red wrote:The title of this thread is kind of correct. They started making great shows, thankfully not faith based junk.
Indeed, indeed. And they have to pick up the pace like a mofo with that. They have to produce massively popular content, massively quick.
Why, you ask?
Because Netflix is the single most valuable media outlet that there is (or so was reported here recently). A lot of that is from the vast library of Disney/Marvel content they distribute more or less exclusively.
Now that the online streaming business has kinda matured, though, all the content manufacturing corporations are looking at that and are saying "These should be our profits!"
Disney has already announced they will start their own, exclusive streaming service. As part of that effort, they will pull
all of their content from Netflix. Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, all manner of Marvel shows and movies and anything Disney. Poof, gone, you're gonna have to buy yet another subscription for that when Disney roll out their own streaming platform. And Disney isn't alone there, Warner are working on something.
Amazon is negotiating to become the exclusive outlet for someone, can't recall who right now, and they would be able to keep their streaming service going even if they weren't - they've got such a VAST IT business, they can afford to run a streaming platform that's not quite so profitable on its lonesome, so long as it convinces people to get a Prime subscription. Which entails a bunch of additional benefits, so may be an easier sell even if they no longer get to present content from the big Hollywood outfits.
Netflix, though, they don't have a music streaming service, nor free shipping on toilet paper and all the other stuff that comes with prime. Even with their (most excellent) originals, they depend on access to the libraries of the major studios.
So long as the latter lot keep the world carved up into different markets, Netflix may be able to stay in the black there for some time. I think it may take a while for Warner or Disney to set up their streaming platforms for every country in Scandinavia, eastern Europe, east Asia, etc., etc.
Eventually, though, Netflix will either have to become focused on distributing original content and making that profitable enough, or will maybe rent out their existing infrastructure for rebranded exclusive outlets for outfits like Warner, etc.
Disney, from what I hear, pretty definitely wouldn't be a customer for that, they are too fucking big to not run their own horse in that race. Smaller/independent studios, or content creation outfits like European/Asian TV networks may keep doing business with Netflix, of course, and I could see that becoming a more significant part of Netflix's catalog. So long as the bullshit geographic restrictions evaporate, I'd look forward to that. With technology moving along as it does, we may not only get real-time, auto-generated closed-captions, but non-real-time, yet cheap, automated dubs. I can't keep up with closed captions due to my vision defects, so I'm really looking forward to that. Not as much as I'm looking forward to the brain implant that'll let me learn to understand a foreign language in the time it'd take me to fly where they speak it (I wrote about that in my novel, animal testing to demonstrate the principle was published years ago), because I
will not watch dubbed anime, no matter who dubs it or how. And I miss anime.
But Netflix will have to revamp their business model. More original content, more content from niche-providers. And I don't know about the US, but over here, you can subscribe to Netflix, or not, and that's it. Watching individual films or episodes of shows, at prices not quite as extortionate as what Amazon charges for old movies, perhaps something with the blockchain and/or micropayments (I'm hypothesizing about the future of internet media, I must use at least two of these buzzwords, I think it's actually the law), I'd suggest they come up with something like that, so people who aren't willing to subscribe to more than four or five streaming services wouldn't be kept out.
Becoming a backbone provider for other brands would be particularly interesting because of the consumer-side business presence Netflix has the world over, for handling all kinds of customer support and legal shite, I doubt the technology of streaming video would discourage someone like Warner from setting up their own shop.
If they did that, they would be in a "prime" position (pun
not in...
intend... fuckit) to resell subscriptions to all the services they keep running at a discount, possibly. So in addition to the normal little Netflix subscription, you might see Netflix
Pri... Netflix
Premi... fuckit, Netflix FuckIt. You might be able to get Netflix FuckIt, with access to all of it for not quite as much as it would cost to subscribe to them all individually. Possibly with a Netflix ScrewIt subscription, with Netflix, one of their partner streaming services, and big rebates on buying individual episodes of shows from any stuff Netflix hosts rebranded, but isn't included in ScrewIt otherwise.
That's how I could see Netflix going on even when Disney/Marvel and others shift to their own distribution platforms.
Of course, it might not be necessary, not as such. In the USA, anti-trust legislation is dead as a doorknob, it appears. When, once upon a time, in a magic fairytale age, TV networks weren't allowed to integrate production of content into their distribution, or movie studios weren't allowed to run exclusive chains of movie theaters.
Over here in the potatoist republic of
laws only apply to the little people, it's on the way out, also. But in other countries (or "markets"), someone may object to Disney doing everything from conception of the product to the consumers eyeballs. Vertical integration is anti-competitive, anti-consumer, and anti-cultural. If you have to subscribe in order to see anything Disney at all, you'd see society getting divided into people who can afford to subscribe to all of it, and people who can maybe lift one such subscription, but nor more.
The internet is far too vertically integrated as it is, or however you wish to describe it. Many people don't even know there's an internet beyond Facebook, or those who do don't know that there are search-engines beyond google (I'm trying to use the competition for anything but reverse image search or translations). Once, corporations with a fraction of the scope and market dominance that the big internet companies command would have been broken up before they could become a fraction as big. Most anti-trust regulations predate many online products by so much, they actually do not apply. Movies, though.
The USA demonstrated, for many decades, how preventing vertical integration in media will lead to a prospering market, and a massively competitive and once even innovative industry - that dominates the world so much, the dreaded French are no longer alone in regulating how much domestic content broadcasters must broadcast (afaik). I'm really crossing my fingers the US, and the rest of the world, get back to that. I think I'm ranting, so I will stop now.
If there were absolutely anything to be afraid of, don't you think I would have worn pants?
I said I have a big stick.
