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Old 01-27-2020, 12:51 PM   #136
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True, but even Star Trek and Star Wars can be bled dry eventually. There's a reason Star Trek went into hibernation for so long.

Disney has Marvel, the Lucas stuff and their own history. CBS has Star Trek (and doesn't Paramount own Star Trek anyway?) and the Twilight Zone and...?

NBC, CBS and the rest can create their own original streaming content, but will it make sense to spend a lot of money on quality shows that aren't being shown on their own broadcast channels? And will it be enough? Already there's the joke about getting excited when you see a trailer for a new show only to be disappointed when you see it's exclusive to Hulu.
CBS actually has a pretty big library of shows. Perry Mason for example. M*A*S*H. Disney also has the ABC library. Of course, it all depends on licensing agreements and contracts. Paramount is owned by ViacomCBS.

It can be interesting to trace through who owns what networks and what libraries of content. NBC is owned by Comcast which also owns Universal. So all three major networks have some pretty big libraries they can access for streaming content. AT&T owns the WB, HBO and Turner.
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Old 01-27-2020, 01:19 PM   #137
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CBS actually has a pretty big library of shows. Perry Mason for example. M*A*S*H. Disney also has the ABC library. Of course, it all depends on licensing agreements and contracts. Paramount is owned by ViacomCBS.

It can be interesting to trace through who owns what networks and what libraries of content. NBC is owned by Comcast which also owns Universal. So all three major networks have some pretty big libraries they can access for streaming content. AT&T owns the WB, HBO and Turner.
Sure. Assuming that all networks have some rights to shows that they broadcast (I don't believe that is completely true, but for sake of argument), then they all have a large library. But will that sustain subscriptions for an extended period? Are old TV shows that have been in reruns for decades really going to support a streaming service?

Friends was one of the most popular shows on Netflix (proving popular taste sucks). But would people pay... let's say $4.99 a month for a streaming service that only showed Friends? Not for long they wouldn't.
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Old 01-27-2020, 01:40 PM   #138
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Sure. Assuming that all networks have some rights to shows that they broadcast (I don't believe that is completely true, but for sake of argument), then they all have a large library. But will that sustain subscriptions for an extended period? Are old TV shows that have been in reruns for decades really going to support a streaming service?

Friends was one of the most popular shows on Netflix (proving popular taste sucks). But would people pay... let's say $4.99 a month for a streaming service that only showed Friends? Not for long they wouldn't.
Maybe they hope people on the fence over paying $5/month for 1 or 2 or 3 new exclusive shows will bite given the availability or large numbers of old shows available exclusively,

And, as mentioned earlier, some may pay for a month or 3 to binge on oldies.

(I am not happy about the declining netflix catalog, but am not currently willing to futz around trying the newcomer services and don't have anything to watch them with anyway.)
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Old 01-27-2020, 02:28 PM   #139
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So much for the promises that streaming video would give the Long Tail unavailable on DVD!
DVD catalogue is bigger than all streaming combined.
See also promises regarding eBooks and POD. The Big Five publishers are pathetic at long tail of stuff in copyright. They'd rather charge new release prices for stuff in the Public Domain that's very well known.

The attempt in Ireland & UK to stop Sky having a monopoly hurt football fans, in Ireland they then needed THREE subscription services to get all their matches.
A Pay TV platform owner should not own channels or have exclusive content. That's like only one supermarket has beans and only one different one has potato. It's worse as it's not pay per content you want (except expensive PPV sport), but subscribe for a year with only options for expensive add-ons.

Also Netflix is STILL selling below cost in most markets to woo people from Satellite and Cable Pay TV. Streaming costs 1000x more for a mass market popular product than Satellite or Cable. It's only cheaper than broadcast for niche content.
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Old 01-27-2020, 02:41 PM   #140
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Sure. Assuming that all networks have some rights to shows that they broadcast (I don't believe that is completely true, but for sake of argument), then they all have a large library. But will that sustain subscriptions for an extended period? Are old TV shows that have been in reruns for decades really going to support a streaming service?

