Nowadays, whenever I browse Netflix, I feel like that Bruce Springsteen song, "57 Channels (And Nothin' On)."[a] Sure, there are lots of choices, but they all kinda suck. I find myself wondering, why? The OP weaves an insightful, opinionated narrative that explains how we got here. Much of it rings true. This passage, in particular struck a chord with me:
> Several screenwriters who’ve worked for the streamer told me a common note from company executives is “have this character announce what they’re doing so that viewers who have this program on in the background can follow along.” [...] One tag among Netflix’s thirty-six thousand microgenres offers a suitable name for this kind of dreck: “casual viewing.” Usually reserved for breezy network sitcoms, reality television, and nature documentaries, the category describes much of Netflix’s film catalog — movies that go down best when you’re not paying attention, or as the Hollywood Reporter recently described Atlas, a 2024 sci-fi film starring Jennifer Lopez, “another Netflix movie made to half-watch while doing laundry.”
In other words, people like me, who want to focus on and experience a great film or series, are no longer the target audience.
Apparently, there's no money in targeting people who want to pay attention.
TV was also like this though. It's one of the first things you learn in a 20th century media class. Early TV shows were adapted from radio play scripts, and later written by radio play scriptwriters moving into the new format. That structure and its conventions stayed strongly influential right up until the end of prominent network TV shows.
TV show creators understood and planned for people watching their shows in a variety of environments, with varying degrees and kinds of attention. A lot of what made for example X-files and Sopranos compelling was a willingness to break this convention, so it was still firmly in place by the late 90s.
You could also maybe reasonably claim that all TV shows before those were bad as well. But then you need to view netflix as reverting to the norm rather than being a novel travesty. We are simply exiting a 20 year anomaly where TV was good.
I'm not quite making that argument here though. I think there was good TV before the 90s, so I think this is a constraint on the form that good creators can work through and still make compelling art. Why netflix can't is an interesting question but I think this avenue is a dead end for understanding it.
My completely unscientific impression is that other services are making the effort to produce high-quality films and series, including Apple TV+ (Slow Horses, Silo, For All Mankind, Foundation, etc.), Max/HBO (Barry, Curb Your Enthusiasm, GoT, The Last of Us, etc.), FX (Shogun, The Bear, The Old Man, Fargo, etc.), and AMC (Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Night Manager, etc.). Whatever you think of the quality of shows in those services, they at least show genuine effort to make things that don't suck.
Well, people that want to half-watch TV deserve stuff made for them too.
Netflix has shows made for really watching too. I don't know if they are rebellious acts from their makers, brought without an option, or actual choices, but Netflix does have them.
My impression is that Netflix cornered themselves into the same AAA race to death that the major movie studios are in. Everything is too expensive, so they can't accept risks, so nothing is really good (nor really bad). Micromanaging is just one more visible consequence of that, between lots and lots that stay hidden but are as important to the final result.
> Well, people that want to half-watch TV deserve stuff made for them too.
What? No they don't. Film and television are visual art forms that are meant to be viewed and given the appropriate attention. There's already plenty of mediocre television out there you can use as background noise; we don't need to intentionally lower the bar for the media that's being made. As the article mentions, Netflix has already played its part in ruining the job landscape for writers and actors. I guess they see a need to play their part in devaluing the work that remains.
The reality is the average person's time to watch TV/unwind is also going to be spent doing chores. This was always the case. When I was a kid, we watched shows that could be followed along by whoever was cooking dinner/doing dishes as well as the people sitting in front of the set. People don't have all that much extra free time.
Movies were an experience because... they were an experience. They weren't constantly on. They were a rare treat, not something consumed nightly.
There is money in that, it just fundamentally doesn't make sense to build a subscription service for it. There are still good movies being made, but they cost money to make, and someone needs to pay for them. They cannot exist if they get thrown on a streaming service where they'll earn a pittance. HN seems to believe they have a fundamental right to watch all the movies and tv ever made for $8/month, but that was only possible due to very special circumstances that have since evaporated.
Netflix is slowly succumbing to it's inevitable fate of turning into daytime tv. That's the only space where it makes sense economically to pay a fixed subscription fee regardless of how much you consume. If you want an all you can eat buffet, don't act surprised when it isn't michelin starred.
