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So what we're seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930's-1950's. You want to see a Paramount movie, you must go to a Paramount theater. Today you want to watch an Apple show you must go to Apple's VOD.
We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.
No it isn't. It's a workaround. This is an 8 billion dollar deal, there would have to be an impossible amount of piracy for it to count as "competition." This is precisely the reason why government regulation here is correct, as consumers, we don't have a lever long enough to have any real impact on the core problem.
And we're just one side of the deal. These types of distribution setups are not just bad for consumers, but for actors, directors, producers and anyone who makes a living on any part of these productions.
The knee jerk responses to avoid meaningful government regulation are always baffling to me.
I really wish we had the bandwidth we have now, back in the Napster-era.
Napster, and others forced, persuaded and cajoled the music industry to consolidate, whether they liked it or not, on Spotify, and iTunes.
If we'd had easy free sharing of movies, it's not hard to envisage something similar to what we see now in the music industry forced on the movie companies. Now it's honey pot torrents all over the place.
No customer wants to spend X on Shudder, Y on Netflix, and Z on Prime, plus Hulu, HBO, and your cable/satellite fee either. Paying 200 GBP/USD a month is utterly absurd.
Frankly, I'm glad I have a waning interest in modern movies as I get older, and I'm actually more interested in watching old black and white movies that are "free to air" in my country.
Or we could fall back to watching movies made from the ‘30s to the ‘50s, that’s what I have been doing for more than half a year now and it has been wonderful for my mental well-being (they really knew how to make comedies back then, even after the Hayes code).
So wait, your solution is to encourage all consumers to break the law and put themselves at legal risk, rather than have reasonable legislation focused on consumer welfare and encouraging competition?
I think we're at or approaching a tipping point. For a long while I've not been able to justify the effort it takes to maintain automatic content downloads and a streaming server. But that maintenance cost isn't higher when I want content from an additional platform. If I'm gonna pirate an Amazon/MGM exclusive then I'm gonna cancel Netflix, Hulu, Paramount+ and Apple TV+ too.
Asking for a friend of course, but what would be the best setup for a Netflix/Prime/...-like experience for own media for a family of not-too-digitally-savvy users?
That friend uses Kodi (and a NAS) now, but it's still a bit arduous to use for his family. She wants profiles, availability on any device over wifi and 4G and movies and series only.
Another meaningful consumer response is just to not watch the movies. No one actually needs them. Take your dog for a walk or read a book or play a video game or whatever. I've never understood why some people feel like they're entitled to watch particular movies.
My biggest gripe is that the prices are totally artificial. I rented The Fugitive (1993 irrc) for $5 for 2 days and it costs $20 to buy it—as much as a brand new blockbuster in HD on physical media. This doesn’t seem like a particularly free market.
I don't think you can prove that piracy is an effective means to incentivize good behavior on the part of the media industries. Also, it seems irresponsible to openly promote theft as a 'good idea'. I understand there are arguments against calling or treating piracy as theft but at the end of the day you are taking something that isn't yours without paying for it. Encouraging people to take part in illegal activity on the internet has real consequences. I'm guilty of wanting to fight fire with fire as well — and in the past I've pirated plenty. Looking back, it wasn't a good idea then and it still isn't today.
It's not though. If you have a system with no piracy, it's an indication that the industry could be more greedy. This is what we saw with Netflix's disruption and the drop of piracy, followed by all the other streaming services and the return of piracy. So there's an acceptable amount of piracy that they're shooting for, and that amount is the line where it's cheapest to lobby the govt to prosecute pirates than it is to give customers a better experience. That's not consumer friendly IMO.
If it isn't legal, and normal democratic processes won't make it legal in the short term, then it isn't viable competition.
DMCA/etc vastly favors content owners who also lobby hard to maintain their ownership by extending copyright and similar protections.
Anti-competitive behavior must be countered but unless it's well funded and focused will end up like the IRS and DMCA today, going after small fish due to lack of resources to challenge those that can afford to fight like players as big as Amazon and MGM.
We for the most part have exponentially more and better content in tv and film, and for MUCH cheaper and with more convenience than 10-15 years ago.
But still people insist that they must pirate because the "studios" for some amorphous reason related to preexisting hatred of corporations or whatever.
Some people would just prefer to not pay for shit I guess. I just wish they'd be more honest about it than the mental gymnastics used to defend piracy.
Came here to say this, I avoid giving money to Amazon like the plague. I will go out of my way and invest my personal time as long as Amazon gets nothing. Don't give them your money.
In [1] Arthur De Vany showed rather convincingly that the split between distribution and production for movie production made things worse for the consumers. The problem is that the profit of the whole industry is dominated by very few titles and that split lead to a few non-trivial consequences like lack of diversity in Hollywood.
EDIT: one of the Amazon reviews gave a very good summary of the above point:
One of the more interesting conclusions is that the old movie studio system understood implicitly that this business was unpredictable. Until the antitrust laws were used to break them up, the studios contracted stars, script writers, directors, distribution networks and movie theaters in order to own the entire stream of revenues all their movies would generate.
This way the old studio bosses could diversify their risk in what was essentially a portfolio of movies. They knew that they could not predict which of their films would be a hit so they insisted on owning them all and on managing costs so that the hits would pay for the turkeys, while leaving shareholders with a healthy return.
This depends on what you think makes a great movie and a great system and there really is no right answer. I'm not sure the above 'proves' that things were made worse for consumers. Fact is, weird independent 'auteur' filmmakers and foreign films entered the market in the 1960's and were able to distribute without being locked out. The producers taking those risks perhaps didn't feel they were taking a risk at all. Maybe they knew they had a winning hand and had better know-how than the studio bosses and their risk avoidance BS. That's how you get those Easy Riders and Raging Bulls.
At the same time, movie theatres ceased to be these lavish 'palaces'. So what 'going to the movies' meant shifted in consumers' minds. Film productions also shrunk in size and scale so there is that. I would assume the business side actually deteriorated while cultural relevance rose. Probably not everyone on the consumer side was happy with all of that.
If we're talking about that studio era though, these portfolios of movies being managed from the top definitely made films bland and predictable. But then on the other hand they also forced the talent to hone skill through repetition. So you had some specific aspects of the films being executed on a high polished level like the noir cinematography. I'm feeling/seeing something similar going on right now with the VOD offering. Even though it's all really well produced and shot and put together, I just sense everyone is following the same seemingly risque but safe playbook optimized for social media marketing.
Seen in another way, the internet aspect of these distribution systems really can make all of the above completely irrelevant too. I find my satisfaction with MUBI and weird niche shit on YouTube. A piece of my money still goes toward partially paying for the very same infrastructure. As someone else mentioned here already - I'm not physically limited from seeking what I want to find online, and it's all there side by side for me to view. This was not at all the case in the 1950's.
In my mind one thing is certain, and this is just my take - I don't really want to watch a James Bond that has been developed by a goofy logistics e-commerce corporate giant. I just really don't see it.
> Until the antitrust laws were used to break them up, the studios contracted stars, script writers, directors, distribution networks and movie theaters in order to own the entire stream of revenues all their movies would generate.
Interesting. I was entirely unaware of that history. I was always impressed by Michael Ovitz's bundling play at CAA. Seems like he in fact "just" rebundled what he could at the agency level.
What's interesting is that the government had to step in and break the movie theaters from the movie studio in a famous anti-trust case. I wonder how it'll play out in this case. Presumably Amazon may still license Bond movies (for example) to Netflix. In fact Netflix is included in my Prime bundle I believe...
That Supreme Court case [1] stopped the vertical integration where the studios signed actors under exclusive multi-year contracts, made the films, and will only release them in their own theaters. It was overturned by new legislation in 2020.
Yes - and this is by far the strangest aspect of it all. My local telecom advertising that Netflix is bundled into the cell service. Netflix licensing shows from BBC or ordering content from other outfits. Netflix being built on top of AWS infrastructure. Streaming brands being available as “apps” on AppleTV. HBO becoming a property of Paramount, and both being owned by ATT. So many examples of complex relationships and weird inter-dependencies.
I’m guessing that you’re young-ish, then? Because that’s not how it was when I was a kid. That changed in the mid-nineties, and it was a fairly controversial decision.
From about 1970 to 93, antitrust regulations were put in place because only three networks could determine over 90% of broadcast media. A judge ended that rule under the rational that upstart networks like Fox and CW were now competitive. https://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/13/business/judge-rules-netw...
Critics said this would be bad because the networks would be incentivized to broadcast lucrative content over quality content, and subjectively I would say that is exactly what happened. But fortunately the Internet came along and made TV kind of moot… but anyway if you are of the opinion that radical centralization and corporate consolidation lead to crummy content, fewer opportunities for creators, and in a macro scale a widening wealth gap, this all just kinda sucks.
You would be shocked at the amount of shows that were sold to NBC but produced by ABC Studios or whatever. It still happens today but the trend is going back to the closed loops.
Except watching online is nowhere near as inconvenient as only watching movies from theaters in your area. It will most will likely consolidate to 4 major players so we're looking at 4 subscriptions to watch most new content.
There's nothing stopping production companies from producing content, if it's compelling enough they'll still be able to license it out to the big players.