Friends was one of the most popular shows on Netflix (proving popular taste sucks). But would people pay... let's say $4.99 a month for a streaming service that only showed Friends? Not for long they wouldn't.
I suspect that to be successful, a streaming service is going to have to have a combination of deep library and new shows. You really need one new "must watch" series to get people in the door and a wide array of stuff to keep them watching.

In a "perfect" world, the streaming service and content provider would be separate, i.e. I could watch anything available on whichever service I choose, but everyone wants the whole pie, not just a piece of the pie. I don't see how Netflix survives unless they get bought by one of the big four content providers.

One of the reason that I said it depends on contracts is that content involves a lot of parties and frequently no one entity is in complete control.
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Old 01-27-2020, 03:36 PM   #141
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Maybe they hope people on the fence over paying $5/month for 1 or 2 or 3 new exclusive shows will bite given the availability or large numbers of old shows available exclusively,
Maybe. But I don't see it happening. Maybe I lack foresight. Maybe.

Quote:
And, as mentioned earlier, some may pay for a month or 3 to binge on oldies.
That's what will likely happen. But various people picking up your service for a free month and then dropping it doesn't seem like a viable long term strategy.

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(I am not happy about the declining netflix catalog, but am not currently willing to futz around trying the newcomer services and don't have anything to watch them with anyway.)
To me, the Netflix catalog isn't declining, but it is changing. To their credit, they have so much original content to watch that I can't keep up with it. I still haven't watched Wild, Wild Country, Stranger Things, The Umbrella Academy, Altered Cqarbon or G.L.O.W. and now there's The October Faction and The Witcher.

Even if the original content stream slows down (which it has to do eventually) there's enough on there to keep me as a subscriber for a good long time.

I do hope the studios are smart enough to keep licensing older movies to third party services. I watched Tremors on Netflix this weekend and enjoyed it. But c'mon, I'm never going to subscribe to Peacock just to watch it.
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Old 01-27-2020, 10:41 PM   #142
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Everyone polishing their crystal balls. So here's mine:

Lemma 1: Piracy in ebooks is huge issue, it's even easier than music. Virtually all books are one google search away. Not pirating books is truly a consumer choice because I WANT to support the author who writes for a living. Charlie Stross wrote on this issue why "tipjar" schemes are not really workable for career author: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog...no-tipjar.html

Lemma 2: Mainstream authors HAVE TO go through Big5. For editing, organizing events, payola, print, for cash upfront to live off. This is the music record industry all over again. Amazon may skim less, but it has some serious drawbacks. You get no editors, no serious promotion aside from few kindle ads, no nothing. Amazon is what bandcamp is to music.

Lemma 3: Reading is a complete niche. Once you remove school textbook scams, schlick fic erotica, NYT new age self-help bestseller of the year and other generic schlock, reading is not really as big as people think it is. It mostly comes in waves of extremely popular YA franchises like Tolkien, Pratchett, JKR, but it tends to die off just as quick.

The third point is what separates ebooks from music industry. Everyone listens to music and watches TV, so schemes like spotify or netflix are most likely workable. The sheer size of the market can carry a flat rate subscription scheme.
However literature is a niche, and niches in general are far more difficult to disrupt - ebook format itself is perhaps the only disruption.

Perhaps there's hope is that Amazon becomes one of Big6. That is, they start acting more like a publishing house, seriously focusing to attract high roller authors and provide the homebase as other publishers do. All the while acting a little bit more ethical. But looking at their past record, they far prefer to go quantity and automation rather any semblance of human aspect.

And here lies the Catch-22. Amazon is the *only* one who can efficiently combat piracy (through convenience). Yet Amazon is also too lazy to act like a publisher. Meanwhile Big5 publishers are way over their head wrt piracy - they try to compensate for it by unreasonable market gauging - which is extremely self-defeating, as that simply pours even more oil on the issue.

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Old 01-28-2020, 07:47 AM   #143
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To me, the Netflix catalog isn't declining, but it is changing. To their credit, they have so much original content to watch that I can't keep up with it. I still haven't watched Wild, Wild Country, Stranger Things, The Umbrella Academy, Altered Cqarbon or G.L.O.W. and now there's The October Faction and The Witcher.

