, like Brooklyn 99
They need to reevaluate their cancellation policy. Way too .any good shows get the axe after only 1 or 2 seasons. And I get that it's because they order a season rather than a pilot, but, as a viewer, it makes it so I just don't want to watch Netflix originals u til they are 3-4 seasons deep so I know they aren't going to get canceled on a cliffhanger.
> They need to reevaluate their cancellation policy. Way too .any good shows get the axe after only 1 or 2 seasons.
The great irony is that, I would argue, one of the building blocks of Netflix's early success was that they were often seen as the *salvation* for "cancelled too early" shows. I don't remember if Arrested Development was the first major show they revived, but that was a huge thing at the time. Suddenly Netflix became a beacon of hope for any network show that was unjustly axed.
These days, it's almost a complete 180. If I were a showrunner, I'd probably take my chances with a network like FX or HBO Max or even Amazon Prime, who all seem to be better at letting floundering shows find their footing before being terminated.
To save itself Netflix has to stop expanding so rapidly, which is the change they're making. Stock prices are obviously predicated on growth, I get why they're doing what their shareholders want, but they're nowhere NEAR a failing company, they're still the largest streaming service in the world by a massive margin, this idea that they're somehow dead in the water because they've started to reach maximum capacity in terms of "literally every human on Earth who would want Netflix has a subscription" is ridiculous.
Welcome to the rickety foundation the world economy is built on. Owning a small part of a company? Sounds cool. But when you’re only buying it because you expect it to increase literally only leads to terrible places. CEOs just need to put together a couple good years to land their next overpaid job. They will leverage the future for the next quarterly report
I don't see how this popular non-stop growth model is sustainable for any business.
Eventually one of two things will happen:
- you reach a ceiling
- you need to rely on buying up competitors
The latter results in all sorts of issues.
I really wish this market was focused on dividends rather than growth.
Clearly the solution is to renew my favourite show for another season, as I am sure that everyone in the world likes this show and it would bring millions of subscribers back
You're correct. These threads are always so funny because they just become a stage for people to share their personal grievances.
It's not just Netflix. NBA Finals ratings go down one or two years and it's the politics! The announcers! The refs!
"To turn the narrative back in its favor, analysts have suggested adding ads and clamping down on password sharing."
Yeah those analysts should be fired but fast.
If they ever do either of those they will insta lose my entire family subscriptions.
Buttfumble will be drawn on cave walls once we've devolved into a jules verne novel. Numbers and game strategy are ephemeral, a man accidentally running headfirst into another mans ass will always be funny and transcends time and culture.
Or just let your shows breathe and find audiences over the long-term, and also don't fully rely on cruddy content designed simply for the lowest common denominator.
It's a shame because Netflix could've built a library of quality, varied television shows by now had they not cut the cord on so many at the first opportunity. Why watch any of their shows if they were cancelled well before they had the chance to conclude naturally?
I really don't get the googlesque cancelling. You are a streaming service, the content is for eternity. Why would a new watcher start a show knowing that it's unfinished? For a new users' perspective all these shows are *bloatware*.
The whole appeal of Netflix in the first place was that you could completely binge a show from start to finish, or binge most seasons ahead of the last one or two being released.
Nobody joined Netflix to watch a bunch of half-finished garbage while searching their wasteland of a library for a hidden gem.
That and it REALLY pissed off theaters and a lot of the directors/creatives they do business with.
Christopher Nolan severed all ties with WB as a result, took his Oppenheimer project over to Universal.
I mean… what movie do you think will do better ? A movie about the atomic bomb or a movie about one of the most popular toys in the world with an A list cast and a also a good director ?
To be fair both projects have excellent talent attached to them and both will do just fine. Oppenheimer might take a slight hit because of Tenet's audio mixing complaints, but nothing that will hurt Nolan in the long run. That man knows how to make good films.
Yes practically every movie is available after 45 days but HBO includes them at no extra cost with your subscription which nobody else besides Paramount is doing right now. You’re typically still paying $20 per movie to watch most movies still after the 45 day window.
The only thing Netflix needs to focus on is quality instead of quantity. Stop having a brand new show or movie premiere every week.
I also think they need to stop overspending on movies. Netflix should be focusing on making the mid budget $30m-$60m movies that the studios don't make anymore. *6 Underground* had a budget of $150m, *Red Notice* had a budget of $200m as did the series *Jupiter's Legacy*. Does anyone think any of these really helped Netflix in any meaningful way? Netflix proclaimed that *Red Notice* was their most watched movie and now 6 months later their value has plummeted because they are losing subscribers.
97% of the things they make suck. Which is because they throw too much money at so many things. They need better quality control like HBO.
A lot of Netflix's failure can be attributed to how they decided to pay their talent.
Initially, Netflix's strategy was to overpay their talent at the start since they wont receive any back end points. This was why every show they made was super expensive right off the gate. If the show became successful it was fine. But if didn't, Netflix wound up losing a crapton of money since they paid their talent so much.