When everything's online the primary drawcard to different video subscriptions is exclusive content, which the giants are funding the production of themselves. Can't see how you could impose a law banning them from producing their own content, if they did and all content is licensed to everyone, there will be nothing distinguishing the different services.
> It will most will likely consolidate to 4 major players so we're looking at 4 subscriptions to watch most new content.
How do you see this playing out when there have been so many big investments by traditional players to put forward new streaming services?
The major players went from Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon and have now added Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock, Apple TV+, and Paramount+, with more on the way.
Untangling all the licensing deals is quite confusing as well and starts to get into the innards of production. I always associate Friends and Seinfeld with NBC, yet they aren't on Peacock, they're on HBO Max and Hulu, respectively. That and content shifting from one platform to another constantly, makes the web even more confusing and it's hard to determine which services you really want.
> if they did and all content is licensed to everyone, there will be nothing distinguishing the different services.
Pricing and UX?
But even though some companies are incapable of making good UIs, UX isn’t much of a moat.
At the same time, differentiation through pricing leads to races to the bottom and unsustainable / worthless markets (and, in our case, probably diminishing content quality).
> Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.
Are we not currently living in a content golden age? Is there any measure of quality and quantity now vs the past? It feels like there's a new amazing mini series and movie and show every week.
This, in my opinion really depends on the content you consume, where you consume it and how you pay for it. Some types of content in competitive ecosystems, are thriving and flourishing. Other types, in large vertically organized systems, are languishing. Only time will tell, but for instance, it has been a really long time since I have seen a memorable film or tv show that truly stands out in my mind as something that will stand the test of time. And the best stuff can be found in obscure distribution channels while the worst stuff gets over financed and over promoted. But that has always been the story hasn’t it, so it’s tricky to make assessments as we only remember the best examples from the past. Certainly, more people than ever can make some thing and then rapidly deliver it to their audience and this is a good thing, even if there are fewer Stanley Kubricks around.
What do you think cable networks were in the 90s? If you weren't paying a middle-man to aggregate them onto a single monopolized access point in your house you'd be paying NBC/ABC/CBS/etc individually. Think about how premium channels worked at the time; you'd pay for HBO or Cinemax on top of your monthly cable bill. It's not as though those premium channels were significantly cheaper than HBOMax or Netflix, and they didn't offer a fraction of the content you could consume at any given time.
I still think DRM should be banned and paying for content should be super cheap - say per movie $1 for HD file download and $2 for a 4k version. For me I'd literally spend hundreds of dollars per year on content that I can own going forward.
The funniest thing of course is I bet the studios would make more money than trying to charge me $4.99 to rent movies and absurd sums to "buy" them...
My wife and I are no strangers to "buying" on-demand movies we enjoy. But our experience with Verizon FIOS is that every couple of months those titles "aren't available." Our "Purchased" area is empty.
Last night was one of those nights. We settled in a bit early for TV (minor celebration) and decided we had time to re-watch a movie, and our kid-still-at-home would join us. But we couldn't get it and ended up watching some junk (background while we talked mainly) and, of course, losing the kid's interest.
The alternative was to try to call CS and spend perhaps an hour troubleshooting.
If, however, we owned our own physical copy we could have watched it.
My evening, crippled by tech failures of the vendor, and no recourse for compensation for loss of use or our time.
>I still think DRM should be banned and paying for content should be super cheap - say per movie $1 for HD file download and $2 for a 4k version
Sounds like you need to go and produce some content and distribute it this way to show the world the way to englightenment. Please come back and post a Show HN on how well it worked out for you.
>The funniest thing of course is I bet the studios would make more money than trying to charge me $4.99 to rent movies and absurd sums to "buy" them...
That was actually the situation early on with videotape. The price of the tapes was set at something like $100 to make more money (indirectly) by renting because the rental stores had to pay a much higher price.
Over time, tapes started also being "priced to buy" (often things like Disney animation that kids would want to watch over and over again). Eventually, I think pretty much everything became priced to buy.
Right on. In the times of DVDs, you could get a DVD film for $5 dollars and here in Mexico even cheaper $50 pesos ($2.5 USD). I think the fact that a rental movie (even when you "buy" the digital version it is a rental as it has ben shown over an over) costs around $12 USD today that delivery process has been streamlined so much. That's pure greed.
Exactly. When the movie star system died, it took a lot of material made for adults with it. Even Robert Downey Jr. can't carry a movie that's not a popular IP. Now everything is a $200M sequel to something else or a $1M movie that's financed by 18 different companies. The TV golden age was serving adults for a while but seems to be dying off now.
Isn't that the period considered the "golden age" of Hollywood cinema?
I've no skin in the game, really, except that I do love film and I hope good films are increasingly made.
It's not as if those films or productions are requisite viewing. It's casual entertainment or philosophy. I'm not sure what the pressing concern there is.
Amazon, however, is a different beast and should probably be broken up to some degree for other reasons—not this one.
It's definitely a streaming service arms race, though.
To a degree the “golden age” is as more about a certain style as it is quality. Casablanca is an entirely wonderful movie - but at the time it was just one of a fleet of films pushed through the machine. The ‘Hollywood style’ was intended to be 1) immediately legible/easy to understand for a wide audience and 2) easy to make quickly on a factory line-like studio process.
Worth mentioning that the studios have been screwing theaters more an more for a long time. Theaters used to be run on ticket sales, now your popcorn costs $18 because Disney is taking 60% of all ticket sales. It really seems like at some point in the future the only way you're seeing a new Marvel movie is by going to a Disney theater.
You're right. And yes, we could use those laws, but we're also now at a time in history where the combined power and influence of "big tech" is greater (by far, I fear) than the will and character of Legislators (i.e. low-character politicians) to enact any such law to constrain/regulate them, at all.
> We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.
Forcing this would also have many downsides:
- if you make content that others don't want to distribute, are you not allowed to distribute it yourself? Freedom to publish whatever you want feels very valuable for society, IMHO.
- costs for consumers might rise because you now have two sets of costs priced in, instead of one set of costs.
- It's harder to launch new companies. If content providers don't want to work with you as a distributor when you're small, it's hard to get off the ground. If distributors don't want to work with you because your content is unproven, it's hard to get off the ground. Etc.
I don't see your line of thinking:
- Yeah you um can, like build your own movie theatre and show your own movies. The point of the law in this case is to prevent vertically integrated corporate structures from forming.
- I don't see the sets of costs argument - any price is made up of infinite sub-costs. You buy a carton of milk, it came from a distributor who bought it from a wholesaler, who got it from a carton plant and so on and so forth. At each step of the way someone verified the quality to ensure reputation. In a vertical corp quality control can be difficult.
- The opposite - easier to launch new companies. This is already how it is in places like Europe. No problem to sign 'distribution' deals, and no problem in seeking 'distributors' if you have the content. What's more a ton of other types of incentives make it easier to start new efforts.
I don't think you understand that mostly, this is how it all already works, by itself. That's the whole point of a 'free market'. Until Amazon rolls into town and starts buying everybody up and integrating it all into something else.
Make all content available at a flat rate per minute streamed owed to the content creator. Maybe let the creator set the rate for the first N years (with a cap) if they want to capitalize on a new release etc. I would throw money at a service that had Everything(r) on it.
>Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.
Really? Have you enjoyed the drek that has been released over the past decade? HBO started the bucking of the system, F/X and A&E followed. But since they were cable ops, I guess they get a pass? When Netflix started producing and pushed everyone's game, content started getting so much more interesting. Obviously, Amazon/Apple followed. I'm waiting for Google to get involved so we can have a full FAANG entertainment.
All of the Paramounts/WBs want to do is take the one franchise and squeeze every drop from it with endless sequels to the point I have completely lost any interest in explosions, cars, and super heroes.
Squeezing all the juice out of a genre or subgenre is what Hollywood is best at. If you didn't like cowboy movies you were avoiding like 60% of all movies and tv shows made from the birth of cinema until the 70's. I think we're seeing the same thing w comic book movies. In other words they'll peter out, but probably after all of us are dead.
Well, the end of the 1930's to 1950's vertical monopoly shouldn't detract from the many ways the entertainment industry is monopolistic today. Indeed, my impression is no one could even summarize all the ways unions, rights, contracts and etc divide profits, limit who can do what, etc.
My impression buying a historical piece of the entertainment industries is a lot like buying a company with large patent portfolio. No one knows whether the buyer is going to use the pieces "offensively" to cut off the rights of others or "defensively", to get leverage for cross licenses and so-forth.
We definitely now know Apple won't be buying the James Bond franchise and making it exclusive. That would have been a huge loss for the other GAFA's entertainment libraries.
Well technically the way I understand it, all the law should be enacted and enforced everywhere.
This is a classic 'culture is not important, doesn't matter' line of thinking. Cultural products influence people a great deal. Especially when they are young.
If monopoly power is influencing culture, the way it can with any industry by incentivizing low-quality or bad pricing, then it should be to some extent over-seen.
If there was some kind of anti-trust to go on with streaming sources it might be more likely to be about something like Amazon only having its content on Fire devices or forcing Roku to only have Amazon content and not Netflix or something.
We need FRAND for Copyright, if you are going to license your copyright in a commercial setting you must license it to all platform in a way fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory method
I see the meaningful difference here being that there is no limitation to distribution across consumers.
With studio owned theaters, if there wasn’t a Paramount theater in your town, you’re outta luck.