Even if the original content stream slows down (which it has to do eventually) there's enough on there to keep me as a subscriber for a good long time.
Correct.
Netflix started distributing DVDs via mail, and transitioned to licensed reruns to ramp up the streaming model. Then they started building their own library of exclusives and international content because they new content owners could raise costs unreasonably (an ongoing problem driving cordcutting from cable TV) or pull it completely (remember Disney's VAULT strategy on DVDs?).

They knew content owners would eventually try to disintermediate them and go direct to consumer. So did Amazon. It was inevitable.

Thing is, not all content owners can afford to go direct.
Setting up a survivable streaming service requires a deep catalog of "backlist" shows and movies, plus a steady stream of originals. The latter is mostly tapped out since Disney bought Fox and CBS merged with Viacom. WarnerMedia was ahead of everbody since they inherited tbe Turner treasure trove of content and brands and then merged with ATT because they understood an enduring streaming service will need 10-figure investment in new content *annually* for the better part of a decade. At least five years.

The fate of that market is pretty clear by now: Netflix, Prime, and Hulu got a headstart with tens of millions of *paying* customers. Disney has the Brands and library depth to keep people signed in at their *launch* price. (They've made no bones about the price inching upwards over time as tbeir library grows and licensed content contracts with others expire.) And then tbere is HBOMAX which is intended to convert the vast majority of their 150M cable subscribers to streaming at the exact same price for a giant increase in available content. They too have big brands, nine of them. And a broader library than even Disney.

The newcomer to watch is Peacock. NBCUniversal has a big library but is is, frankly, second tier. Plus they're late to tbe party and starting with no subscribers. They have the hardest row to hoe.

Anybody smalleriscovery, MGM, LIONSGATE, etc is in a squeeze.
They could try to roll their own. (Discovery has been planning for almost two years and constantly evolving those plans.) Good luck there. They could team up in a coop like Philo. (Their best hope but they're late. And it still will rquire money they don't have.) Or they can simply stay out of the fray and license everything to everybody. Non-exclusive licenses don't bring in as much as they used to but it's better than nothing.
They'll keep on licensing because they have to.

Alternately, they could sell out of the game.
It's getting too rich.

Most are saddled with debt (LIONSGATE), have small libraries (MGM only goes back to tbe 80's because they sold everything older back in the 80's), or both.
Buyers are also limited: Disney and WarnerMedia are too big to escape government scrutiny and woukd be blocked. Ditto for NBCUniversal (Comcast). CBS/VIACOM wouldn't be blocked but is heavy in debt.
That leaves the tech boys: Amazon, Apple, maybe Google.
And Netflix.

Latest rumor has Netflix and Apple looking at MGM. Apple has the money and their need is desperate but the MGM library is small and not worth its cost...to Apple. It won't add enough to their skimpy library. Netflix, however, can afford it and with tbeir bingeing model best exploit their few franchises. STARGATE would be a good match with LOST IN SPACE, SABRINA, WITCHER, ALTERED CARBON, and other SF&F.

Apple woukd be best advised to bite tbe bullet and take on LIONSGATE and its debt with their bigger library. STARZ and ENCORE, eyc, do have 56 million cable subscribers so they'll be buying a fair amount of *paying* customers they can try to transition to streaming.

Not heard of, is Google.
Their YouTube premium and YouTube red have both been underwhelming (despite a couple of decent shows) but YouTube TV is a well-regarded liveTV streaming player and with death of PLAYSTATION VUE they stand to grow. Plus they have the money to buy Lionsgate, Discovery, and MGM. Which they'll have to, to be players.

The problem for all is churning: people will binge and rotate subscriptions so the number of active, paying, subscriptions will always be smaller than their total number of accounts, just as with ereaders.

Churning is a manageable evil for the big boys.

It is also a plus for the niche small fry with a few hundred or even dozens of products living on FireTV and Roku who live off people paying for a month, draining the library, and then quitting. For them churning is tbeir business.

It is newcomers and the medium players who can die by churning.
Not big enough to tolerate churning, not small enough to live by it.

Netflix, Disney/Hulu, and WarnerMedia all have a viable survival strategy. PrimeVideo is an outlier playing a churn-free game and NBCUniversal is late but their model just might play. CBSAA has been muddling along but they're likely survivable because of Trek churners. Get enough Trek shows rotating and they might live. Or sell out. Hard to tell.

