I just recently cancelled my Netflix subscription after 10+ years of being a customer (after they raised the prices, yet again).
For me, the problem is they are just throwing too many darts at the wall at this point. There is just sooo much garbage original content being added monthly, it seems. They are almost over optimizing/testing their shows, in my opinion. Instead of focusing on the good shows (obviously opinionated), and building up on them with new seasons, it seems like they are just investing more into new content to see what happens. Sadly, they have also been ending a lot of what I thought were popular shows on there (some of my favorites). Their catalog outside of Netflix original shows has also been dropping significantly, which many very popular shows leaving here soon (Office/Friends).
I used to spend about 80/20% time on Netflix/Hulu, now it's 100% Hulu after cancelling Netflix. The content on Hulu has been ramping up significantly for their TV department (non-originals). Plus, I love having my HBO through Hulu, and it's all in one place under 1 subscription payment.
I'll most likely re-subscribe to Netflix again in a few years just for a month or two to watch a few seasons of new content that will actually interest me (then cancel again), but until then, no need to pay them so they can produce the copious amounts of BS half-assed content like they seem to only be doing lately.
It just sounds like they’re doing what every other network does. A bunch of it is trash you don’t care about but another subset of their customers do. It’s not all commissioned for us personally, and Netflix will always prioritise their own shows before others in the app.
It’s not like you watch HBO 12 hours a day expecting pure content that you love from start to finish.
That said, apart from the tent pole series they [plan to] push out each year (stranger things, better call saul, Fargo, mindhunter, nightflyers, etc.) the rest is clearly data driven garbage that doesn’t realise it’s working a cliche. With a couple of exceptions even the marvel universe shows fell into their pattern.
In that sense it’s Netflix Unoriginal Content. But you still get the diamond in the mine.
Being in the EU I get about 8 different translations of two different kinds of zombie story, but you’re not really paying for that.
And on the same level, it’s a shame that streaming is now split. American Gods, Good Omens, The Expanse, and Mr Robot are all on Amazon. Netflix definitely dropped a ball on some of that. The TV show costs the same but I have to pay 2x to watch because of the networks.
Netflix is a bit different in that (recently) they seem unusually reluctant to renew shows after the second season. People speculate that this is a rentier play, new customers don't value season 3+ as much as existing customers. Netflix expects new content to bring in new customers and they hope to be just good enough for existing customers that they don't cancel.
I think it's fair to point out that often they don't have a choice with those shows as the owners of the properties are jacking up the price in order to move to their own streaming services.
What Netflix should be called on is their stubborn refusal to improve the interface/search. They want to make it seem like they have oodles of content so they show the same show 5 times under different genres on the main page. They have all the information there, yet you can't do a search based on a combination of tags or genres.
I've been doing the 2 months off 1 month on thing for a while not because I don't feel their content is worth the full price but because when a company looks like it's trying to 'trick' you it loses a lot of goodwill.
> I think it's fair to point out that often they don't have a choice with those shows as the owners of the properties are jacking up the price in order to move to their own streaming services.
An alternative way to phrase this would be that the owners have realized that the streaming rights for their properties are worth a lot more than Netflix was paying for them.
I was bummed when they canceled Marco Polo, I liked that show. They seem to be canceling way too many shows. Kinda reminds me of Google canceling products left and right, even those with tons of users...
It quoted a section from an article in The Information:
> [Netflix] now routinely ends shows after their second season, even when they’re still popular. Netflix has learned that the first two seasons of a show are key to bringing in subscribers—but the third and later seasons don’t do much to retain or win new subscribers. Ending a show after the second season saves money, because showrunners who oversee production tend to negotiate a boost in pay after two years.
I didn't watch Marco Polo, so I hope it didn't leave you on a cliff hanger, but I would look at it as a good thing.
I feel like a majority of shows in the U.K. tend to only go for a few seasons then stop. Compare that to typical shows in the U.S. getting beaten to death, having most viewers think the show might have gone one season too long.
That could mean the stories are written to wrap up mostly nicely, instead of leaving cliff hangers to lead to the potential next season.