Today, you can get Peacock and Paramount+ and Disney+, etc on virtually any device. Even Apple, who has been historically resistant to distribution on other devices has Apple+ on Roku and Amazon devices
Because antitrust favors impact on consumers, I doubt we’ll see any substantial legislation is this space.
I think in the near term a combination of good content and enjoyable user experience with viewing application is going to drive adoption.
I have a Roku and Samsung SmartOS TV. The only independent playback experiences that come close to Netflix, Prime Video, and Paramount+ in my limited experience are Plex, Apple TV, and for legacy stuff, TiVo.
I'll take this weird world of locked-in distribution channels for a few years while innovation progresses, and hope Plex and Apple TV win once innovation stops.
>So what we're seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930's-1950's. You want to see a Paramount movie, you must go to a Paramount theater.
Or the TV business throughout all of TV history. You know, if you want to see an HBO show, you can only watch it on HBO. If you want to watch _new+ episodes of Seinfeld, you have to watch it on NBC.
On the contrary: stop trying to use the law for everything!
Such strategy works a million times better than the horror of copyright law.
The companies should be free to do it, and it's awful that someone wants to involve the force of the state to stop them from doing so, instead of seeing it as a way to get rid of the burden of copyright law to society.
Isn't this more like cable tv packages, where you add another $10/month to your bill for that package of channels, which were often focused by broadcaster, who had a bunch of exclusive shows, or themes, like sci-fi or 'cartoon network'.
Netflix, Apple TV, etc are broadcasters and crunchyroll is thematic.
One wrinkle of that era was how they even had their own stable of actors working for them exclusively. The new vertical integration doesn't seem to be going that far down. I imagine there's not as much interest in that, and actors have a powerful union now.
Tbh, probably completely off topic, but the first thing that came to mind are alcohol regulations at least in CA preventing vineyards and distilleries from opening or operating restaurants...hence the rise in "educational tasting/pairing classes"
> We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.
We have those laws for cars and beer and they are considered ongoing disasters. Why are films different?
I wonder if we’ll see some kind of cable box equivalent where private companies will go ahead and bundle a subset of all the content on the streaming service into a package to sell you. Possibly subsidized with ads…
This is kind of what Roku does, yeah? Each Roku device comes pre-loded with a suite of streaming services installed (but you still have to subscribe to each one...) and the remote even has dedicated buttons for whatever streaming services are paying Roku the most at the moment.
The laws are there, it's our lawmakers that have been failing us the past ~30 years as big tech has run roughshod over the entire fucking planet doing whatever it wants with extremely minimal consequences.
We have the laws and organizations but the FTC and SEC have failed us in the 21st century. There is no consideration of the consumer or marketplace, only shareholder value.
I don’t think you can make the same comparison to iTunes. No record label had the ability to reach millions of paying users like Netflix already has. Netflix has no incentive to license their original content to a different aggregate platform.
A century ago, if Library's hadn't existed, someone trying to create one might have had a chance. Today they'd have no chance at all.
If you think to today's U.S. government would willingly choose to fight the U.S. vs Paramount battle again, you'll probably be disappointed. They're far more likely to close libraries.
Disagree. Government oversight is usually never the correct answer. The simplest solution to this is through consumer choice. Simply pirate the content you want. If corporations don't want to lose money to piracy then they'll learn to stop doing anti-consumer behavior.
This will be my prediction: the usage of piracy to consume this type of content will increase.
And they will blame PLATFORM X (or just the ol'piratebay) for the losses of revenue, when in reality it's just a matter of people not being able to access content because everything has a paywall gate.
It's like they want to bring cable TV back to the internet, and you had massive bills just for channels subscriptions.
I think that what the industry will move into will be into something very similar to cabletvm, so, instead of buying subscriptions from a few services, you'll buy a package from a bundler.
On the bright side it won't be as bad as it was with cable, because it will be on-demand. But also, probably the MBAs are going to come out with infinite combinations of tiered-services that nobody will understand, at first, it will be cheaper to buy a bundle, but as it becomes popular, the consumer value extraction machine will go full throttle.
> It's like they want to bring cable TV back to the internet, and you had massive bills just for channels subscriptions.
Basically, yes. More precisely we have a handful of companies who worked to "disrupt" the cable TV business only to realize that in fact, they could become the new cable TV.
I wonder if the rise of smartphones will dampen this. Back when PCs were the standard piracy was relatively simple, you downloaded bittorrent or edonkey and sailed the high seas.
Nowadays it would be rather difficult to install a piracy app on your phone (not impossible, but definitely harder than simply downloading a binary from sourceforge). So you're left wish shady streaming sites who in my experience have terrible usability.
It's important to remember is happening now is not without precedent. There have been large monopolies in living memory. It's also telling that they have all but faded from the memory. It's not just some hopeless, "evil" power - grab. [Edit: so thanks for mentioning that!]
The meaninglessness of $8.45b relative to amazon's scale is mind boggling. It represents 0.5% of their market cap, 20% of their cash-on-hand, nevermind their borrowing capacity @ near 0%.
If a problem is worth the Jeff/Andy's personal attention, it's worth spending $8bn on.
I'm a broken record but, current equity prices and financial climate generally makes massive consolidation very likely. Antitrust, or fear of is the only restraint... and it is not very restraining.
Unless Apple & Google are going to start issuing dividends/buybacks on an epic scale (doesn't seem likely), they have no way to put cash they have to work (besides vanguard/bitcoin). Google would need to do 10 Waymos (in for about $20bn so far) simultaneously, to invest what they need to invest on internal projects, but even their one Waymo is dubious. Acquisition is the only remaining option.
Consider that these companies can currently afford to buy whole industries outright, perhaps without involving a bank. Does Waymo need a friend? Why not buy it Ford & GM? Anything outside the S&P 10 is a snack. They literally have cash enough for both lying around... and these deals are never all cash.
5 more years on the current trajectory, and the VOC/EIC days will look quaint.
True, but I don't think buybacks are likely to be scaled sufficiently to solve the "problem." Apple, maybe. They do have a dividend paying history and they don't like to spread.
The Alphabet & FB buybacks represent about 5% of those companies' cash reserves... not enough to change anything. Apple have $200bn, though I'm not sure if this is net or gross of the buyback.
I think of these buybacks more as supporting evidence to what I said previously. There is a hell of a lot of "what are you going to do with all this cash" pressure on these companies.
That said $77bn (I've seen $90bn reported) is a truly stupendous sum. Has there ever been a buyback at this scale?
They could have used that $77B to fund fusion research, carbon capture research, build private space stations and put man on Mars, but no they wanted to make their already high share price even higher.
Apple could have built the most incredible semiconductor mega-hub in the world with the money it spent on dividends and buybacks in the past decade.
In-house R&D is still a thing. Capital expenditure is still a thing. Pay raises for rank-and-file staff are still a thing. Please don't suggest that acquisitions, buybacks, and dividends are the only ways for Apple and Google to put their free cash flow to work.
Waymo is Google's big, speculative in-house R&D project. It's pretty big. They're in for $20-$25bn so far, and it'll require that much again before viability^. That's over a decade, and it is pretty risky.
Meanwhile, besides search, most of their big successes were acquisitions: adwords, youtube, android, docs... all acquisitions at core. All extremely cheap, in retrospect.
Tesla joining the elite "tech company" ranks has made for some good juxtaposition. They are a "textbook" company, because the textbook more or less assumes that firm = manufacturing. The way they were financed (pre-insanity equity markets), the way they consume capital, etc. Apple, Alphabet, FB, etc aren't like this.
In this vein, $8.45B seems a bargain for the likes of Apple to instantly booster their very limited TV+ offerings. Was this an exclusive, closed door negotiation between owners of MGM and Amazon?
I'm perplexed how the final price isn't a lot higher due to a potential bidding war between all the streaming giants. Even Netflix would benefit - if anything to force competitors to pay more.
What about MGM’s back catalog makes Apple TV+ qualitatively more compelling to your marginal subscriber? Versus say spending that same $8.5B on new content?
There’s not much “forward looking” IP of value tied to MGM except the Bond franchise, and it sounds like the Broccoli’s aren’t giving up control of that in this deal.
>The price is about 37 times MGM’s 2021 estimated EBITDA - or almost triple the enterprise value-to-EBITDA multiple that Discovery’s deal implied for AT&T’s content assets - according to Reuters Breakingviews.
Was there another offer for slightly less than $8.45B? What kind of thinking would lead them to that figure, rather than a different one?
Worth noting that based on AAPL's latest 10-Q, the vast majority of their cash is invested in corporate bonds, which have a nominal annualized return of ~6%. I'm sure the financial value of any acquisition is pitted against this alternative.
In real business culture, there is an imputis (especially for tech companies) to "maKe money work." If their best investment is other companies' bonds, they should (again, in theory) just return cash to investors who can buy the bonds themselves.
More importantly, The ability to reinvest profitably is a sign of horizon, at least traditionally.
I stress "in theory," because theory is a long way from practice when it comes to modern tech giants. The theory is financial theory... how companies are financed. In theory, equity investment is a way of financing companies. Google and Facebook did not need to be financed by the time they became publicly traded. They never had debt. Software companies don't require capital investment to expand, like a theoretical "firm" does. In practice, public markets have no role in financing companies per se, they're only there to provide liquidity.