"MUBI IS TERRIBLE!
*---- 6y ago • Nick2866
MUBI is terrible there's no good action or horror films it's crazy because almost all of the movies on the app I haven't even heard of and I'm a big movie buff. So just don't waste your time with MUBI just get Netflix or amazon prime."
I mean it is also somewhat dependent on how much bandwidth you have free while doing laundry, some people can handle watching the complicated stuff while doing their daily tasks and I guess those people also hate these half-assed shows.
I think it depends on which kind of bandwidth we're talking about. I can follow a talk-show no problem while doing laundry / the dishes / vacuum / iron. Keyword being "talk". But I can't look at the screen too often.
So, watching a sitcom or similar where the characters' body language or facial expressions are important is an exercise in frustration.
If I'm sitting down to watch something new, I'm going to give it my full attention and therefore want it to be awesome. If I just want background noise then I can just put on anything that I've already seen for its mood. I can't fathom wanting to be only half paying attention to new things. It feels like living very indeliberately. Is the point just to be able to say you've seen such and such new show, or what?
Netflix thought they could take on Hollywood and beat them at their own film game. But in the process they realized that it’s not actually a game worth winning, and more importantly, that YouTube and TikTok are their real competition, not Hollywood.
The future of most media is video-based, and I think Netflix probably understands this and is trying to get away from the historical model as movies you watch online and closer to the optimized video ecosystem of YouTube. The latter is more relevant in a world with video-playing devices everywhere.
Even in real-time... My wife will literally watch Facebook Reels on her phone while we sit on the couch at night to watch something on Netflix together.
Anyway, I was thinking about this too when the article talked about the data from Amazon showing that viewers preferred stuff from the 90s and 00s over their newly produced content: How are Netflix, Amazon, etc. doing with young adults? If the audience is all Millennials and Gen-X folks, because Gen-Z folks are exclusively watching short-form video instead, it would make sense that stuff from the 90s and 00s would be the most popular. Like I think this is a well-established phenomenon with music, where a person's lifelong preferences will be fixed on whatever they first heard during their high school or college years. I will absolutely pay for a streaming service that gives me access to all the movies and TV series from, say, 1990-2015 and never adds any new content.
> My wife will literally watch Facebook Reels on her phone while we sit on the couch at night to watch something on Netflix together.
HN spans this incredible gamut from “Turing-award winner chimes in on their field of expertise” to stuff like this that just puts you in awe how pozzed some people are.
Can you please explain what this optimized video ecosystem of youtube is actually optimized for other than clickbait? Maybe it works for others but i fell into this for a while and now i look at it in disgust.
Clickbait is a part of it, sure. But there are also many other content types that I wouldn’t characterize that way: 3+ hour long video podcasts, ambient music channels, niche indie musicians, short entertaining videos like Mr. Beast, etc. YouTube is increasingly a huge tent that includes tons of different kinds of content.
My point was more that YouTube is increasingly designed for a world in which people have their devices everywhere and jump in and out of watching videos.
Netflix isn’t, because it is still using the “old” model of sitting down for 30-200 minutes to watch a movie.
I’m not saying that the film model is bad or somehow worth getting rid of - I love films myself - just that it’s probably not the future of video content for most people.
Youtube still has massive variety and quality of production. I've largely been able to avoid the clickbait-optimized videos by curating my subscriptions. I've found about a dozen creators who's content I regularly watch. Many of them create YouTube videos as secondary to some other hobby or profession. Most are trending towards the clickbait thumbnail, but few are actually changing their content in that direction.
>A signature characteristic of Netflix’s strategy over the years has been to define genres into microscopic sub-genres and develop content on very specific customer likes — for example “Urban teen geniuses who invent time travel”
>There is an unfortunate issue with making things bad and to somebody’s taste — the person whose taste you are courting may be happy to be courted but if all they ever get of things to their taste are things that are bad representations of that taste they may come to sour on what they once loved.
and that is I think what happens a lot with Netflix, they produce approximations of the thing you love, and by doing this bad half-assed version with the wires sticking out and everything, in the end you don't love that thing anymore.
Netflix in the hunt for quick engagement eats the seed corn of fandom, and are left with nothing to build on.
Oof. What's next? Announcing what they see? What items are around them and how they could interact with them (or not)?