Compare Weeds (8 Seasons) to Breaking Bad (5 Seasons), B.B was written to not drag on forever. The recent GoT season finale, where lots of fans went a bit overboard with their reactions when the show runners ran out of their own original ideas. LOST, anyone?
My best example is looking at Black Mirror. When that was mainly for a U.K. audience the first two seasons could have ended and that would have been the best two season show. Netflix did swoop in and that gave us White Christmas(?), but the show has definitely been tailored to American audiences and maybe the premise is being drawn out too much at this point. Don't get me wrong, I love me some more Black Mirror or any of the other shows listed above, but sometimes a story needs to end even if it means its shorter than you expected.
I've said it before but I agree - Netflix sure adds a lot of original content, but I've yet to see a true masterpiece deserving its place among The Wie, The Sopranos or Mad Men and lately I'm starting to think that Netflxi is entirely fine with producing good enough content which adds and retains subscribers while never really stading out. Of course it's entirely reasonable to do so if it's a successful approach, but I can't say I like it and I don't think it leads to exceptional, high prestige content.
If HBO produced their content mostly according to numbers while neglecting artistic considerations The Wire would have been done after Season 1.
Furthermroe, did you see the other discussion about Netfli/Hollywood recently here on HN? [0]
From the article:
> Netflix now routinely ends shows after their second season, even when they’re still popular. Netflix has learned that the first two seasons of a show are key to bringing in subscribers—but the third and later seasons don’t do much to retain or win new subscribers.
> Ending a show after the second season saves money, because showrunners who oversee production tend to negotiate a boost in pay after two years.
Propably a financially sound approach, but I doubt I'll stay a subscriber much longer if that's the direction they are heading.
I think Netflix is pursuing the Silicon Valley mantra of product development: try everything, iterate fast, fail things fast. We've seen how that resulted in eroding users trust in many Google products (chat applications especially) so I think in the end it's going to end up hurting Netflix too.
Or look at how the main complain people have about Steam (when moving to GOG and other platforms) is the sheer amount of "crap" on that platform making discoverability of high quality content very hard.
They make shows to match different demographics and user groups. Not every show is supposed to be enjoyed by every person. It is about making a broad range of shows to meet the wants of multiple people. Going out on a limb, but I assume most young adults don't care about high brow political shows like House of Cards and would rather watch shows like The Society.
Yes, but the trial-and-error model of Netflix original content production is exactly the same as it is for series produced chiefly to be shown on major US TV channels.
The difference is, more of this content used to be licensed to Netflix, but shows have been leaving as licensing deals expire and typically end up on Hulu, which is a first-party platform for Disney (ABC, Freeform, FX, A&E) and NBC (Syfy, Bravo, USA), and a third-party platform for WarnerMedia until they finish starting their own.
Streaming services are proliferating as each vertical starts their own, and exclusivity is being leveraged to drive subscriber numbers. Discerning viewers can choose on content or cycle out subscriptions as they consume the material of interest, while casual viewers can choose on a different dimension like price per month, size of back catalog, variety of genres, search and discovery tools, or lack or presence of commercial breaks.
It's sort of a well-known pitfall of centralized product management. In the short term, it's less risky and more profitable to create a product that 1000 people would find passable, than to create 10 different products that would be loved by their 100-people audiences and ignored otherwise. However, in the long term this erodes people's expectations of future products and they eventually move on. That's a part of the normal economic cycle and the reason why big corporations eventually go bust.
I think, this process is happening throughout the entire motion picture industry and in the next 10-20 years we will likely see a shift to some new type of entertainment that hasn't been ruined by formalized best practices yet.
> Instead of focusing on the good shows (obviously opinionated), and building up on them with new seasons, it seems like they are just investing more into new content to see what happens.
Can't have more good shows if you don't make new shows.
The writing's clearly on the wall - the major content providers are cutting Netflix off. They need a large stable of good-enough content, and quickly. Some of that new content will be crap, just like on the networks. Some will be awesome. Some of the awesome stuff will get enough viewers to stick around.