Crypto "market cap" isn't really comparable to the market cap of companies. Nobody would (or could) ever buy Dogecoin for 44b. But companies are usually purchased for more than market cap.
This makes it very likely that the beloved Stargate franchise will return as an Amazon Prime exclusive franchise, which will be great news for those of us like myself with appetite for 60+ more seasons of that show (after the 17 seasons that have already been made).
I watched the sci-fi show "The Expanse" on Amazon Prime Video. Season 4 (the one made by Amazon Prime Video) felt like it had a tenth of the budget compared to season 1 and 2. A completely different show that I found very boring and unwatchable.
Hopefully any future Stargate revival will have the budget and writing it deserves. I would spend $20/month for the rest of my life to get a season of high budget Stargate with decent writing each year. I'm sure there is a million other fans are willing and able to pay a similar amount.
SG-1 is a great show. It holds up surprisingly well for its age. Strikes a great balance between serious and light-hearted, and the self-contained episodes often have interesting ethical or social issues. I'm also fond on how the early episodes emphasize that humans are new to interplanetary travel and are still figuring things out. There are several episodes where SG-1 travels to another planet and actually messes things up, making life worse for the natives. And the show did a great job with having things change in-universe.
There are some cliches and flaws, of course. My least favorite part is probably how non-permanent deaths were, they really overdid the whole thing with characters dying and coming back to life, or being cloned.
I'm surprised that Stargate has had some sort of franchise curse where other media never succeed. They had two more shows in the franchise (I'm in the minority that loved Universe, and I think Atlantis was for the most part bad), but never a movie aside from the one that started the franchise, never a game that succeeded (most attempts failed to even ship).
Honestly, I loved Atlantis and Universe. Atlantis was purely character driven imo. The plot was more or less a rehash of SG-1 missions to the point they directly start referencing the SG-1 mission report lol. But McKay, Sheppard, Weir, Ronan, Teyla, Carson, and Todd were all very fun characters. SG-1 was carried by the strong performances from O'Neil, Carter, Jackson, Teal'c and Hammond + interesting plots. So I was able to forgive the lazy plots in Atlantis since they focused more on the characters.
Universe was really cool. They made some critical mistakes early that made it hard to see where the show could go, but the last season was so good and setup some cool stuff just to never get the opportunity to explain it. Rush getting control of Destiny so early really messed up the pacing of the show imo, but I would have loved to see the show continue.
I haven't finished Atlantis or Universe yet. They're on my to-watch list.
As for franchising into other media... there's a brand new tabletop role-playing game that'll be launching later this year. I wonder how the Amazon deal will affect it.
I started watching SG1 again (I saw it incomplete as a kid). It’s incredibly good. It pushes rationalism and feminism in a sane way that I’m not sure would happen in today’s environment. It’s incredibly rich in historical references and concepts. It’s rarely dumb and often preempts cliches. It’s still worth watching imho (and is much less known that Star Trek in US).
I consider it hands down better than any Star Trek except possibly TNG. And that's giving TNG some grace due to being a bit older; take that away and I'll give SG-1 the prize. I will agree that people can reasonably disagree about Deep Space Nine vs SG-1. But that's the level of quality we're talking about, in my opinion. It's top tier, and much less well known.
Also strongly recommend binging the first season in particular; they did a very good job of conveying the feeling of humans blundering about not really knowing what they are doing in the big new universe, and it really comes across when watched relatively quickly on top of each other. It is reasonable that as the seasons rolled on and they got their bearings this toned down in favor of other plot lines, but I think this is one of the more unusual tones in sci fi that a show managed to successfully convey. Enterprise really whiffed on this, in my opinion. (They should have had a first season more like SG-1's first season and saved the "temporal cold war" plot arc for later. Or perhaps even not at all. That would have been OK too. There are a couple of episodes that convey this sense but not enough to hold the tone IMHO.)
Also, if you are starting out, I kinda recommend the Stargate movie first... it isn't strictly speaking necessary but it will contextualize some things, even though it's only sorta half in the continuity with SG-1. But I will say that if you kinda dislike it, continue on to SG-1 anyhow. In my opinion it's a big step up in a lot of ways.
Like you I also recently restarted watching SG-1 for the first time since I was a kid. It holds up a lot better than I expected it to. There's the occasional eyerolling cliche (and Carter's dialog about internal vs external gonads is kinda ridiculous) but like you said the cliches are also lampshaded pretty often. I just watched an episode where the Stargate broke and there was an exchange that went something like this—
General Hammond: How long will it take to fix the Stargate?
Technician: It'll be about 24 hours sir
Hammond: You have 12 hours
Technician. Sir, that's not how this works... it'll take about 24 hours
The characters are so good. The plot lines are great. The enemies are actually bad.
While TNG is idealistic and more or less wholesome, SG1 definitely lines up with DS9 in that it's more real/gritty yet still has all the hope, fun, morals, ethics, etc.
My parents watched a lot of sci fi TV when I was kid, SG-1 is the only show that I ever actually sat down and watched more than the occasional episode of.
I remember being struck by a scene that was (I believe?) pretty early in the series where Sam's about to fight some guy hand to hand; Jack protests this (but not in a way that makes it clear whether he thinks a woman shouldn't do it or if he's just unsure of her fighting skill), but once getting told what level she had trained to he immediately backs off.
It gave me (who was at most 13 years old I think) the impression of what good respect between the sexes should look like.
I could also be mis-remembering this because it's been a really long time though.
I just started doing the same last week (weird to suddenly see this thread after not much mention of SG1 for a long time...) and agree it is great. It is nice to watch as a series instead of the random odd episode I saw as a kid watching cable TV in the 90s. There is so much more of it than I remembered. I've almost finished season 1, so it's going to tide me over for a good long while!
I recently finished a rewatch of it. It has held up far better than it has any right to. One thing that’s really stood out to me is the insane amount of technology change that happened over SG-1 — the show ran from 1996 to 2004. It went from laughable 3D CG on a Showtime budget, CRTs and landlines to heavy CG on a SciFi Channel budget, flatscreens and tiny cell phones.
It does have its dumb moments though. Basically anything involving real-world weapons or explosives. There were also a few weak seasons in the middle, and it’s pretty obvious the main cast started phoning it in around season 5. But on the whole I agree, it’s one of the best Sci Fi shows ever made and absolutely belongs with the best of Trek.
> Season 4 (the one made by Amazon Prime Video) felt like it had a tenth of the budget compared to season 1 and 2. A completely different show that I found very boring and unwatchable.
Season 4 follows book 4, whereas previous seasons split the books in a non-typical fashion: e.g., S02E05 ("Home") was the end of book 1. Book 4 is also part of the second kind-of-trilogy and so is a bit slower paced, because it set ups the next two books.
This isn't really Amazon's fault: it's from the original content.
The show was weird from the start -- the first season was the first half of the first book, then they adapted the second half of the first book and the first half of the second book for season two (and likewise for S3 and books 2 & 3). Season 4 largely resolved that by wrapping up book 3 and adapting all of book 4 in one go, since book 4 is kinda slow on its own.
I’ve read all the books and S4 was my favorite so far as it didn’t look as cheesy (the first few seasons have that “syfy” tint to them, which is strange considering they have the same budget) but S5 was not good, imo, which sucks because it’s probably my second favorite book. Too much filler it really should have been 8 episodes tops.
If it makes you feel better the fourth book of The Expanse is the most boring in my opinion and the show stuck to the plot for the most part throughout. I still enjoyed both the book and the fourth season but the action and production really picks back up in the fifth season.
The expanse has a lot of problems. Mainly the fact that the creators dislike "disaster porn". Thus making the show completely devoid of any emotional impact.
Like the rocks falling was filmed in such a way as to be the least emotionally impactful to the viewer. I don't think they could have done anything more than they did to make it un-emotional. It is incredibly bizarre.
Yes, season 4 has the exact same budget per episode and the same production company/crew as the other seasons. Amazon doesn't have anything to do with perceived changes (I thought 4 was still good and 5 was great).
I'm chugging through book 2 at the moment, I hate reading books right after I watched a show since I'm already aware of most of the events and the plot direction, but I want to see where the show diverged in the later seasons and of course get to the books after that.
SG1 is indeed an amazing series, the showrunners did a great job blending action, mythology, and light-hearted sci-fi into a very watchable show.
I was less thrilled with Atlantis, and thought Universe was completely horrible. Let's not even acknowledge the existence of "Origins".
I do hope Amazon will be good stewards of the franchise going forward. I don't want them to make new content only for it to be dark, gritty, drama-heavy, and politicised the way much of modern "entertainment" has become.
Maybe we'll even get a few good Stargate video games out of this! So many lost opportunities on the gaming front - an MMO was in the works, but never got released.
Stargate revival is my main hope about all this. I don't know that they could do a continuation/sequel because the world of Stargate at this point is pretty complex and far from our universe. So they would probably do a reboot which is risky because the actors had such great chemistry together.
Wow I thought it was just me who didn’t like season 4 of the expanse. At some point they made a turn to focusing on the flaws of all the main characters to an obnoxious degree.
> I watched the sci-fi show "The Expanse" on Amazon Prime Video. Season 4 (the one made by Amazon Prime Video) felt like it had a tenth of the budget compared to season 1 and 2. A completely different show that I found very boring and unwatchable.