Like "Protagonist: I walked north and I entered a mysterious room, full of different bottles. They don't look like I could use them, but maybe I should take one with me?"
I think because people are 'watching' in a situation where twenty years ago they'd've put the radio on but now they default to 'fire something up on Netflix' and so Netflix wants to make things amenable to those customers.
I'm not sure how I feel about this, but it does at least make sense in terms of why Netflix are doing so.
Audio works on the subway, on the bike, while riding a bike, cleaning the house and the big one, driving a car. To get into a situation where you can both watch and listen is much rarer.
One of my favourite films is called Upstream Color.
Below is not a spoiler, but I like to avoid reading anything about a good film before watching it, and I recommend to do the same here. You like it or you don’t.
This film has no staged speech that tries to explain anything. The little dialogue that it has is what would naturally arise given the situation. For the same reason, most characters have no names or no full names. No situation in which they would formally introduce themselves takes place.
Do I fully understand it immediately, or even after watching it once? No. Does it mean I dislike it? Rather the opposite. Actually, I enjoy being treated as an adult who can make conclusions without having given any pre-digested explanation.
If you enjoyed Upstream Color, I highly recommend checking out Carruth's previous project, Primer, if you haven't already. It's a movie that takes a dozen rewatches to make full sense of. Natural dialogue, organic cinematography, and no hand-holding.
Upstream Color was a great movie as well, it's a shame what happened between Carruth and Amy Seimetz.
Stanley Kubrick did something similar in `2001: A Space Odyssey`. In a scene where staff were being transported in a taxi... on the moon... 100% of the dialog is meaningless. They're discussing the merits of this or that sandwich, not how wonderful the Earth looks from space, or overcoming technical challenges.
It's so refreshing to be living in an environment vs being spoon fed.
Even better is very old or even silent movies ("M" is fantastic: modern-ish thriller from 1931 where sound is a character; Metropolis)
Also dialog-less movies: `Koyaanisqatsi` is incredibly beautiful and has a specific plot, even if there's no understandable dialog nor words.
In theaters _right now_ is `Flow`. No dialog, and no _human_ characters! It's all animated cats and dogs and other animals. It's startling how directly the characters transmit their goals and agenda and emotions.
I enjoyed Upstream Color a lot as well, but yeah it's certainly not for everyone.
And agreed on not being spoon fed.
A prime example to the contrary was when in the Joker, spoiler alert, they had a recap showing his delusion. The movie would have been so much better if they had cut that entire segment, and just have the neighbor female act all surprised and weirded out like she did when he entered the apartment.
The opening lines to The Magic Flute (which continues in a similarly expository tone for the duration). Seems like there have always been scripts which were easy to understand while also staring at your phone, though that doesn't stop the ushers at English National Opera getting narky at you if you try!
Man. I like that you’re bringing opera into the conversation, but I don’t think comparing two different mediums that way is useful.
Die Zauberflote is easy to understand because it’s a fairly light work, and you’re meant to be staring at the lavish staging and costumes. The performers narrate the action because that’s the convention for the genre - it’s a sung story. They break into more conventional dialogue for the recitative sections (a tradition that went out of style with Verdi.)
> They break into more conventional dialogue for the recitative sections (a tradition that went out of style with Verdi.)
The comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan were contemporary to Verdi's work and still feature lots of dialogue, so they are very approachable. You still won't be able to use your phone, though - you'll be too busy laughing!
My recommendation for an introduction would be the 1982 Canadian production of The Mikado by the Stratford Festival. It is currently available in its entirety on YouTube:
In Mozart's time what was happening on the stage was a footnote to eating, talking, flirting, seeing, and being seen. Opera was a social event with background music.
Treating art with reverence and rapt attention didn't get to be a thing until the late Enlightenment. Before that the kind of art you took seriously was religious, and the idea that you were supposed to reverent about it could be considered a carry-over from religion.
Talking over things and not paying attention is almost the default. Sitting still and concentrating on a performance of any kind is a relatively recent idea.
None of this makes the crapification of Netflix (and related trends in other media touched by streaming and tech) any less annoying.
Really enjoy this curveball you threw, casts this whole conversation in a new light doesn't it?