That's fair, and I understand that point as well. But when it feels like R&D is starting to steal from the good money makers, that seems like a problem to me. That the effort/focus is in the wrong place and more resources are going into the wrong bucket. But again, this is just from an outside opinion with no data to back that up. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Your comment reminds of this wonderfully written post by Roger Ebert[1]. It's not the same topic, but there is something to be glanced at in his writing where he eludes to choice, editorial-ism, and doing a story regardless of what the audience wants.
This is the worst, most opinionated, garbage article I've ever read. I feel like I'm reading the article from the Simpsons, 'Old Man Yells at Cloud'.
In reference to 'Braid':
'She also admires a story told between the games levels, which exhibits prose on the level of a wordy fortune cookie.'
Anyone who needs to stoop to the level of insulting something to convince me it's not legitimate is not presenting their argument in an intelligent or unbiased manner. You wanted people to read this? I'm not even sure how it's relevant, but I can't get past how awfully written it is.
I think Netflix is trying to pump out as many original series as they can because Disney+ is on the horizon and they already own Hulu. Netflix’s best bet is to pump a lot of money into new content since non originals will be more expensive for them, but going the HBO route requires very impressive shows that have multiple seasons. Netflix is just throwing darts on the wall trying to achieve this.
Netflix's UI is user-hostile in many ways. I don't mind having these defaults, but at least give me options to customize the way I use the app. I don't want a 5-second countdown, I want 15 seconds.
I know Netflix likes to keep the UI simple, but simple is stupid if I still have to use JustWatch/IMDB/RottenTomatoes to figure out which show to actually watch and then search for it in Netflix. That's me unknowingly avoiding the Netflix UI! Netflix should be striving to become the hub, not the endpoint.
The fact that the alternatives in the pirate realm are better in many ways is ridiculous.
Yeah, I'm cancelling as soon as I get a couple things watched. Will just re-sub every now and then... maybe. Would leave it on—even with the hikes it's not that much money, though they definitely serve as reminders to maybe-cancel—but seriously, what's pushing me over the edge is the damn auto-play-while-browsing crap. I hate it.
It's reduced Netflix's utility since I never browse now like I used to, and only go on when I have something specific I know they have that I want to watch so I can go straight to it.
It's the worst when trying to browse with someone else. You stop to talk for a second and the TV starts yelling at you. WTF.
Their auto-playing trailers seems to be something that I've only seen negative feedback about online. The assumption is that their internal metrics show auto-playing trailers has a positive impact (on their metrics) so they're keeping them?
This might be a case of trackable vs un-trackable. Where the thing that is trackable tells you one thing and the full reality (the untrackable) is missed.
Yikes. A little more than half the estimate. I’m pretty sure that is the worst miss the company has ever had.
With recent news that reruns like the Office and Friends are leaving next year, it would be really funny if a large chunk of Netflix subscribers are literally subscribing just to watch decades old reruns. It could be a bit of an Emperor Has No Clothes situation for them.
Netflix is a heavily data-oriented company; if a large chunk of Netflix subscribers just watch decades old reruns then they know it. What Netflix needs to do is build content specifically for these people and I don't believe they're doing that.
My anecdote on this: My collage age daughter watches Friends on Netflix basically continuously -- she's probably watched every season a dozen times now -- when she gets to last episode it just cycles around again. This is because she keeps on it in the background when she's studying or doing school work.
What can you build for those people except reboots of those old shows, which they're doing (e.g. Sabrina, Fuller House)? They can't force NBC to license them the old reruns forever if NBC doesn't want to. There's no amount of money they can offer that will work once a studio decides it's going to reserve the content for its own streaming service.
>Netflix is a heavily data-oriented company; if a large chunk of Netflix subscribers just watch decades old reruns then they know it. What Netflix needs to do is build content specifically for these people and I don't believe they're doing that.
I know that a significant portion just bing rewatch the Office and Friends, however they do not own the rights and these will go back to NBC who will just host them in their own streaming service.
This is the main issue facing Netflix. The more their competitors wise up and take their content elsewhere people will be more reticent to pay for a sub fee since there are now way too many options to choose from.