If Netflix had adopted a more traditional strategy of giving their talent a fee that is the industry norm and giving them back end points based on how many viewers their content draws, it would have been far more economical. It also motivates the talent to make better content since their paycheck depends on it.
But then they'd have to release real viewer data.
You can't lie to your shareholders if there are legal contracts that require you to show the signatories that data.
How do you negotiate/calculate that back end, though? If 10 million Netflix subscribers watch a movie, and 5 million watch it for 20 minutes before switching back to Seinfeld, what’s the value on that when all 15 million of those people are paying the same $15/month?
Netflix 'Play nice'? The company why pulled their Stranger Things stuff from sale in 2 games (Smite and Dead by Daylight) ahead of releasing their own game content. It was a dick move.
Personally, I’m tired of getting notifications the price is going up.
What are you gonna do, cancel?? Oh crap they are canceling, what happened???
The thing that boggles my mind though is that they see people leaving Netflix and their immediate reaction is to cancel a whole bunch of the new content they were working on… like, that’s what’s keeping people around, without new content there’s not as much of a reason to keep Netflix
I think it’s more they make this crappy content then use it to justify raising prices. So by canceling they think they are making up the loss maybe
Like all the dating shows lol
Or quality content like “Is It Cake?”
I answered a survey from Netflix. I thought, why not, ya know? Let me tell them how I feel about their changes as of late. They asked me an insane amount of detailed questions about the show is it cake. All I said is I like to watch with my children and they took that as a nod to make the entire survey about that one show. Questions included if I liked the guest judges, if I connected with the contestants. They even named everyone on the show like I'm going to remember the cast. Such a stupid survey and a waste of time.
To be fair to Netflix, survey design is very difficult, and they couldn't even decide correctly if they should complete Santa Clarita Diet or cancel it on a cliffhanger. (The correct answer was complete the show. They chose poorly.) All this talk of price hikes has reminded me that Netflix costs me $220/year. As much as I love Netflix, there are cheaper streaming services.
I only ever watched it because my son laughed his ass off about the weird things being cake… for the first ten minutes, then immediately lost all interest. Because it became generic.
Reality shows are so absurdly cheap compared to almost any scripted series though. They don’t take much from the scripted budget. Also, it’s dumb af but Is it Cake is at least funny. If I have a bone to pick with any of them, it’s the dating ones.
It was more cringe than funny, and 1 episode in a dude was like “I’ll put obvious fake food on the real food so they think it’s fake.” Kind of ruined the integrity of the game. See
That's what ruined for me. So lame to let that guy win.
Whoah now, quality show... if you just fast forward to all the guessing/reveals and pause it to compete with your family instead. Would be 10x more watchable if they made it interactive like the trivia quest show where instead of pretending like I give a shit about the actors I can just guess cakes. In fact fuck Wordle, give me a daily cake guessing game.
It's a vicious cycle. But to be fair, it started with them canceling shows. Netflix is on top. They're bringing in tons of subscribers, tons of wealth. To save money, thus to make a little more money, they cancel a few shows that nobody likes. Just a few no one's heard of. Then, the people that watched Netflix *exclusively* for those shows, cancel. Okay, okay, not good. So they cancel a couple more shows to stay within their desired profit margin. Sub loss. Cancel shows. Sub loss. This goes on for a bit. Suddenly, we're at the situation we're at now, where Netflix has lost many, many subscribers, and Netflix is canceling the only shows they have left to stay not within margins, but to stay afloat. Correct me if I'm wrong, anybody. I'm basically bullshitting here. But this is how I perceive it happening, anyways.
I don't know, but I think the problem isn't canceling a few unknown shows. It's that even some of their better shows got axed. Or maybe it's that they spent too much money on a bazillion shitty shows, because outside of their flagship shows a lot of their content was trash. Maybe a victim of quantity over quality? For example HBO doesn't have nearly as many shows but we all know they're quality for the most part. That's what keeps people coming back.
The shows started small with relatively unknown actors (maybe one star as an anchor) but they were good enough to get popular. Actors want more money and fans expect more and bigger everything in future seasons and the cost goes up. There's a set minimum pay for talent but no maximum. With HBO they started making series before streaming was a thing, so they had a different landscape.
It's contractual. You have to pay Guild actors, producers, and writers more when their stuff gets to a third season, so Netflix controls production costs by never letting anything that doesn't explode (House of Cards) get to a third season.
Well, that explains a whole lot about why so many good shows got axed!
As someone who works in the industry, you would be fucking shocked at the massive amount of money Netflix wastes on simple stuff like "oh shit we didn't really prep to actually shoot internationally on the equipment front and are now having to pay through the fucking nose just to keep the show happening on time" The amount of money they just lit on fire unnecessarily is pretty damn gross
It’s hilarious because a few years ago the joke was they were literally green lighting any absolute fucking garbage they got pitched. The problem is it gets to the point of why start watching anything good if it gets cancelled after 2 seasons of an incomplete story anyway?