Ultimately that's one show though. Amazon have spent BIG on some of their series. The Grand Tour had an enormous, enormous budget compared to Top Gear. They are spending Game of Thrones money on Wheel of Time.
> The deal can be viewed as a doubling down on business strategy that Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, articulated at a conference in 2016: “When we win a Golden Globe, it helps us sell more shoes,” he had said, referring to Amazon's diverse business divisions.
`I do get the argument that Prime Video is a waste of money for Amazon; Brad Stone notes in his new book Amazon Unbound that “there was little evidence of a connection between viewing and purchasing behavior” and that “any correlation was also obfuscated by the fact that Prime was growing rapidly on its own.”`
Is that nugget actually true or is Bezos just obsessed with the glamor of Hollywood?
>> “When we win a Golden Globe, it helps us sell more shoes,”
> Is that nugget actually true or is Bezos just obsessed with the glamor of Hollywood?
Could it be more an idea of goodwill[0] ("the intangible value attributable solely to the efforts of or reputation of an owner of the business")? What I mean to say is, having Golden Globes or running a valued streaming service, even if it's not directly correlated with increased retail sales, makes customers generally regard Amazon more highly, more chic?
For all of its faults (and I am very critical of the company), I don't know anyone who derides the company in the same manner that Walmart is derided[1], for example.
I find it hard to believe as well, although of course if you subscribe to prime for movies and TV you're probably more likely to use it for free deliveries as well.
But if the plan is to make Prime more popular there seem to be many, many simpler and probably cheaper ways to do that. It's as if McDonalds started a movie studio in order to sell Movie + Big Mac bundles.
yeah i highly doubt it’s true. but maybe over time if prime video gets compelling enough that people buy prime just for access to it, then it could be true. right now it’s just seen as a bonus if you already have prime for other reasons. maybe bezos just believes it anyway
I’m skeptical of the argument that Prime Video attracts Prime subscriptions. The true motivation could be Hollywood glamor, or having the data to link viewing behavior to product recommendations.
Indeed. The acquisition opens up numerous product placement opportunities. I can't wait to watch John Krasinski watching a mission briefing with his mPow 2021 Slim Noise Cancelling Bluetooth USB-C headphones.
That blew my mind. We have so much sci-fi depicting the evil mega-corp that's it has become a trope, yet we're just lumbering along towards that exact future.
Basically we all see ourselves as the main character and don't think boring (i.e. systemic) problems will affect us. I'm not going to die from COVID like the rest because I'm special -- I'll die in an important way when it's narratively convenient, not like an extra killed off in act one to establish the stakes. Evil mega corps won't creep up on me, they'll introduce themselves spectacularly in a way that directly challenges me personally in a way that still allows me to defeat them and complete my hero's journey.
They're not joking; this acquisition cost more than it cost Disney to buy Marvel and Lucasfilm COMBINED. They're definitely taking the entertainment end of their business very seriously.
I'm sure Bezos knows what he's talking about, but how does this work exactly? Amazon Prime Video and the marketplace have different entry points. Is the idea just general brand awareness?
You can get standalone Amazon Prime Video membership — buuut it's about the same price as complete Amazon Prime membership! So you might as well get the complete membership and get all the perks you might want in the future.
And bam, you're now in the Amazon Prime universe. One day you'll be comparison shopping for a specific pair of shoes you like online, and you'll see that Amazon has the lowest (or one of the lowest) prices plus free one- or two-day shipping, and hey, you've got that Prime membership from back when you wanted to watch Amazon Prime Video. Deal sealed.
It lowers the barriers for every Amazon Prime-connected entry point.
I wonder if Amazon will change MGM's stance on "Movies Anywhere"? MGM is one of the few major studios that currently does not participate in that.
OT: how the heck does MA actually work?
Suppose I buy a movie from Apple that came from a studio that supports MA. It almost immediately shows up in my Amazon Prime Video library, my Fandango library, and others. I then stream it using the Fandango app on my TV.
Does it stream from Fandango's servers? If so, who pays for that bandwidth?. Fandango accounts are free, so I've not paid them any money. Do they just eat it, assuming it will balance out due to people who bought from Fandango streaming on other services? Or does MA tell Fandango that I bought the movie from Apple and Fandango periodically bills Apple for Apple store movies played via Fandango?
Or does it stream from some common CDN that keeps track of all this and bills each seller for their share of bandwidth?
Or does some magic happen so that even though I'm playing the movie in the Fandango app, it is actually streaming from Apple servers?
The studios are basically paying the burden of cost for MA. It's one of the big reasons Paramount and MGM haven't joined, it's expensive on the studio side.
Bandwidth is a nearly zero cost for a lot of the companies streaming the video on MA anyways. Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, all don't care meaningfully about bandwidth cost anymore, especially for prerecorded content they can CDN all over the place. The biggest value to a streaming provider participating in MA is user acquisition: People might redeem their existing collection on MA, and then buy new titles on their platform.
> I wonder if Amazon will change MGM's stance on "Movies Anywhere"? MGM is one of the few major studios that currently does not participate in that.
MGM's home ent catalogue isn't that big tbh but maybe.
> Does it stream from Fandango's servers? If so, who pays for that bandwidth?. Fandango accounts are free, so I've not paid them any money. Do they just eat it, assuming it will balance out due to people who bought from Fandango streaming on other services? Or does MA tell Fandango that I bought the movie from Apple and Fandango periodically bills Apple for Apple store movies played via Fandango?
It streams from Fandango and Fandango eat it, in the hope that if you're using their services you're more likely to buy from them.
> Or does it stream from some common CDN that keeps track of all this and bills each seller for their share of bandwidth?
You might be overestimating the costs here: it’s a fraction of a penny per GB to deliver.
> Or does some magic happen so that even though I'm playing the movie in the Fandango app, it is actually streaming from Apple servers?
It’s directly from Fandango - there is a shared revenue model + Fandango treats the MA content just as they would any third party content. They acquire source material and ingest it into their catalog as they would from any other studio.
I wish people didn't watch so much television. It's too good and too easy to watch an unlimited amount of content. Every hour you spend being entertained in front of your screens is an hour less you could be spending building actual social bonds with people in your community.
There is a correlation to increasing tv watching and decreased social club engagement. By social clubs I mean bowling clubs, skating clubs, 4H clubs, knitting clubs, quilting clubs, book clubs, etc. Whatever other clubs people used to do back in the pre modern television era.
Being a part of these clubs connects you with your local city. It encourages real social relationships. If the club membership is diverse, you are exposed to people of different backgrounds, experiences, and races, which decreases racism and xenophobia.
All of this will increase the amount of trust we have for random humans. And that correlates strongly to how well government is working for us.
This could also be fueling why the US has so much hostility in politics now. What if we were in clubs with people of different political viewpoints? You like these people, and you disagree politically. I think that would change things.
So please, do your part and stop watching so much bullshit on television. Sure, a few good movies and shows every once in a while is understandable. But really do you need to watch all these new TV series and every single made-for-netflix movie??
I have some pretty bad internet addiction too. It was so bad I basically stopped playing guitar in my teen years. I restarted last year and had to basically start from scratch, it was so depressing. I used to be able to sight read sheet music, then I threw a budding life skill all away to look at memes I will never remember or play some dumb quest in a game.
I was addicted really to consumption. I stopped creating. Now I'm trying to make more time for it. The other night I fell asleep on the couch before midnight with my guitar in my hand and my fingers forming a chord, rather than being wired and awake on reddit until I look and notice it's 2am again. Still, the sting of knowing I squandered probably 10 years of youth just consuming junk is a lot to bear.
It's depressing knowing some very smart people are out there striving as hard as they can to get me and others away from looking inwardly and creating, or at least investing focus in one's own life and building yourself up, and instead hooked on the teet of endless content. It's like the end game with this endless consumption is The Matrix, where most of humanity is just plugged into the machine sitting there, thoughtless, sucking on the feeding tube and fueling the robots until they eventually die and are replaced by another warm body.
>>"Every hour you spend being entertained in front of your screens is an hour less you could be spending building actual social bonds with people in your community."
I feel it didn't used to be like that; there was a brief period of limited TV choices where it seemed to increase the bonds - it was a shared experience, and unlike most shared experiences which you have with couple of people physically present, it was shared with any number of friends colleagues and strangers. "Did you see the movie last night" or "Did you catch Ed Sullivan" show, do even "Remember the Friends episode where...". It was a common cultural reference point.
Now of course there's so much content we are more divergent and everybody watches their own TV show or Movie or Youtube channel or TikTok etc.
I'm surprised that your insightful comment (questioning the very elephant-in-the-room assumption that we all must have content to consume) has not been voted higher by this community of hackers, tinkerers, and makers.
Indeed, why is this so central to our lives? Why isn't a different kind of shared activity more sought-after?
Your point about the sheer variety is also relevant -- there's just too many echo chambers of consumption for everyone now.
Overall, the creative force has nary a chance to flourish in such environs.
Doesn't TV shows and movies also contain diverse cast and help us relate to people with different backgrounds, race, sexual orientation, etc.?
For example, i think Hollywood movies depicting homosexuality have large impact on people watching them from conservative countries.
Readit News
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27289924&p=2
(Sorry for the interruption. Comments like this will go away eventually.)