That is definitely what their concern has been the last 7 or 8 years and why they've made such a massive push with original content. With so many content producers starting their own streaming services, they have to lure and keep customers the same way the other content producers will be: with original content not sourced from elsewhere. It's the only way forward for them and fortunately for them, they were aware enough to realize it almost a decade ahead of time.
Personally I haven’t found the quality of Netflix originals to be anywhere close to the same level as HBO. Their approach is more “consistently release a ton of average quality shows” and hope a few stick. Will be interesting to see if that actually work long term.
I think the biggest issue with netflix is precisely the lack of things like Friends, Seinfeld, The Office - shows you can watch casually and not have to binge. My wife hates Netflix precisely because she hates binging. She wants to watch sitcoms and shows where you don't have to invest heavily. And you know, so do I. Life is hard enough without having to following tons of different plots lines and having tons of characters always die.
Anyway, we have Hulu now which has gotten quite good. I can imagine cancelling Netflix pretty soon honestly.
> I think the biggest issue with netflix is precisely the lack of things like Friends, Seinfeld, The Office
Technically, it seems unnecessary to stream the same content repeatedly, and financially it seems wasteful to pay a monthly fee for access to the same content. How about buying the particular shows once (e.g. iTunes) and have the data stored locally (e.g. appleTV)?
“Much of our domestic, and eventually global, Disney catalog, as well as Friends, The Office, and some other licensed content will wind down over the coming years, freeing up budget for more original content. [...] From what we’ve seen in the past when we drop strong catalog content (Starz and Epix with Sony, Disney, and Paramount films, or 2nd run series from Fox, for example) our members shift over to enjoying our other great content.”
This is an impressive bit of spin, seeing as how creating new original programming is always going to be more expensive than licensing older/original programming. So yeah, losing the licensed programming "frees up budget," but the end result will be a smaller catalog.
As a former quant fund manager Netflix presents an interesting problem. If you read about the quant space, a whole load of people reckon they can use ML to make money.
The problem for them is much like for Netflix.
Having a way to predict the future is not the whole story of how to decide what to do.
Netflix having a whole load of data about what people watched, for how long, their demographics, etc, is probably very useful. But it is not an obvious step to go from knowing what people saw, even predicting it, to deciding what to produce and what to present to them.
Add to that the likely fact that people often want something fresh and innovative, and you have quite some stretched assumptions in statistical terms.
Not saying this is the end, I don't know enough about the business. Just that it's an interesting jump that I rarely hear anyone talk about.
Well, driving by using the rear view mirror isn't a wildly successful strategy. Many people are surprised by the difference between testing strategies for ML working to predict physical phenoma and complex systems like the markets; you can backtest market strategies to bits and it matters not even a bit, it means nothing.
I'm likely going to remain a permanent subscriber even if there's nothing I like to watch because I never want to return to the pre-Netflix days of normal TV which I haven't watched in more than a decade but get a glimpse of it every-time I visit my folks who have both Cable and normal over-the-air TV, both of which I find unwatchable - ad-laced, cringeworthy, opinionated, political, dated and of low-effort quality.
Netflix's on-demand streaming is basically the only way I can watch long-form media content these days.
Also the economics of paying a low monthly fee for access to billion dollars worth of content per year is insane value and something I'd definitely like to see more of, so I'd like to see the Netflix model continue to succeed.
I'm cancelling my sub because the back catalog is non-existent in my region. It is impossible to find anything older than 2000 anymore. On top of that, their UI and search functions are straight-up garbage that deliberately steer you to their own trash.
Readit News
For me, the problem is they are just throwing too many darts at the wall at this point. There is just sooo much garbage original content being added monthly, it seems. They are almost over optimizing/testing their shows, in my opinion. Instead of focusing on the good shows (obviously opinionated), and building up on them with new seasons, it seems like they are just investing more into new content to see what happens. Sadly, they have also been ending a lot of what I thought were popular shows on there (some of my favorites). Their catalog outside of Netflix original shows has also been dropping significantly, which many very popular shows leaving here soon (Office/Friends).