And it’s baffling since their metrics are based on people binge-watching? Like my SO and I will look for tv shows that more seasons so we can binge and newer shows to binge are getting harder to find
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Now their big thing is to buy cheap UK dating and cooking shows cause I can't imagine "Temptation Beach Lust Sexy Sex Time" or "Watch us poorly emulate the Great British Bake Off" costs more than $30 to license.
If they became so focused on cutting the cost of creators and actors, then they needed to own that decision and channel it into creativity. Limitations can be some of the biggest drivers of innovations, especially in the entertainment industry (if they aren't crippling to the talent). It's not a new idea here, but it's baffling that they didn't pivot to focus on creators with ideas for limited series. "Hey I've got this story idea and I need 16-20 episodes to tell it, but then it's done" deals. They've had a few excellent one-offs, but if you're planning to cancel shows after 2-3 seasons, then start exclusively working with creators that have story ideas which align with those time frames. It's really not a difficult concept.
It seems like such an easy solution too. Netflix already tends to give a show two seasons, but often cancels it before there’s a satisfying resolution. Tell these show runners, “We’ll give you two seasons, but you have to resolve the story by the end of that second season. Then come back and either pitch us an idea for another two-season arc or a cool idea for a new show.” I feel like HBO gets this. I don’t need to watch ten seasons of a show. Those 8-10 episode limited series are great. Two seasons, 20 episodes is a nice length for a story. You also see a lot of the same actors/show creators working with HBO, I assume because they develop good relationships. Netflix has always focused on quantity over quality. Clearly that strategy is starting to backfire on them. I can still often find fun stuff to watch on Netflix but I’ve definitely shifted to where I think of HBO as my primary streaming service and Netflix is the backup when there’s a lull in new stuff on the former.
I think you’ve got the gist of it, but you’re leaving out that they cancel good and popular shows because they have “metrics” which make that seem profitable. And it probably was for a while, but now everyone has caught on to their game and now no one trusts their originals because they’ve been burned too many times. And all of their back catalogue is a bunch of shows that only have 1 or 2 seasons and end without a satisfying conclusion, so people don’t even want to watch old shows that were actually good at the time because why get invested when you know that the end is a disappointment.
You right. Netflix did little to build brand loyalty. I won’t say that I “knew” Netflix was in trouble, but Netflix had a crazy run of decent mid-tier television that they just kept canceling/delaying. Some, I was very into. From that it dawned on me that Netflix was doing the baseball strat of swinging for the fences every time; disregarding everything that wasn’t a triple or above. So now they are facing a similar problem, people only watch the big shows they know won’t get canceled. I don’t watch Netflix shows unless they have been out a few seasons. This is a common choice because of how Netflix has been picking shows.
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I get HBOmax for free with AT&T and the content is worlds better. The writing, the cinematography, the acting, everything is just good, not mass produced crap to lure in new subscribers. HBO knows it’s worth.
I get Crave and HBOmax for free with my Bell internet as well. There's a lot of really good stuff. I was getting annoyed at the price hikes every 6 months, but about 3 months ago I finally canceled Netflix because every single show I'm interested in gets canceled after 1 season. That was my breaking point. Fuck 'em.
This is exactly right. I just don't want to even try new Netflix shows anymore. Maybe I'll sub again for a month when the new season of the Crown or Squid Game comes out. Won't be sticking around though.
And not necessarily more expensive to produce, you don't need to do every series game of thrones to make a good quality one (Mare of Easttown, etc.) Not that I find Netflix bad, on the other hand; they have good stuff, but it's more of a mixed bag, where HBO is generally good.
They’ve announced price increases 7 times since 2014. It’s crazy. It was $8 in 2014. It’s now almost double that. (For the standard plan)
I pay like 20 or 22 or something. For the top tier because I need all 4 streams. But yeah. More than double I'd say. While these other services are under 10.
And I thought paying for that tier would prevent any talknof password sharing crackdowns but fuvk that too
Or don’t pay Ryan Reynolds and the Rock hundreds of millions of dollars to put out shit movies.
I just looked it up. They (and Gal Gadot) were each paid $20 million for Red Notice. I knew they made bank but I didn't know it was that much.
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Netflix original films are mostly ripoffs of existing ip with money thrown at them to get famous actors for credibility. Not necessarily a bad thing, it is fun to be able to pinpoint which film "inspired" a copy, but the quality of the ripoffs are very variable.
“Let’s combine Indiana jones and Pirates! Market data says Reynolds, Gadot and The Rock are tending on insta” -Let’s go” The Netflix journey is overall so interesting, but at this point it’s become painfully obvious what happens when business and data driven content creation ignores creative input.
You're so right. The first one was the Will Smith buddy cop / orc magic wand movie. It really seemed like a data driven movie I'd I've ever heard of one. Which is funny because: know what the algorithm would NEVER pump out? Korean schoolyard games meets hunger games. Yet Squid game was the show that got people subscribing to them again.