We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.
Piracy is competition to bad content behavior. It's a meaningful consumer response to monopoly, balkanization and other anti-consumer practices.
No it isn't. It's a workaround. This is an 8 billion dollar deal, there would have to be an impossible amount of piracy for it to count as "competition." This is precisely the reason why government regulation here is correct, as consumers, we don't have a lever long enough to have any real impact on the core problem.
And we're just one side of the deal. These types of distribution setups are not just bad for consumers, but for actors, directors, producers and anyone who makes a living on any part of these productions.
The knee jerk responses to avoid meaningful government regulation are always baffling to me.
I really wish we had the bandwidth we have now, back in the Napster-era.
Napster, and others forced, persuaded and cajoled the music industry to consolidate, whether they liked it or not, on Spotify, and iTunes.
If we'd had easy free sharing of movies, it's not hard to envisage something similar to what we see now in the music industry forced on the movie companies. Now it's honey pot torrents all over the place.
No customer wants to spend X on Shudder, Y on Netflix, and Z on Prime, plus Hulu, HBO, and your cable/satellite fee either. Paying 200 GBP/USD a month is utterly absurd.
Frankly, I'm glad I have a waning interest in modern movies as I get older, and I'm actually more interested in watching old black and white movies that are "free to air" in my country.
Forcing consumers to sign up to 10 platforms to watch 10 movies will no doubt lead to a shift back to torrents.
YouTube is pretty good in this regard, as it allows paying for renting a single movie for a weekend for a reasonable price.
That's similar to saying that stealing candy bars is a meaninful consumer response to high prices at convenience stores.
That friend uses Kodi (and a NAS) now, but it's still a bit arduous to use for his family. She wants profiles, availability on any device over wifi and 4G and movies and series only.
DMCA/etc vastly favors content owners who also lobby hard to maintain their ownership by extending copyright and similar protections.
Anti-competitive behavior must be countered but unless it's well funded and focused will end up like the IRS and DMCA today, going after small fish due to lack of resources to challenge those that can afford to fight like players as big as Amazon and MGM.
But still people insist that they must pirate because the "studios" for some amorphous reason related to preexisting hatred of corporations or whatever.
Some people would just prefer to not pay for shit I guess. I just wish they'd be more honest about it than the mental gymnastics used to defend piracy.
For example all Apple TV shows are full of Apple product placement every minute or so.
It's not something new, Disney creates most of their characters with merchandising in mind. Look at baby Yoda.
But it also goes deeper, when it aims to spread ideologies and behaviors.
Now that a James Bond villain write the show, I wonder who the bad guy will be.
I don't do that with Discovery, Picard, Wandavision, etc, because they are available.
Then they completely cocked up Lower Decks and wouldn't take my money. Bittorrent to the rescue.
There is always competition.
[1] - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0415312612?psc=1&ref=ppx_po...
EDIT: one of the Amazon reviews gave a very good summary of the above point:
One of the more interesting conclusions is that the old movie studio system understood implicitly that this business was unpredictable. Until the antitrust laws were used to break them up, the studios contracted stars, script writers, directors, distribution networks and movie theaters in order to own the entire stream of revenues all their movies would generate.
This way the old studio bosses could diversify their risk in what was essentially a portfolio of movies. They knew that they could not predict which of their films would be a hit so they insisted on owning them all and on managing costs so that the hits would pay for the turkeys, while leaving shareholders with a healthy return.
At the same time, movie theatres ceased to be these lavish 'palaces'. So what 'going to the movies' meant shifted in consumers' minds. Film productions also shrunk in size and scale so there is that. I would assume the business side actually deteriorated while cultural relevance rose. Probably not everyone on the consumer side was happy with all of that.
If we're talking about that studio era though, these portfolios of movies being managed from the top definitely made films bland and predictable. But then on the other hand they also forced the talent to hone skill through repetition. So you had some specific aspects of the films being executed on a high polished level like the noir cinematography. I'm feeling/seeing something similar going on right now with the VOD offering. Even though it's all really well produced and shot and put together, I just sense everyone is following the same seemingly risque but safe playbook optimized for social media marketing.
Seen in another way, the internet aspect of these distribution systems really can make all of the above completely irrelevant too. I find my satisfaction with MUBI and weird niche shit on YouTube. A piece of my money still goes toward partially paying for the very same infrastructure. As someone else mentioned here already - I'm not physically limited from seeking what I want to find online, and it's all there side by side for me to view. This was not at all the case in the 1950's.
In my mind one thing is certain, and this is just my take - I don't really want to watch a James Bond that has been developed by a goofy logistics e-commerce corporate giant. I just really don't see it.
Interesting. I was entirely unaware of that history. I was always impressed by Michael Ovitz's bundling play at CAA. Seems like he in fact "just" rebundled what he could at the agency level.
1- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_P....
They did not have to. They could have let market forces dictate how it played out.
When I was a kid, if you wanted to watch an NBC show, you had to watch it on an NBC network. What is the difference?
At least nowadays you can just pay, watch, and cancel at your leisure with the click of a few buttons.
From about 1970 to 93, antitrust regulations were put in place because only three networks could determine over 90% of broadcast media. A judge ended that rule under the rational that upstart networks like Fox and CW were now competitive. https://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/13/business/judge-rules-netw...
Critics said this would be bad because the networks would be incentivized to broadcast lucrative content over quality content, and subjectively I would say that is exactly what happened. But fortunately the Internet came along and made TV kind of moot… but anyway if you are of the opinion that radical centralization and corporate consolidation lead to crummy content, fewer opportunities for creators, and in a macro scale a widening wealth gap, this all just kinda sucks.
There's nothing stopping production companies from producing content, if it's compelling enough they'll still be able to license it out to the big players.
When everything's online the primary drawcard to different video subscriptions is exclusive content, which the giants are funding the production of themselves. Can't see how you could impose a law banning them from producing their own content, if they did and all content is licensed to everyone, there will be nothing distinguishing the different services.
How do you see this playing out when there have been so many big investments by traditional players to put forward new streaming services?
The major players went from Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon and have now added Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock, Apple TV+, and Paramount+, with more on the way.
Untangling all the licensing deals is quite confusing as well and starts to get into the innards of production. I always associate Friends and Seinfeld with NBC, yet they aren't on Peacock, they're on HBO Max and Hulu, respectively. That and content shifting from one platform to another constantly, makes the web even more confusing and it's hard to determine which services you really want.
Pricing and UX?
But even though some companies are incapable of making good UIs, UX isn’t much of a moat.
At the same time, differentiation through pricing leads to races to the bottom and unsustainable / worthless markets (and, in our case, probably diminishing content quality).
Are we not currently living in a content golden age? Is there any measure of quality and quantity now vs the past? It feels like there's a new amazing mini series and movie and show every week.
The funniest thing of course is I bet the studios would make more money than trying to charge me $4.99 to rent movies and absurd sums to "buy" them...
Last night was one of those nights. We settled in a bit early for TV (minor celebration) and decided we had time to re-watch a movie, and our kid-still-at-home would join us. But we couldn't get it and ended up watching some junk (background while we talked mainly) and, of course, losing the kid's interest.
The alternative was to try to call CS and spend perhaps an hour troubleshooting.
If, however, we owned our own physical copy we could have watched it.
My evening, crippled by tech failures of the vendor, and no recourse for compensation for loss of use or our time.
Sounds like you need to go and produce some content and distribute it this way to show the world the way to englightenment. Please come back and post a Show HN on how well it worked out for you.
That was actually the situation early on with videotape. The price of the tapes was set at something like $100 to make more money (indirectly) by renting because the rental stores had to pay a much higher price.
Over time, tapes started also being "priced to buy" (often things like Disney animation that kids would want to watch over and over again). Eventually, I think pretty much everything became priced to buy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....
https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/american...
https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-day-the-supreme-cour...
too bad it's not about making better stuff but more profit.
it's like the market has been distorted out of its ability to better reward better stuff.
I've no skin in the game, really, except that I do love film and I hope good films are increasingly made.
It's not as if those films or productions are requisite viewing. It's casual entertainment or philosophy. I'm not sure what the pressing concern there is.
Amazon, however, is a different beast and should probably be broken up to some degree for other reasons—not this one.
It's definitely a streaming service arms race, though.
https://hbr.org/2014/06/how-to-succeed-in-business-by-bundli...
Forcing this would also have many downsides:
- if you make content that others don't want to distribute, are you not allowed to distribute it yourself? Freedom to publish whatever you want feels very valuable for society, IMHO.
- costs for consumers might rise because you now have two sets of costs priced in, instead of one set of costs.
- It's harder to launch new companies. If content providers don't want to work with you as a distributor when you're small, it's hard to get off the ground. If distributors don't want to work with you because your content is unproven, it's hard to get off the ground. Etc.
- I don't see the sets of costs argument - any price is made up of infinite sub-costs. You buy a carton of milk, it came from a distributor who bought it from a wholesaler, who got it from a carton plant and so on and so forth. At each step of the way someone verified the quality to ensure reputation. In a vertical corp quality control can be difficult.
- The opposite - easier to launch new companies. This is already how it is in places like Europe. No problem to sign 'distribution' deals, and no problem in seeking 'distributors' if you have the content. What's more a ton of other types of incentives make it easier to start new efforts.