It is true that a lot of old plays, operas etc do exactly what Netflix is accused of here. What is a monologue? Was Shakespeare guilty of creating casual viewing content when he wrote Hamlet's monologue? Shouldn't he have just showed Hamlet's ambivalence???
Those lines are from a song, and a significant part of the audience at the time wouldn't be listening in their native language; it's not really a fair comparison.
I was just wondering a bit about this. I read some of your comments here and, as I sometimes do, writing and discarding before submitting my response.
But it just occurred to me... Maybe Netflix should do half-movies next. The movie is designed to be appealing on the menu, to have a good but not too engrossing first 30 minutes, and then start ramping down the budget drastically for the remaining of the film, which -it seems- people aren't watching any more. Like don't bother with FX, then just don't bother with actors, then just insert shots of the storyboard or don't even bother with the story at all and just insert stock video, etc. Maybe at the end add a narrated summary of what happened (or didn't happen).
This was actually pioneered by Bruce Willis. He would get paid a lot to show up in a couple of introductory scenes for really low budget films. They'd put his face on the movie poster, they'd pay him like half the budget of the film, then he'd move on to the next one.
(Unfortunately, it turns out he was struggling with dementia and it seems he was trying to cash out before he couldn't act at all)
I watched some of those movies - my god they were terrible. I'm pretty sure Willis filmed his parts in front of a green screen because he was never in shot with other actors.
Knowing the reason why though, I don't blame or fault him for doing it.
This article is a fascinating explication of the core reason that, without any respect paid to my millennial nostalgia at all, we need to preserve the physical cinema. The digital "attention economy" introduces such immense layers of abstraction between the audience and the business that none of us should feel confident that it will allow us to express our tastes for entertainment with anything close to intentionality. If we want to keep getting any modicum of entertainment that we actually like -- what a high bar! -- then we need to maintain our right to vote audibly with our dollars.
In my experience, when technology advances, and the original thing to be replaced still holds some value, it doesn't continue existing as such, it may survive binging on momentum, habits or nostalgia.
But then it splits, the useless aspect discarded and the useful merged with other old and new fragments, in combinations tried by the experimental startup ecosystem.
In the end we may have for example entertainment venues for both playing arcades and watching movies and theater plays, perhaps with dinner for example. (We already have this actually.)
One nice thing about the movie theater, is that nobody can pull up her phone in the middle and start scrolling through stuff. And then we have to rewind later. Not pointing fingers here. :)
I remember going to the physical cinema one day to see "Air". I didn't think the movie was that great, and I wonder if the "Amazon Studios" logo at the beginning made me more critical.
Readit News
> Several screenwriters who’ve worked for the streamer told me a common note from company executives is “have this character announce what they’re doing so that viewers who have this program on in the background can follow along.” [...] One tag among Netflix’s thirty-six thousand microgenres offers a suitable name for this kind of dreck: “casual viewing.” Usually reserved for breezy network sitcoms, reality television, and nature documentaries, the category describes much of Netflix’s film catalog — movies that go down best when you’re not paying attention, or as the Hollywood Reporter recently described Atlas, a 2024 sci-fi film starring Jennifer Lopez, “another Netflix movie made to half-watch while doing laundry.”
In other words, people like me, who want to focus on and experience a great film or series, are no longer the target audience.
Apparently, there's no money in targeting people who want to pay attention.
---
[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/57_Channels_(And_Nothin'_On)
TV show creators understood and planned for people watching their shows in a variety of environments, with varying degrees and kinds of attention. A lot of what made for example X-files and Sopranos compelling was a willingness to break this convention, so it was still firmly in place by the late 90s.
You could also maybe reasonably claim that all TV shows before those were bad as well. But then you need to view netflix as reverting to the norm rather than being a novel travesty. We are simply exiting a 20 year anomaly where TV was good.
I'm not quite making that argument here though. I think there was good TV before the 90s, so I think this is a constraint on the form that good creators can work through and still make compelling art. Why netflix can't is an interesting question but I think this avenue is a dead end for understanding it.
Netflix has shows made for really watching too. I don't know if they are rebellious acts from their makers, brought without an option, or actual choices, but Netflix does have them.
My impression is that Netflix cornered themselves into the same AAA race to death that the major movie studios are in. Everything is too expensive, so they can't accept risks, so nothing is really good (nor really bad). Micromanaging is just one more visible consequence of that, between lots and lots that stay hidden but are as important to the final result.