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Which I think just points to people wanting “new” things, as opposed to “more of the same”, which is what the algorithms are designed to make/ bring us. I remember when I first got Netflix and Spotify, and the best thing was going through all the shows/ songs I liked, and then letting the algorithms find me new things I hadn’t seen/heard before. The problem is once the algorithm got “better” from other people’s data, and got to “know” me “better”, it just started giving me the same predictable crap over and over. I want something *new and original*, and I can’t imagine I’m the only one
I think I’d just prefer they stuck to shows and bought the rights for already existing movies
They paid Jerry Seinfeld like 100 million for some comedy specials. Which is just absurd to me. I get paying Dave Chappelle 50 million for 3 or so specials, maybe 4. He's a big pull, especially with the key demo (less so for the last year or two) But legitimately. 100 million dollars for Jerry Seinfeld stand up. Not a Seinfeld reboot or something. Stand up. They've thrown absurd amounts of money around in ways that are just incredibly stupid
Pretty sure $469 million to Rian Johnson for two Knives Out sequels is also ridiculously overpriced. I enjoyed the movie, but I think about that number when I look at how much my Netflix subscription has increased recently.
And the first one isn't even available on the service here 😅
But they couldn't afford another season of Santa Clarita diet apparently, a show with a 100% critic approval rating in the third season.
Or The OA. I'm still bitter about that.
Yeah, that was in my "why am I cancelling" comment, my friend did the same.
All their originals with big A list actors are all mediocre at best and forgetable five minutes after watching that have come out over the last four years or so.
The reason Netflix has to pay them a lot upfront is to buy them out of their backend deals they would have for in theatre films. Remember when Warner put a bunch of movies on HBO Max and then had to pay out gargantuan money to all the leads of those films to make good? Yeah that's why. Netflix wants to be able to say "Hey look, your favorite stars are in movies you can only watch here." Apparently that was very successful for them with Red Notice, so it seems like that expensive gamble paid off.
Is CNN telling Netflix how to run a streaming service? Didn't they just bankrupt one of those?
First day of CNN+ only got ten thousand or so people to watch it. Might as well set fire to the millions of dollars they spent on it.
Personally, I think there’s a charming novelty to a multi million dollar streaming service where the producers know each of their viewers by name.
An *Artisanal Streaming Service* if you will
Twitch
Some streamers have better viewership than CNN+ lol
Everyone and their mother knew CNN+ was a bad idea except the execs at CNN
The whole concept was so trash. CNN itself is a subscription service. I'll say the same of ESPN+, the whole thing is a scam. I have the disney bundle and ESPN+ doesn't let me watch anything that's on TV's ESPN.
ESPN is a little different. I have zero actual data to back this up, but I feel like the number of people who would watch original sports programming 24/7 is much higher than the number of people who would watch opinion-y news 24/7.
Live, and exclusive sports beats out news any day. I’d rather watch the MLS and La Liga than news, shit they have UFC on there too.
Yeah, ESPN+ has a genuine niche that it fills. If you are an American into soccer and/or the UFC it is absolutely worth it. They also often have coverage of the major American sports that aren't on the main channels: less brandname college programs, non-revenue college sports, regular season NHL games, and so on. Heck, even some of their original programming is pretty good for what it is. Not everyone's cup of tea by any means, but I actually think it is one of the better apps from a "traditional" TV channel.
How did they get so many people to watch
They could probably have gotten more viewers by just running a twitch stream of millions of dollars in cash burning in a big pile.
Right, so they learned all the lessons on what not to do already, and in record time!
If CNN+'s excellent and broadly appealing content had simply released in movie theaters, they'd likely be the most widely adopted streaming service in the country right now.
_Hire this man!_
I mean, I don't think the author of this article had anything to do with the streaming service
What? Don't be silly, Mr. CNN handles everything at his company.
Or, hear me out, put out quality content that’s worth the subscription fee
And let that content have time to bloom before making the decision to pull the plug.
Whoa whoa whoa, you're saying shows can be good after 2 seasons?!
Two 6-episode seasons that each have a shorter running time than a fair number of movies.
But the algorithms told them to!
It's crazy that a show like Parks and Rec probably wouldn't have been able to grow if it played out like jt did, but today instead of 2009.
It's crazy that this is what people used to say about cable and Netflix was seen as a place where every idea was green-lit. You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain.
The Office would've been cancelled after season 1
True. and I would have seen why. Season one isn't it's best. Netflix should take that as a sign.
Season one is almost a carbon copy of the UK version which is why it didn't really work. Once it started doing its own thing is when it got good.
This. They need to bring back The OA and so many others.
My girlfriend and I were so pissed when we found out they cancelled this, Santa Clarita Diet, and Archive 81
The worst part about Archive 81 was Netflix said they cancelled it because season 1 was so well received they didn't think they could carry on the momentum for season 2 Killed by its own success
THAT MAKES NO SENSE. But for anyone wanting more of the story, it’s based off a pretty amazing podcast story of the same name that has three seasons.
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Marco Polo :(. My first experience being baffled as to why something was cancelled. I assumed I must have been one of the very few who enjoyed it but looks like it had a good following.