I used to spend about 80/20% time on Netflix/Hulu, now it's 100% Hulu after cancelling Netflix. The content on Hulu has been ramping up significantly for their TV department (non-originals). Plus, I love having my HBO through Hulu, and it's all in one place under 1 subscription payment.
I'll most likely re-subscribe to Netflix again in a few years just for a month or two to watch a few seasons of new content that will actually interest me (then cancel again), but until then, no need to pay them so they can produce the copious amounts of BS half-assed content like they seem to only be doing lately.
It’s not like you watch HBO 12 hours a day expecting pure content that you love from start to finish.
That said, apart from the tent pole series they [plan to] push out each year (stranger things, better call saul, Fargo, mindhunter, nightflyers, etc.) the rest is clearly data driven garbage that doesn’t realise it’s working a cliche. With a couple of exceptions even the marvel universe shows fell into their pattern.
In that sense it’s Netflix Unoriginal Content. But you still get the diamond in the mine.
Being in the EU I get about 8 different translations of two different kinds of zombie story, but you’re not really paying for that.
And on the same level, it’s a shame that streaming is now split. American Gods, Good Omens, The Expanse, and Mr Robot are all on Amazon. Netflix definitely dropped a ball on some of that. The TV show costs the same but I have to pay 2x to watch because of the networks.
What Netflix should be called on is their stubborn refusal to improve the interface/search. They want to make it seem like they have oodles of content so they show the same show 5 times under different genres on the main page. They have all the information there, yet you can't do a search based on a combination of tags or genres.
I've been doing the 2 months off 1 month on thing for a while not because I don't feel their content is worth the full price but because when a company looks like it's trying to 'trick' you it loses a lot of goodwill.
An alternative way to phrase this would be that the owners have realized that the streaming rights for their properties are worth a lot more than Netflix was paying for them.
It quoted a section from an article in The Information:
> [Netflix] now routinely ends shows after their second season, even when they’re still popular. Netflix has learned that the first two seasons of a show are key to bringing in subscribers—but the third and later seasons don’t do much to retain or win new subscribers. Ending a show after the second season saves money, because showrunners who oversee production tend to negotiate a boost in pay after two years.
I feel like a majority of shows in the U.K. tend to only go for a few seasons then stop. Compare that to typical shows in the U.S. getting beaten to death, having most viewers think the show might have gone one season too long.
That could mean the stories are written to wrap up mostly nicely, instead of leaving cliff hangers to lead to the potential next season.
Compare Weeds (8 Seasons) to Breaking Bad (5 Seasons), B.B was written to not drag on forever. The recent GoT season finale, where lots of fans went a bit overboard with their reactions when the show runners ran out of their own original ideas. LOST, anyone?
My best example is looking at Black Mirror. When that was mainly for a U.K. audience the first two seasons could have ended and that would have been the best two season show. Netflix did swoop in and that gave us White Christmas(?), but the show has definitely been tailored to American audiences and maybe the premise is being drawn out too much at this point. Don't get me wrong, I love me some more Black Mirror or any of the other shows listed above, but sometimes a story needs to end even if it means its shorter than you expected.
Furthermroe, did you see the other discussion about Netfli/Hollywood recently here on HN? [0]
From the article:
> Netflix now routinely ends shows after their second season, even when they’re still popular. Netflix has learned that the first two seasons of a show are key to bringing in subscribers—but the third and later seasons don’t do much to retain or win new subscribers.
> Ending a show after the second season saves money, because showrunners who oversee production tend to negotiate a boost in pay after two years.
Propably a financially sound approach, but I doubt I'll stay a subscriber much longer if that's the direction they are heading.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20403587
Or look at how the main complain people have about Steam (when moving to GOG and other platforms) is the sheer amount of "crap" on that platform making discoverability of high quality content very hard.
The difference is, more of this content used to be licensed to Netflix, but shows have been leaving as licensing deals expire and typically end up on Hulu, which is a first-party platform for Disney (ABC, Freeform, FX, A&E) and NBC (Syfy, Bravo, USA), and a third-party platform for WarnerMedia until they finish starting their own.