Of the rest, only Crown Media looks survivable. They have a service in place, plenty of liveTV streaming deals at reasonable prices and customer loyalty. They could sell but don't have to.

The rest have work to do.
They may have to resort to free ad-supported services like CW/CW SEED and licensing which is viable but will keep them on the fringes.

So, anyway, no NETFLIX is in no danger.
They truly are too big to fail because they are already global: global in content and global in subscribers. They got there "firstest with tbe mostest."

(Plus $13B a year is roughly what their big competitors spend...combined.)

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Old 01-28-2020, 07:56 AM   #144
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Everyone polishing their crystal balls. So here's mine:

Lemma 1: Piracy in ebooks is huge issue, it's even easier than music. Virtually all books are one google search away. Not pirating books is truly a consumer choice because I WANT to support the author who writes for a living. Charlie Stross wrote on this issue why "tipjar" schemes are not really workable for career author: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog...no-tipjar.html

Lemma 2: Mainstream authors HAVE TO go through Big5. For editing, organizing events, payola, print, for cash upfront to live off. This is the music record industry all over again. Amazon may skim less, but it has some serious drawbacks. You get no editors, no serious promotion aside from few kindle ads, no nothing. Amazon is what bandcamp is to music.

Lemma 3: Reading is a complete niche. Once you remove school textbook scams, schlick fic erotica, NYT new age self-help bestseller of the year and other generic schlock, reading is not really as big as people think it is. It mostly comes in waves of extremely popular YA franchises like Tolkien, Pratchett, JKR, but it tends to die off just as quick.

The third point is what separates ebooks from music industry. Everyone listens to music and watches TV, so schemes like spotify or netflix are most likely workable. The sheer size of the market can carry a flat rate subscription scheme.
However literature is a niche, and niches in general are far more difficult to disrupt - ebook format itself is perhaps the only disruption.

Perhaps there's hope is that Amazon becomes one of Big6. That is, they start acting more like a publishing house, seriously focusing to attract high roller authors and provide the homebase as other publishers do. All the while acting a little bit more ethical. But looking at their past record, they far prefer to go quantity and automation rather any semblance of human aspect.

And here lies the Catch-22. Amazon is the *only* one who can efficiently combat piracy (through convenience). Yet Amazon is also too lazy to act like a publisher. Meanwhile Big5 publishers are way over their head wrt piracy - they try to compensate for it by unreasonable market gauging - which is extremely self-defeating, as that simply pours even more oil on the issue.
A lot of good points, but be prepared for the attack of the Amazonians and Never Publishers.

I'm not sure that I would agree that niche is quite the right word for the book market. If it's a niche, it's a really big niche, but yes an order or two magnitude smaller than music and movies. You did miss the fast growing market of audiobooks.

I've given my view of the unique consumer types/markets in the book consumer world before - The words just want to be free reader; The cheap, all you can eat, I don't care what it taste like buffet reader; the read 3 best sellers a year reader; the genre reader; the connoisseur reader to name a few. The problem is that while there is some crossover, readers in one group tend to think that most readers are just like them and that anything that does cater to their group is worse than useless.

I tend to disagree with you regarding piracy. I have yet to see any evidence that piracy is a major issue for book publishers. First off, while piracy does exists for paper books, typically in various 3rd world countries, it's a non factor in markets like the US and UK. So piracy is mostly an eBook thing and eBooks is only around 20% of the book market the last time I looked. Publishers charge what they think will give them the most profit.
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Old 01-28-2020, 08:21 AM   #145
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Maybe. But I don't see it happening. Maybe I lack foresight. Maybe.



That's what will likely happen. But various people picking up your service for a free month and then dropping it doesn't seem like a viable long term strategy.



To me, the Netflix catalog isn't declining, but it is changing. To their credit, they have so much original content to watch that I can't keep up with it. I still haven't watched Wild, Wild Country, Stranger Things, The Umbrella Academy, Altered Cqarbon or G.L.O.W. and now there's The October Faction and The Witcher.

Even if the original content stream slows down (which it has to do eventually) there's enough on there to keep me as a subscriber for a good long time.