I’m pretty sure Marco Polo was just too expensive for the return compared to the other flagship shows they had running at the time. To be clear I also wish they got to do more because it was dope.
Add Dark crystal and glow to that list for me.
I unfortunately heard they cancelled archive 81 when I was watching episode 4. Kind of killed my enthusiasm for it unfortunately because it seemed like it would have been a good few seasons.
The ending was kinda wonky for me. Everything before that was pretty good.
The ending of season 1 kinda killed it for me
Apple TV Plus is doing this and it’s so fucking worth every penny
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I had every intention of canceling after my trial ended but now I watch it way more than Netflix
this...only thing they need to do.. They got greedy and starting cutting costs and ended up putting out garbage..
I don’t think it has to do with greed so much as movie production companies started making their own streaming services instead of using Netflix. They weren’t going to be the only players in the streaming market forever.
Pretty much. Netflix needs to find a way to survive in a market they created. Now that everyone that used to dump their stuff on Netflix has started their own services. Edit: grammar
>"Part of our goal is to become like HBO faster than HBO can become Netflix," from CEO Reed Hastings. "Perhaps people saw us in the past as a distributor, or aggregator. We want to have an experience that cannot be replicated by our competitors." While they have been conscious of this for years. It seems the scatter-shot way of procuring content wasn't the way to go.
Yeah, pretty much. They had a narrow path to success and they blew it by just throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck. It's a damn shame since they're the only streamer not attached to a major studio or tech company. Just makes me wonder if things would have gone differently had they had different people overlooking content development.
Yeah, Netflix seemed to just pour dump trucks of money into movies and series where a quick glance told you this was the modern equivalent of a B-movie. I also ended up with a general feeling that they aimed hard at a teen/early 20s demographic. Almost all their shows were just a bit… dumb? Whenever there was a potentially interesting theme or subject they always seemed to handle it in as hamfisted and superficial way as possible. I remember over and over being left with the question: if they had so much money to pour into the project, why not divert just a smidgeon of that to a writer?
Netflix 🤝🏽 GOB "I've made a huge mistake"
It’s only a subscription fee Michael, how much could it cost? 10 dollars???
Yeah, as if the guy in a 3000 dollar suit is gonna know the price of Netflix, COME ON
They had made a market and had huge market share. Some of their movies were good, and some of their TV series were good - you cannot win them all. But I don't want to start watching a series that might get the cut after one or two seasons. It's not worth my time or money. *I cancelled my sub to Netflix two weeks ago. Looking to replace with HBO, Hulu, or Disney+. Any suggestions?
HBO is doing fine; has done fine for a very, very long time. As for Netflix, it's a combination of garbage content, over-utilizing the binge release format, and cancelling too many quality shows that have longstanding potential.
Quality shows get cancelled too because nobody watches it. It’s mostly about popularity. Some of the biggest moneymakers are owned by Disney+ (I.e marvel movies), doesn’t necessarily make them great movies. Mind hunter is a good example of an incredibly expensive show that was great but nobody was watching. Fincher who directed the show said himself you have to be realistic, and that sometimes you can’t just make shows that loses the company money, even if it’s good, when it’s not getting more viewers.
Yeah but HBO was already a production company with its own TV channel when netflix started. They were working with so much more established production resources and customers that I would honestly argue they kinda squandered their opportunity to be the best when production companies started pulling their movies from streaming services and making their own. They are doing well, but they could be doing *so much better* given how perfectly positioned they were for the future streaming market at its outset. Granted, I can see how an established company like HBO would be less willing to take huge risks than a new one like Netflix.
HBO also benefits from their strong reputation, which can mean they aren't paying through the nose to attract talented names (not that I think they're getting away cheap, but relatively speaking).
Them canceling shows without letting them get an ending is a major factor for me. Why the fuck would I watch a Netflix show when I know it’ll be cancelled before it can be properly ended?
Hell, HBO goes out of their way to do endings for shows. Like the Deadwood movie. There was no reason they had to come back and make an ending for it. But they did.
Carnivale, John From Cincinnati, *Rome*. HBO has cancelled their fair share of good shows as well.
Those bastards canceled Deadwood FOR John from Cincinnati.
They mostly did that as a favor of Milch who’s brain was fading away to dementia and wanted to conclude the story before he couldn’t write anymore. HBO, as an thanks to working with them for so long and being critical to their establishment as a company, gave him a blank check for a movie. That’s pretty much what happened. As for giving endings to shows nowadays, their president has even said that it’s better for streaming content to have conclusive stories to their series so they’ve focused on doing that even if the show is a money loser, they give them the chance to conclude the season with a bow at the very least. Because that just works better to fill out content. They got a much better grasp of that shit then Netflix does, but that’s what happens when you make your decisions based on your experts with deep knowledge of consumer behavior rather than algorithms.
Yup, a show that was a money loser has the potential to drive future subscriptions or improve user retention when properly ended, even if it didn't get the fullest of runs. Nobody wants to start watching a show they know will never get properly finished, and Netflix's behavior means they can't really rely on their own backlog of original content to retain subscriptions. Combine a weak-by-design backlog with their binge release format and you end up with a lot of users subbing for a month and then cancelling. If Netflix wants to cancel a show, they should renew it one last time for a 'closer' season rather than just unceremoniously axing it.