I don't think you understand that mostly, this is how it all already works, by itself. That's the whole point of a 'free market'. Until Amazon rolls into town and starts buying everybody up and integrating it all into something else.
Really? Have you enjoyed the drek that has been released over the past decade? HBO started the bucking of the system, F/X and A&E followed. But since they were cable ops, I guess they get a pass? When Netflix started producing and pushed everyone's game, content started getting so much more interesting. Obviously, Amazon/Apple followed. I'm waiting for Google to get involved so we can have a full FAANG entertainment.
All of the Paramounts/WBs want to do is take the one franchise and squeeze every drop from it with endless sequels to the point I have completely lost any interest in explosions, cars, and super heroes.
My impression buying a historical piece of the entertainment industries is a lot like buying a company with large patent portfolio. No one knows whether the buyer is going to use the pieces "offensively" to cut off the rights of others or "defensively", to get leverage for cross licenses and so-forth.
Why? We’re not talking about food, water or the environment. There is where laws should be enacted or enforced.
This is a classic 'culture is not important, doesn't matter' line of thinking. Cultural products influence people a great deal. Especially when they are young.
If monopoly power is influencing culture, the way it can with any industry by incentivizing low-quality or bad pricing, then it should be to some extent over-seen.
If there was some kind of anti-trust to go on with streaming sources it might be more likely to be about something like Amazon only having its content on Fire devices or forcing Roku to only have Amazon content and not Netflix or something.
Today, you can get Peacock and Paramount+ and Disney+, etc on virtually any device. Even Apple, who has been historically resistant to distribution on other devices has Apple+ on Roku and Amazon devices
Because antitrust favors impact on consumers, I doubt we’ll see any substantial legislation is this space.
I do have my hopes on some sort of anti-trust regulation, but it's not going to be focused on film - it's going to be all about software and gaming.
I have a Roku and Samsung SmartOS TV. The only independent playback experiences that come close to Netflix, Prime Video, and Paramount+ in my limited experience are Plex, Apple TV, and for legacy stuff, TiVo.
I'll take this weird world of locked-in distribution channels for a few years while innovation progresses, and hope Plex and Apple TV win once innovation stops.
Why though? I wasn’t aware these laws exist(ed). Why are they needed?
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Or the TV business throughout all of TV history. You know, if you want to see an HBO show, you can only watch it on HBO. If you want to watch _new+ episodes of Seinfeld, you have to watch it on NBC.
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Seriously though, who cares? It's just mindless time wasting entertainment. It's an art form who's time is rapidly passing.
Let's get back to doing things together, like live music, any kind of hobby, just anything other than watching moving pictures.
On the contrary: stop trying to use the law for everything!
Such strategy works a million times better than the horror of copyright law.
The companies should be free to do it, and it's awful that someone wants to involve the force of the state to stop them from doing so, instead of seeing it as a way to get rid of the burden of copyright law to society.
Netflix, Apple TV, etc are broadcasters and crunchyroll is thematic.
We have those laws for cars and beer and they are considered ongoing disasters. Why are films different?
Currently the best catalog is with illegal streaming services and BitTorrent VOD and (for the cost of VPN).
This is a massive opportunity for someone to do what iTunes did to music and what Spotify did after. It just might end up being Amazon...
If you think to today's U.S. government would willingly choose to fight the U.S. vs Paramount battle again, you'll probably be disappointed. They're far more likely to close libraries.
And they will blame PLATFORM X (or just the ol'piratebay) for the losses of revenue, when in reality it's just a matter of people not being able to access content because everything has a paywall gate.
It's like they want to bring cable TV back to the internet, and you had massive bills just for channels subscriptions.
Basically, yes. More precisely we have a handful of companies who worked to "disrupt" the cable TV business only to realize that in fact, they could become the new cable TV.
Nowadays it would be rather difficult to install a piracy app on your phone (not impossible, but definitely harder than simply downloading a binary from sourceforge). So you're left wish shady streaming sites who in my experience have terrible usability.
If a problem is worth the Jeff/Andy's personal attention, it's worth spending $8bn on.
I'm a broken record but, current equity prices and financial climate generally makes massive consolidation very likely. Antitrust, or fear of is the only restraint... and it is not very restraining.
Unless Apple & Google are going to start issuing dividends/buybacks on an epic scale (doesn't seem likely), they have no way to put cash they have to work (besides vanguard/bitcoin). Google would need to do 10 Waymos (in for about $20bn so far) simultaneously, to invest what they need to invest on internal projects, but even their one Waymo is dubious. Acquisition is the only remaining option.
Consider that these companies can currently afford to buy whole industries outright, perhaps without involving a bank. Does Waymo need a friend? Why not buy it Ford & GM? Anything outside the S&P 10 is a snack. They literally have cash enough for both lying around... and these deals are never all cash.
5 more years on the current trajectory, and the VOC/EIC days will look quaint.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/tech-giants-have-ramped-up-...
Apple recently $77B in buybacks, Alphabet $8.5B, Facebook $3.9B
The Alphabet & FB buybacks represent about 5% of those companies' cash reserves... not enough to change anything. Apple have $200bn, though I'm not sure if this is net or gross of the buyback.
I think of these buybacks more as supporting evidence to what I said previously. There is a hell of a lot of "what are you going to do with all this cash" pressure on these companies.
That said $77bn (I've seen $90bn reported) is a truly stupendous sum. Has there ever been a buyback at this scale?
Apple could have built the most incredible semiconductor mega-hub in the world with the money it spent on dividends and buybacks in the past decade.
In-house R&D is still a thing. Capital expenditure is still a thing. Pay raises for rank-and-file staff are still a thing. Please don't suggest that acquisitions, buybacks, and dividends are the only ways for Apple and Google to put their free cash flow to work.
Not to mention that both companies carry debt.
Meanwhile, besides search, most of their big successes were acquisitions: adwords, youtube, android, docs... all acquisitions at core. All extremely cheap, in retrospect.
Tesla joining the elite "tech company" ranks has made for some good juxtaposition. They are a "textbook" company, because the textbook more or less assumes that firm = manufacturing. The way they were financed (pre-insanity equity markets), the way they consume capital, etc. Apple, Alphabet, FB, etc aren't like this.
^if
They could also, in theory, build schools in central africa. They could even pay their taxes. I think acquisitions are more likely though.
I'm perplexed how the final price isn't a lot higher due to a potential bidding war between all the streaming giants. Even Netflix would benefit - if anything to force competitors to pay more.
There’s not much “forward looking” IP of value tied to MGM except the Bond franchise, and it sounds like the Broccoli’s aren’t giving up control of that in this deal.
Was there another offer for slightly less than $8.45B? What kind of thinking would lead them to that figure, rather than a different one?
In real business culture, there is an imputis (especially for tech companies) to "maKe money work." If their best investment is other companies' bonds, they should (again, in theory) just return cash to investors who can buy the bonds themselves.
More importantly, The ability to reinvest profitably is a sign of horizon, at least traditionally.
I stress "in theory," because theory is a long way from practice when it comes to modern tech giants. The theory is financial theory... how companies are financed. In theory, equity investment is a way of financing companies. Google and Facebook did not need to be financed by the time they became publicly traded. They never had debt. Software companies don't require capital investment to expand, like a theoretical "firm" does. In practice, public markets have no role in financing companies per se, they're only there to provide liquidity.
My coworked compared it to the Dogecoin marketcap of $44b... kinda puts things in perspective.
I watched the sci-fi show "The Expanse" on Amazon Prime Video. Season 4 (the one made by Amazon Prime Video) felt like it had a tenth of the budget compared to season 1 and 2. A completely different show that I found very boring and unwatchable.
Hopefully any future Stargate revival will have the budget and writing it deserves. I would spend $20/month for the rest of my life to get a season of high budget Stargate with decent writing each year. I'm sure there is a million other fans are willing and able to pay a similar amount.
There are some cliches and flaws, of course. My least favorite part is probably how non-permanent deaths were, they really overdid the whole thing with characters dying and coming back to life, or being cloned.
I'm surprised that Stargate has had some sort of franchise curse where other media never succeed. They had two more shows in the franchise (I'm in the minority that loved Universe, and I think Atlantis was for the most part bad), but never a movie aside from the one that started the franchise, never a game that succeeded (most attempts failed to even ship).
Universe was really cool. They made some critical mistakes early that made it hard to see where the show could go, but the last season was so good and setup some cool stuff just to never get the opportunity to explain it. Rush getting control of Destiny so early really messed up the pacing of the show imo, but I would have loved to see the show continue.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0929629/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0942903/
As for franchising into other media... there's a brand new tabletop role-playing game that'll be launching later this year. I wonder how the Amazon deal will affect it.
Also strongly recommend binging the first season in particular; they did a very good job of conveying the feeling of humans blundering about not really knowing what they are doing in the big new universe, and it really comes across when watched relatively quickly on top of each other. It is reasonable that as the seasons rolled on and they got their bearings this toned down in favor of other plot lines, but I think this is one of the more unusual tones in sci fi that a show managed to successfully convey. Enterprise really whiffed on this, in my opinion. (They should have had a first season more like SG-1's first season and saved the "temporal cold war" plot arc for later. Or perhaps even not at all. That would have been OK too. There are a couple of episodes that convey this sense but not enough to hold the tone IMHO.)