I do hope the studios are smart enough to keep licensing older movies to third party services. I watched Tremors on Netflix this weekend and enjoyed it. But c'mon, I'm never going to subscribe to Peacock just to watch it.
Netflix has a major issue to solve over the next few years, i.e. what to do when their licensing deals expire. According to an article that I read a few months ago, 8 of their top 10 most watched shows are licensed shows such as Friends. Their original content might bring people in to bing, but it won't keep people paying. They have to get a deep enough library to keep subscribers, otherwise they become the stream service that people sign up for a month, binge watch a year's worth of original shows and then drop for a year. Netflix simply can't build a big enough library with original shows.

Apple's problem is they simply don't have anything other than a few original shows. I really think they have a very different business model than the other streaming services. Apple want people to use Apple TV as the one device/app that manages all their video content. From that stand point, the original content is simply a way to get people to buy Apple devices. It's similar to Amazon's Prime Video model. I would not be surprised if Apple at some point copies Amazon's Prime model of rolling all their services into one subscription - Music, cloud storage, TV.

Churn is a fact of life in several industries, however, it's also something that companies manage closely. I think there is a percentage of people who are going to bounce between services, but I think that people who tend to do that, grossly over estimate the number of people who do churn. Most people tend to be creatures of habit and as long as a service has enough content to keep their interest, they will stay with that service. They switch when the services start jacking up the prices or if there is some cool new show that everyone is talking about on a different service.

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Old 01-28-2020, 09:00 AM   #146
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I do think Disney+ will get a lot more subscribers once their deals end and all the Disney content is only available on Disney+.
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Old 01-28-2020, 09:15 AM   #147
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I have YouTube TV and love it. It has the best price for live streaming, including the ability to DVR as much as I want at no extra cost. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and ROKU Free Channels. Disney+ was free for one year and I will drop it as soon as the year is up. All of this is a lot cheaper than Cable or Satellite. It will be interesting to see where the
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Old 01-28-2020, 09:22 AM   #148
issybird
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Everyone listens to music and watches TV,
I can't resist commenting that I do not. And someone who uses the word "lemma" should acknowledge that a single exception serves to disprove a theorem!
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Old 01-28-2020, 10:11 AM   #149
fjtorres
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I have YouTube TV and love it. It has the best price for live streaming, including the ability to DVR as much as I want at no extra cost. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and ROKU Free Channels. Disney+ was free for one year and I will drop it as soon as the year is up. All of this is a lot cheaper than Cable or Satellite. It will be interesting to see where the
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I've seen lots of folks highly recommend it.
I don't watch linear TV at all but I did point it out to my brother who finally got tired of cable price increases.

I tried Sling Blue during the first season of KRYPTON to DVR and binge but nothing else caught my eye. I like their model of skinny bundles but I have no use for it. Between the ondemand streaming services, gaming, and ebooks, I have no eyeball-hours left for "appointment TV."

( I did try YouTube premium to watch IMPULSE but it proved to be the worst ondemand service I ever tried. Good show but the service was awful.)
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Old 01-28-2020, 11:08 AM   #150
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I have YouTube TV and love it. It has the best price for live streaming, including the ability to DVR as much as I want at no extra cost. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and ROKU Free Channels. Disney+ was free for one year and I will drop it as soon as the year is up. All of this is a lot cheaper than Cable or Satellite. It will be interesting to see where the
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I dropped cable TV this past fall. I use Hulu Live for TV (mostly sports). I've got Disney+ free (with Verizon unlimited), Hulu, Prime Video, Apple+ free (with the purchase of my iPad Pro). I had Playstation VUE, but switched to Hulu Live when Sony pulled the plug.

I've had Netflix and dropped it when I realized that I hadn't watched it in six months and there wasn't anything that I particularly wanted to watch. I suspect I'll drop Apple+ since I haven't watched anything and have no plans to watch it. I did like the new Star Wars show on Disney+ and there are several announced shows that appeal to me, so I'll likely keep it.

I find that I'm more likely to buy movies and TV shows that appeal to me. I've got a decent sized collection of both movies and old TV shows. I bought the big HBO mini series that appeal to me, such as Band of Brothers, Rome and Adams on DVD. I've never really gotten into binge watching. I read a lot more than I watch TV.
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