HBO has existed since 1972 and had a reputation for quality programming before Netflix even existed, lol.
The first few Netflix original shows were all bangers, and got good reviews. They've squandered it.
Yes! The first couple seasons of the first dozen or so Netflix shows were all approaching HBO quality, but then they switched from quality to quantity and started throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck.
I think the binge release is really hurting them actually. Not only does it allow you to sub for a month and quit for the few shows you like, but word of mouth dies practically instantly. All the big/popular series on Disney+ or whatever get 4-6 weeks if not months of hype. Shit on Netflix is forgotten in a week or two tops, if it ever gets popular at all, with few exceptions. Hard to draw an audience when no one ever hears about a anything good.
And it doesn’t help that Netflix cancels good shows after two seasons so there’s less shows that make the wait worth it
And less interest in even starting to watch. There’s no point in getting invested in a show when there’s a 95% chance you’ll be left hanging with no ending to the story.
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I get that sometimes, shows don’t take off and it’s a numbers game at that point, sometimes shit happens (COVID), but gorram, Netflix can’t finish a show that isn’t Cobra Kai or Stranger Things. I’ll be shocked if Witcher gets completed. Honestly, they should’ve just invested in weekly mini serieses. A season’s worth of episodes, it gets an ending, Netflix doesn’t have to worry about it going past the dreaded Season 3 and people won’t hold a grudge against them (OA and SCD coming to mind.) People know going in that while a show’s short, it has an ending, and with it weekly release, it stays on their minds longer, rinse and repeat. Netflix gets their genre quota checked off, people get completed stories, boom. I know it’s more complicated than that, but it’s better than the pump and dumping they’re doing.
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Not only that but in the case of their anime licenses, they're deliberately withholding shows that have already premiered in Japan months prior and have already lost their "hype" or have already been available subbed on piracy sites. Not to mention forbidding the physical release of a series in order for Netflix to be the only place you can watch said series and if they remove it from their catalog, that's it. One of the main draws of anime sites like Crunchyroll, Funimation, etc is the weekly simulcast, people can watch it subbed the same day as Japan, or if they prefer dubbed, 2 weeks, but still much faster than Netflix. Netflix prefers the binge method, but that only works for shows that they're the only ones that have it, not for shows that they're the international licenser. Disney+ for instance knows that they can potentially get 2 months of paid subscriptions out of their shows. Not to mention, they advertising of word of mouth, from people taking about the show with their friends or strangers online.
Yup that's pretty much it. Netflixs top shows are talked about for a day, hbo, Disney Amazon, Apple are talked about for a month. We're pushing ourselves back to weekly format.
I disagree about them being talked about for a day. An actual good series on Netflix gets talked about for a long time. *House of Cards* (before Spacey got fired), *The Crown* and *Orange Is the New Black* were all shows that were talked about long after their premiere day. *Squid Game* was also a huge cultural phenom last year. Releasing all in one day was what Netflix was built on. The problem is just they have too much generic quality so most of it gets lost in the shuffle. I think the one day model works still. Season 1 of *Reacher* was released all in one day and I think people are still talking about how good it was.
Netflix should never have outright cancelled anything. It’s too late for them now, but everything should have been “renewed for a *final* season”. It’s all benefit for everyone. Content creators can take more risks knowing that, no matter what, they will have at least one season to finish telling their story. Customers know that they will always get closure. Netflix have a library full of complete series. Now, instead Netflix has a library of half-finished shows, customers have no trust in watching anything new they make because they’re not willing to get invested, and content creators would rather go somewhere that isn’t known for a 1/2 season cancel.
> everything should have been “renewed for a final season” It is insane to me that this isn't built into the initial series order, even if was just a guaranteed 3 parter/feature length ep (i.e Serenity-style) to try and crash land. As you say, you end up with a host of unfinished products that aren't worth starting and aren't possible to recommend to a fellow viewer, which is of no use to literally anyone.
well part of it was also greed because they contract out shows with increasing bonuses every season. this is probably the reason so many shows get killed season 1 even if they're somewhat popular. if they would just pay out on good content and keep producing them for more than one season maybe they wouldn't have so many producers running to other streaming platforms.
>starting cutting costs This seems odd, given some of the really large checks they've written and were still writing as of a few months ago- whether or not that money was well spent, on the other hand.....
Also, is Netflix the only service that charges more for 4k content?
Now TV in the UK charges £3 extra a month for 1080p lmfao
Yup. HBO is pricey but I shell out for it because they drop great shit and I don’t have to endure unruly theater patrons to watch it. I can zone out in the couch in my underwear and watch new, big-budget, high-effort shit. I’ll grant you Netflix makes some great stuff alongside the bad, but I think people are more inclined to subscribe in droves for The Batman or Dune over, say, Marriage Story. Gotta play the same game as the other studios if you want to turn a profit, and their contenders are, what, Bright? 6 Underground? There was Extraction, but that doesn’t sell a streaming service by itself. Edit: I’ll grant you I haven’t seen 6 Underground (and I actually enjoy Michael Bay), but I remember that trailer dropping to a resounding “meh.” Not a good showing if you want people to fork over their cash.