Also, if you are starting out, I kinda recommend the Stargate movie first... it isn't strictly speaking necessary but it will contextualize some things, even though it's only sorta half in the continuity with SG-1. But I will say that if you kinda dislike it, continue on to SG-1 anyhow. In my opinion it's a big step up in a lot of ways.
General Hammond: How long will it take to fix the Stargate?
Technician: It'll be about 24 hours sir
Hammond: You have 12 hours
Technician. Sir, that's not how this works... it'll take about 24 hours
Hammond: Oh, okay then
While TNG is idealistic and more or less wholesome, SG1 definitely lines up with DS9 in that it's more real/gritty yet still has all the hope, fun, morals, ethics, etc.
I remember being struck by a scene that was (I believe?) pretty early in the series where Sam's about to fight some guy hand to hand; Jack protests this (but not in a way that makes it clear whether he thinks a woman shouldn't do it or if he's just unsure of her fighting skill), but once getting told what level she had trained to he immediately backs off.
It gave me (who was at most 13 years old I think) the impression of what good respect between the sexes should look like.
I could also be mis-remembering this because it's been a really long time though.
Good show.
Hammond: "Colonel, the United States is not in the business of interfering in other people's affairs."
O'Neill: (incredulous pause) "Since when?"
And who can forget Carter beating the crap out of a Mongol warlord to prove women are equals?
It does have its dumb moments though. Basically anything involving real-world weapons or explosives. There were also a few weak seasons in the middle, and it’s pretty obvious the main cast started phoning it in around season 5. But on the whole I agree, it’s one of the best Sci Fi shows ever made and absolutely belongs with the best of Trek.
Season 4 follows book 4, whereas previous seasons split the books in a non-typical fashion: e.g., S02E05 ("Home") was the end of book 1. Book 4 is also part of the second kind-of-trilogy and so is a bit slower paced, because it set ups the next two books.
This isn't really Amazon's fault: it's from the original content.
EDIT: VAGUE REFERENCES TO SPOILERS BELOW
Like the rocks falling was filmed in such a way as to be the least emotionally impactful to the viewer. I don't think they could have done anything more than they did to make it un-emotional. It is incredibly bizarre.
I was less thrilled with Atlantis, and thought Universe was completely horrible. Let's not even acknowledge the existence of "Origins".
I do hope Amazon will be good stewards of the franchise going forward. I don't want them to make new content only for it to be dark, gritty, drama-heavy, and politicised the way much of modern "entertainment" has become.
Maybe we'll even get a few good Stargate video games out of this! So many lost opportunities on the gaming front - an MMO was in the works, but never got released.
Ultimately that's one show though. Amazon have spent BIG on some of their series. The Grand Tour had an enormous, enormous budget compared to Top Gear. They are spending Game of Thrones money on Wheel of Time.
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This part is a real nugget.
`I do get the argument that Prime Video is a waste of money for Amazon; Brad Stone notes in his new book Amazon Unbound that “there was little evidence of a connection between viewing and purchasing behavior” and that “any correlation was also obfuscated by the fact that Prime was growing rapidly on its own.”`
Is that nugget actually true or is Bezos just obsessed with the glamor of Hollywood?
> Is that nugget actually true or is Bezos just obsessed with the glamor of Hollywood?
Could it be more an idea of goodwill[0] ("the intangible value attributable solely to the efforts of or reputation of an owner of the business")? What I mean to say is, having Golden Globes or running a valued streaming service, even if it's not directly correlated with increased retail sales, makes customers generally regard Amazon more highly, more chic?
For all of its faults (and I am very critical of the company), I don't know anyone who derides the company in the same manner that Walmart is derided[1], for example.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwill_(accounting)
[1] http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/
But if the plan is to make Prime more popular there seem to be many, many simpler and probably cheaper ways to do that. It's as if McDonalds started a movie studio in order to sell Movie + Big Mac bundles.
I'd trust the words of someone who actually has access to Amazon's financials over the word of a blogger on the outside.
Basically we all see ourselves as the main character and don't think boring (i.e. systemic) problems will affect us. I'm not going to die from COVID like the rest because I'm special -- I'll die in an important way when it's narratively convenient, not like an extra killed off in act one to establish the stakes. Evil mega corps won't creep up on me, they'll introduce themselves spectacularly in a way that directly challenges me personally in a way that still allows me to defeat them and complete my hero's journey.
3 this year https://www.geekwire.com/2021/amazon-takes-3-golden-globes-i...
a few more in the past with Fleabag and others
You can get standalone Amazon Prime Video membership — buuut it's about the same price as complete Amazon Prime membership! So you might as well get the complete membership and get all the perks you might want in the future.
And bam, you're now in the Amazon Prime universe. One day you'll be comparison shopping for a specific pair of shoes you like online, and you'll see that Amazon has the lowest (or one of the lowest) prices plus free one- or two-day shipping, and hey, you've got that Prime membership from back when you wanted to watch Amazon Prime Video. Deal sealed.
It lowers the barriers for every Amazon Prime-connected entry point.
OT: how the heck does MA actually work?
Suppose I buy a movie from Apple that came from a studio that supports MA. It almost immediately shows up in my Amazon Prime Video library, my Fandango library, and others. I then stream it using the Fandango app on my TV.
Does it stream from Fandango's servers? If so, who pays for that bandwidth?. Fandango accounts are free, so I've not paid them any money. Do they just eat it, assuming it will balance out due to people who bought from Fandango streaming on other services? Or does MA tell Fandango that I bought the movie from Apple and Fandango periodically bills Apple for Apple store movies played via Fandango?
Or does it stream from some common CDN that keeps track of all this and bills each seller for their share of bandwidth?
Or does some magic happen so that even though I'm playing the movie in the Fandango app, it is actually streaming from Apple servers?
Bandwidth is a nearly zero cost for a lot of the companies streaming the video on MA anyways. Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, all don't care meaningfully about bandwidth cost anymore, especially for prerecorded content they can CDN all over the place. The biggest value to a streaming provider participating in MA is user acquisition: People might redeem their existing collection on MA, and then buy new titles on their platform.
MGM's home ent catalogue isn't that big tbh but maybe.
> Does it stream from Fandango's servers? If so, who pays for that bandwidth?. Fandango accounts are free, so I've not paid them any money. Do they just eat it, assuming it will balance out due to people who bought from Fandango streaming on other services? Or does MA tell Fandango that I bought the movie from Apple and Fandango periodically bills Apple for Apple store movies played via Fandango?
It streams from Fandango and Fandango eat it, in the hope that if you're using their services you're more likely to buy from them.
You might be overestimating the costs here: it’s a fraction of a penny per GB to deliver.
> Or does some magic happen so that even though I'm playing the movie in the Fandango app, it is actually streaming from Apple servers?
It’s directly from Fandango - there is a shared revenue model + Fandango treats the MA content just as they would any third party content. They acquire source material and ingest it into their catalog as they would from any other studio.
There is a correlation to increasing tv watching and decreased social club engagement. By social clubs I mean bowling clubs, skating clubs, 4H clubs, knitting clubs, quilting clubs, book clubs, etc. Whatever other clubs people used to do back in the pre modern television era.
Being a part of these clubs connects you with your local city. It encourages real social relationships. If the club membership is diverse, you are exposed to people of different backgrounds, experiences, and races, which decreases racism and xenophobia.
All of this will increase the amount of trust we have for random humans. And that correlates strongly to how well government is working for us.
This could also be fueling why the US has so much hostility in politics now. What if we were in clubs with people of different political viewpoints? You like these people, and you disagree politically. I think that would change things.
So please, do your part and stop watching so much bullshit on television. Sure, a few good movies and shows every once in a while is understandable. But really do you need to watch all these new TV series and every single made-for-netflix movie??
I was addicted really to consumption. I stopped creating. Now I'm trying to make more time for it. The other night I fell asleep on the couch before midnight with my guitar in my hand and my fingers forming a chord, rather than being wired and awake on reddit until I look and notice it's 2am again. Still, the sting of knowing I squandered probably 10 years of youth just consuming junk is a lot to bear.
It's depressing knowing some very smart people are out there striving as hard as they can to get me and others away from looking inwardly and creating, or at least investing focus in one's own life and building yourself up, and instead hooked on the teet of endless content. It's like the end game with this endless consumption is The Matrix, where most of humanity is just plugged into the machine sitting there, thoughtless, sucking on the feeding tube and fueling the robots until they eventually die and are replaced by another warm body.
I'd suggest that you not beat yourself up over the past, and always, always keep in mind the Creative Gap:
https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/02/22/ira-glass-on-the-se...
I feel it didn't used to be like that; there was a brief period of limited TV choices where it seemed to increase the bonds - it was a shared experience, and unlike most shared experiences which you have with couple of people physically present, it was shared with any number of friends colleagues and strangers. "Did you see the movie last night" or "Did you catch Ed Sullivan" show, do even "Remember the Friends episode where...". It was a common cultural reference point.
Now of course there's so much content we are more divergent and everybody watches their own TV show or Movie or Youtube channel or TikTok etc.
Indeed, why is this so central to our lives? Why isn't a different kind of shared activity more sought-after?
Your point about the sheer variety is also relevant -- there's just too many echo chambers of consumption for everyone now.
Overall, the creative force has nary a chance to flourish in such environs.