The Muzak-ification of film?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzak
What? No they don't. Film and television are visual art forms that are meant to be viewed and given the appropriate attention. There's already plenty of mediocre television out there you can use as background noise; we don't need to intentionally lower the bar for the media that's being made. As the article mentions, Netflix has already played its part in ruining the job landscape for writers and actors. I guess they see a need to play their part in devaluing the work that remains.
Movies were an experience because... they were an experience. They weren't constantly on. They were a rare treat, not something consumed nightly.
My guess is some internal metrics favor watch time over quality and is just quietly killing their business.
Netflix is slowly succumbing to it's inevitable fate of turning into daytime tv. That's the only space where it makes sense economically to pay a fixed subscription fee regardless of how much you consume. If you want an all you can eat buffet, don't act surprised when it isn't michelin starred.
The first person who figures out how to sort the wheat from the chaff and does so with no interior motive could be a millionaire immediately.
"MUBI IS TERRIBLE! *---- 6y ago • Nick2866 MUBI is terrible there's no good action or horror films it's crazy because almost all of the movies on the app I haven't even heard of and I'm a big movie buff. So just don't waste your time with MUBI just get Netflix or amazon prime."
https://m.slashdot.org/story/122585
Deleted Comment
So, watching a sitcom or similar where the characters' body language or facial expressions are important is an exercise in frustration.
The future of most media is video-based, and I think Netflix probably understands this and is trying to get away from the historical model as movies you watch online and closer to the optimized video ecosystem of YouTube. The latter is more relevant in a world with video-playing devices everywhere.
Even in real-time... My wife will literally watch Facebook Reels on her phone while we sit on the couch at night to watch something on Netflix together.
Anyway, I was thinking about this too when the article talked about the data from Amazon showing that viewers preferred stuff from the 90s and 00s over their newly produced content: How are Netflix, Amazon, etc. doing with young adults? If the audience is all Millennials and Gen-X folks, because Gen-Z folks are exclusively watching short-form video instead, it would make sense that stuff from the 90s and 00s would be the most popular. Like I think this is a well-established phenomenon with music, where a person's lifelong preferences will be fixed on whatever they first heard during their high school or college years. I will absolutely pay for a streaming service that gives me access to all the movies and TV series from, say, 1990-2015 and never adds any new content.
HN spans this incredible gamut from “Turing-award winner chimes in on their field of expertise” to stuff like this that just puts you in awe how pozzed some people are.
Inadvertently an Inglorious Basterds paraphrase?
_Brief him._
My point was more that YouTube is increasingly designed for a world in which people have their devices everywhere and jump in and out of watching videos.
Netflix isn’t, because it is still using the “old” model of sitting down for 30-200 minutes to watch a movie.
I’m not saying that the film model is bad or somehow worth getting rid of - I love films myself - just that it’s probably not the future of video content for most people.
>A signature characteristic of Netflix’s strategy over the years has been to define genres into microscopic sub-genres and develop content on very specific customer likes — for example “Urban teen geniuses who invent time travel”
>There is an unfortunate issue with making things bad and to somebody’s taste — the person whose taste you are courting may be happy to be courted but if all they ever get of things to their taste are things that are bad representations of that taste they may come to sour on what they once loved.
and that is I think what happens a lot with Netflix, they produce approximations of the thing you love, and by doing this bad half-assed version with the wires sticking out and everything, in the end you don't love that thing anymore.
Netflix in the hunt for quick engagement eats the seed corn of fandom, and are left with nothing to build on.
Edit: Twelve Monkeys. I think that counts.
Like "Protagonist: I walked north and I entered a mysterious room, full of different bottles. They don't look like I could use them, but maybe I should take one with me?"
Terribly terrible.
I'm not sure how I feel about this, but it does at least make sense in terms of why Netflix are doing so.
Audio works on the subway, on the bike, while riding a bike, cleaning the house and the big one, driving a car. To get into a situation where you can both watch and listen is much rarer.
She chooses to watch shows in which characters address each other with full names and say their intentions out loud. My brain hurts.
Below is not a spoiler, but I like to avoid reading anything about a good film before watching it, and I recommend to do the same here. You like it or you don’t.