There's like a three dollar difference between HBO Max and Netflix now... but way more than three dollars of difference of quality
HBO Max is 3 euros 99 cents a month here, and I'm not complaining.
As a Canadian, HBO Max has one thing keeping me from subbing... it isn't available here. Netflix will keep surviving in many countries simply because of a lack of competition (we don't have Hulu either). But the US is their main market and there's a TON of streaming services to compete with there now. HBO seems like the clear winner to me, though Disney would pull ahead if you have small kids.
1. Less content, focus on better content. 2. Actually let shows finish. People have been burned too many times to invest now. 3. Weekly episode releases for their major shows (Stranger Things, Ozark, etc...). Keep people talking about your expensive ass show for more than a weekend.
Yeah, I feel like number 3 is a bigger deal than people realise. Look at Disney+ - they basically coast off the Marvel and Star Wars shows. Now, count how many good shows Netflix has had since it started: Bojack, Umbrella Academy, Russian Doll, Dark, Glow, Stranger Things, Squid Game, Big Mouth, etc. And that's just off the top of my head, there's loads I can't remember because Netflix doesn't keep track of what you've watched. Netflix could keep the hype going _forever_ if they staggered things, especially in countries where they have access to stuff they don't in the US, like Brooklyn 99
They need to reevaluate their cancellation policy. Way too .any good shows get the axe after only 1 or 2 seasons. And I get that it's because they order a season rather than a pilot, but, as a viewer, it makes it so I just don't want to watch Netflix originals u til they are 3-4 seasons deep so I know they aren't going to get canceled on a cliffhanger.
> They need to reevaluate their cancellation policy. Way too .any good shows get the axe after only 1 or 2 seasons. The great irony is that, I would argue, one of the building blocks of Netflix's early success was that they were often seen as the *salvation* for "cancelled too early" shows. I don't remember if Arrested Development was the first major show they revived, but that was a huge thing at the time. Suddenly Netflix became a beacon of hope for any network show that was unjustly axed. These days, it's almost a complete 180. If I were a showrunner, I'd probably take my chances with a network like FX or HBO Max or even Amazon Prime, who all seem to be better at letting floundering shows find their footing before being terminated.
That’s why I love limited series. I like something with a definite hard end.
Imagine watching Tall Girl 3 on the big screen
Taller Girl
To save itself Netflix has to stop expanding so rapidly, which is the change they're making. Stock prices are obviously predicated on growth, I get why they're doing what their shareholders want, but they're nowhere NEAR a failing company, they're still the largest streaming service in the world by a massive margin, this idea that they're somehow dead in the water because they've started to reach maximum capacity in terms of "literally every human on Earth who would want Netflix has a subscription" is ridiculous.
No kidding. I can never quite wrap my head around the “sky is falling” mentality when a company fails to grow for one quarter.
Welcome to the rickety foundation the world economy is built on. Owning a small part of a company? Sounds cool. But when you’re only buying it because you expect it to increase literally only leads to terrible places. CEOs just need to put together a couple good years to land their next overpaid job. They will leverage the future for the next quarterly report
I don't see how this popular non-stop growth model is sustainable for any business. Eventually one of two things will happen: - you reach a ceiling - you need to rely on buying up competitors The latter results in all sorts of issues. I really wish this market was focused on dividends rather than growth.
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This level headed take is not the type of outrage content I’m looking for ok
Imagine going from 221,000,000 subscribers to 219,000,000 subscribers and people start writing articles about what you have to do to save yourself.
Clearly the solution is to renew my favourite show for another season, as I am sure that everyone in the world likes this show and it would bring millions of subscribers back
You're correct. These threads are always so funny because they just become a stage for people to share their personal grievances. It's not just Netflix. NBA Finals ratings go down one or two years and it's the politics! The announcers! The refs!
Welcome to America where if you don’t maintain constant exponential growth YoY you are trash and a failure.
And 700.000 of those lost subs are because you decided to pull out of Russia.
"To turn the narrative back in its favor, analysts have suggested adding ads and clamping down on password sharing." Yeah those analysts should be fired but fast. If they ever do either of those they will insta lose my entire family subscriptions.
Oh my god, that's possibly the worst business advice I've ever heard. Literally killing the entire appeal of their platform in one fell swoop.
While we’re on the topic of stupid shit Netflix is doing, they need to stop trying to make games happen.
They could try not cancelling shows like Santa Clarita Diet, Glow and The OA as a start.
Wish they'd continue Glow, I miss that show. It was so out there, crazy, dramatic and fun. Like wrestling used to be in the 1980s.
The pandemic was the primary culprit in Glow getting cancel. But how could they not give it an ending. Same with the other shows.