Streaming services are proliferating as each vertical starts their own, and exclusivity is being leveraged to drive subscriber numbers. Discerning viewers can choose on content or cycle out subscriptions as they consume the material of interest, while casual viewers can choose on a different dimension like price per month, size of back catalog, variety of genres, search and discovery tools, or lack or presence of commercial breaks.
I think, this process is happening throughout the entire motion picture industry and in the next 10-20 years we will likely see a shift to some new type of entertainment that hasn't been ruined by formalized best practices yet.
So, Youtube? Unless Google ruins it in its own way of course.
Can't have more good shows if you don't make new shows.
The writing's clearly on the wall - the major content providers are cutting Netflix off. They need a large stable of good-enough content, and quickly. Some of that new content will be crap, just like on the networks. Some will be awesome. Some of the awesome stuff will get enough viewers to stick around.
[1] https://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/video-games-can-ne...
In reference to 'Braid': 'She also admires a story told between the games levels, which exhibits prose on the level of a wordy fortune cookie.'
Anyone who needs to stoop to the level of insulting something to convince me it's not legitimate is not presenting their argument in an intelligent or unbiased manner. You wanted people to read this? I'm not even sure how it's relevant, but I can't get past how awfully written it is.
You might be able to get lots of cheap stuff, but they will eventually destroy the market for quality fixtures or tools or paint or whatever.
I do like the DVD service.
I know Netflix likes to keep the UI simple, but simple is stupid if I still have to use JustWatch/IMDB/RottenTomatoes to figure out which show to actually watch and then search for it in Netflix. That's me unknowingly avoiding the Netflix UI! Netflix should be striving to become the hub, not the endpoint.
The fact that the alternatives in the pirate realm are better in many ways is ridiculous.
It's reduced Netflix's utility since I never browse now like I used to, and only go on when I have something specific I know they have that I want to watch so I can go straight to it.
It's the worst when trying to browse with someone else. You stop to talk for a second and the TV starts yelling at you. WTF.
With recent news that reruns like the Office and Friends are leaving next year, it would be really funny if a large chunk of Netflix subscribers are literally subscribing just to watch decades old reruns. It could be a bit of an Emperor Has No Clothes situation for them.
My anecdote on this: My collage age daughter watches Friends on Netflix basically continuously -- she's probably watched every season a dozen times now -- when she gets to last episode it just cycles around again. This is because she keeps on it in the background when she's studying or doing school work.
I know that a significant portion just bing rewatch the Office and Friends, however they do not own the rights and these will go back to NBC who will just host them in their own streaming service.
This is the main issue facing Netflix. The more their competitors wise up and take their content elsewhere people will be more reticent to pay for a sub fee since there are now way too many options to choose from.
Anyway, we have Hulu now which has gotten quite good. I can imagine cancelling Netflix pretty soon honestly.
Technically, it seems unnecessary to stream the same content repeatedly, and financially it seems wasteful to pay a monthly fee for access to the same content. How about buying the particular shows once (e.g. iTunes) and have the data stored locally (e.g. appleTV)?
This is an impressive bit of spin, seeing as how creating new original programming is always going to be more expensive than licensing older/original programming. So yeah, losing the licensed programming "frees up budget," but the end result will be a smaller catalog.
The problem for them is much like for Netflix.
Having a way to predict the future is not the whole story of how to decide what to do.
Netflix having a whole load of data about what people watched, for how long, their demographics, etc, is probably very useful. But it is not an obvious step to go from knowing what people saw, even predicting it, to deciding what to produce and what to present to them.
Add to that the likely fact that people often want something fresh and innovative, and you have quite some stretched assumptions in statistical terms.
Not saying this is the end, I don't know enough about the business. Just that it's an interesting jump that I rarely hear anyone talk about.
Netflix's on-demand streaming is basically the only way I can watch long-form media content these days.
Also the economics of paying a low monthly fee for access to billion dollars worth of content per year is insane value and something I'd definitely like to see more of, so I'd like to see the Netflix model continue to succeed.