This film has no staged speech that tries to explain anything. The little dialogue that it has is what would naturally arise given the situation. For the same reason, most characters have no names or no full names. No situation in which they would formally introduce themselves takes place.
Do I fully understand it immediately, or even after watching it once? No. Does it mean I dislike it? Rather the opposite. Actually, I enjoy being treated as an adult who can make conclusions without having given any pre-digested explanation.
Upstream Color was a great movie as well, it's a shame what happened between Carruth and Amy Seimetz.
Stanley Kubrick did something similar in `2001: A Space Odyssey`. In a scene where staff were being transported in a taxi... on the moon... 100% of the dialog is meaningless. They're discussing the merits of this or that sandwich, not how wonderful the Earth looks from space, or overcoming technical challenges.
It's so refreshing to be living in an environment vs being spoon fed.
Even better is very old or even silent movies ("M" is fantastic: modern-ish thriller from 1931 where sound is a character; Metropolis)
Also dialog-less movies: `Koyaanisqatsi` is incredibly beautiful and has a specific plot, even if there's no understandable dialog nor words.
In theaters _right now_ is `Flow`. No dialog, and no _human_ characters! It's all animated cats and dogs and other animals. It's startling how directly the characters transmit their goals and agenda and emotions.
And agreed on not being spoon fed.
A prime example to the contrary was when in the Joker, spoiler alert, they had a recap showing his delusion. The movie would have been so much better if they had cut that entire segment, and just have the neighbor female act all surprised and weirded out like she did when he entered the apartment.
> Oh help me! Oh, help me! My life is in danger!
> The venomous monster is drawing upon me
> And I can’t escape him.
> How near is his bite,
> With teeth sharp and white!
> Oh gods above!
> Why can’t you hear my mortal cry?
> Destroy the beast or I will die!
> Or surely, I will die!
The opening lines to The Magic Flute (which continues in a similarly expository tone for the duration). Seems like there have always been scripts which were easy to understand while also staring at your phone, though that doesn't stop the ushers at English National Opera getting narky at you if you try!
Die Zauberflote is easy to understand because it’s a fairly light work, and you’re meant to be staring at the lavish staging and costumes. The performers narrate the action because that’s the convention for the genre - it’s a sung story. They break into more conventional dialogue for the recitative sections (a tradition that went out of style with Verdi.)
The comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan were contemporary to Verdi's work and still feature lots of dialogue, so they are very approachable. You still won't be able to use your phone, though - you'll be too busy laughing!
My recommendation for an introduction would be the 1982 Canadian production of The Mikado by the Stratford Festival. It is currently available in its entirety on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbpUzCFCy_8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK6y6n98O00
Treating art with reverence and rapt attention didn't get to be a thing until the late Enlightenment. Before that the kind of art you took seriously was religious, and the idea that you were supposed to reverent about it could be considered a carry-over from religion.
Talking over things and not paying attention is almost the default. Sitting still and concentrating on a performance of any kind is a relatively recent idea.
None of this makes the crapification of Netflix (and related trends in other media touched by streaming and tech) any less annoying.
It is true that a lot of old plays, operas etc do exactly what Netflix is accused of here. What is a monologue? Was Shakespeare guilty of creating casual viewing content when he wrote Hamlet's monologue? Shouldn't he have just showed Hamlet's ambivalence???
But it just occurred to me... Maybe Netflix should do half-movies next. The movie is designed to be appealing on the menu, to have a good but not too engrossing first 30 minutes, and then start ramping down the budget drastically for the remaining of the film, which -it seems- people aren't watching any more. Like don't bother with FX, then just don't bother with actors, then just insert shots of the storyboard or don't even bother with the story at all and just insert stock video, etc. Maybe at the end add a narrated summary of what happened (or didn't happen).
(Unfortunately, it turns out he was struggling with dementia and it seems he was trying to cash out before he couldn't act at all)
Knowing the reason why though, I don't blame or fault him for doing it.
Deleted Comment
But then it splits, the useless aspect discarded and the useful merged with other old and new fragments, in combinations tried by the experimental startup ecosystem.
In the end we may have for example entertainment venues for both playing arcades and watching movies and theater plays, perhaps with dinner for example. (We already have this actually.)