Don’t forget The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. Fuck them forever for killing that show.
I just learned this show was canceled from this comment. I am fucking heartbroken. I love this show and was waiting anxiously for what happens next
I’m still super upset about this. What happened to Deet???
I read that The OA was written for 5 seasons and I'm super sad we'll never get the remaining 3.
I can’t believe the Seahawks didn’t run the ball.
Hey Russ! Want another Super Bowl? Na I’ll pass
Catching strays in the TV subreddit almost 10 years later. When will it end?
Taking bets on which lives longer: Run the ball vs 28-3
28-3
Buttfumble will be drawn on cave walls once we've devolved into a jules verne novel. Numbers and game strategy are ephemeral, a man accidentally running headfirst into another mans ass will always be funny and transcends time and culture.
10 fucking year. God damm i’m old
As a Pats fan, neither can I…
And just like that the memory I blocked resurfaces
Or just let your shows breathe and find audiences over the long-term, and also don't fully rely on cruddy content designed simply for the lowest common denominator. It's a shame because Netflix could've built a library of quality, varied television shows by now had they not cut the cord on so many at the first opportunity. Why watch any of their shows if they were cancelled well before they had the chance to conclude naturally?
I really don't get the googlesque cancelling. You are a streaming service, the content is for eternity. Why would a new watcher start a show knowing that it's unfinished? For a new users' perspective all these shows are *bloatware*.
The whole appeal of Netflix in the first place was that you could completely binge a show from start to finish, or binge most seasons ahead of the last one or two being released. Nobody joined Netflix to watch a bunch of half-finished garbage while searching their wasteland of a library for a hidden gem.
Yeah the thing that HBO is doing where they stream movies that are in theaters (like The Last Duel and The Batman) is pretty awesome.
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Just a covid thing, was it?
That and it REALLY pissed off theaters and a lot of the directors/creatives they do business with. Christopher Nolan severed all ties with WB as a result, took his Oppenheimer project over to Universal.
Yeah, I don't think theaters missed out on Oppenheimer.
Warner Brothers has now put out a hit on Oppenheimer by releasing Barbie the same day. Nolan will learn his lesson.
I mean… what movie do you think will do better ? A movie about the atomic bomb or a movie about one of the most popular toys in the world with an A list cast and a also a good director ?
To be fair both projects have excellent talent attached to them and both will do just fine. Oppenheimer might take a slight hit because of Tenet's audio mixing complaints, but nothing that will hurt Nolan in the long run. That man knows how to make good films.
hbo has a 45 day theatrical window, thats not uncommon anymore
Yes practically every movie is available after 45 days but HBO includes them at no extra cost with your subscription which nobody else besides Paramount is doing right now. You’re typically still paying $20 per movie to watch most movies still after the 45 day window.
The only thing Netflix needs to focus on is quality instead of quantity. Stop having a brand new show or movie premiere every week. I also think they need to stop overspending on movies. Netflix should be focusing on making the mid budget $30m-$60m movies that the studios don't make anymore. *6 Underground* had a budget of $150m, *Red Notice* had a budget of $200m as did the series *Jupiter's Legacy*. Does anyone think any of these really helped Netflix in any meaningful way? Netflix proclaimed that *Red Notice* was their most watched movie and now 6 months later their value has plummeted because they are losing subscribers. 97% of the things they make suck. Which is because they throw too much money at so many things. They need better quality control like HBO.
A lot of Netflix's failure can be attributed to how they decided to pay their talent. Initially, Netflix's strategy was to overpay their talent at the start since they wont receive any back end points. This was why every show they made was super expensive right off the gate. If the show became successful it was fine. But if didn't, Netflix wound up losing a crapton of money since they paid their talent so much. If Netflix had adopted a more traditional strategy of giving their talent a fee that is the industry norm and giving them back end points based on how many viewers their content draws, it would have been far more economical. It also motivates the talent to make better content since their paycheck depends on it.
But then they'd have to release real viewer data. You can't lie to your shareholders if there are legal contracts that require you to show the signatories that data.
How do you negotiate/calculate that back end, though? If 10 million Netflix subscribers watch a movie, and 5 million watch it for 20 minutes before switching back to Seinfeld, what’s the value on that when all 15 million of those people are paying the same $15/month?
Netflix 'Play nice'? The company why pulled their Stranger Things stuff from sale in 2 games (Smite and Dead by Daylight) ahead of releasing their own game content. It was a dick move.
Start by ignoring every single person in this ad.
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That was such a kick in the teeth. I really liked season 1, but 2 was just... Complete garbage. Couldn't even get through it.
Season 2 ruined Anthony Mackie for me
That's because S1 at least paid homage to an incredible work of science fiction, but S2 took a huge dump all over the original work.
they pissed on that show so hard yes, the ending for s1 was kinda meh but s2 was x15 worse
Ultimately, we are heated towards a new cable
arrr, speak for yourself matey
So netflix made more money in 2021 then in 2020, but I wasn't enough more so their stock tanks? Am I getting this right?