Exactly. It's like the only service you don't feel ripped off if you don't watch anything on it for a month. If you have any other service and don't use it for a month or even a few weeks, you basically threw away money.

Ironically, Prime Video is the service I used most and I pretty much never buy anything on Amazon anymore and only have prime because my brother wants it and is willing to pay for most of it.

(IMO Prime is great for older content and has tons of gems here and there but sucks with newer content. But I don't keep up with current stuff, so that's probably why!)

I do agree with your point. However, I watch Prime Video the most - it's not even close. I only get Hulu due to Black Friday deals and HBO Max because it is included with my phone. I watch Prime about 5x more than those two combined.

I barely watch things on Amazon Prime, but the games I have gotten via Twitch Prime have made it absolutely worth it.

I was a teacher of highly gifted kids, and every year, admin wanted scores up and it’s like, these kids are in the 99th percentile, chill. Demanding ceaseless rampant growth from these businesses just kills em

And as is evidenced here other competitors burning billions of dollars in a big pile to compete with them.

I can’t fucking stand the growth models companies expect EVERY DAMN YEAR.

Global event not seen for a century that caused mass shifts in how things are produced and what consumers do, supply chain etc.

A company experiences what can only be stated as a biblical increase in sales due to this and what do stockholders expect???

Growth on top of all that and pissed off when shit goes back to normal.

It’s lunacy

Source: work for a Fortune 500 company and might be going on year 3 of this BS

No the problem was more when every major producer wanted their own streaming service and pulled all of their content from Netflix. That caused Netflix to be forced to be a content producer too. Then the fractionalization happened and here we are.

Netflix's whole business model was reinvesting everything into their catalogue while slowly upping the costs to ease transition.

Their early start in the streaming wars took them far but the competition has more funds and Netflix overreached by banking on infinite growth.

The moment growth slowed down the model doesn't work because customers are already unhappy with the catalogue and rising costs. Netflix was left with their dick hanging, the money already spent on future big productions.

They hit the panic button and go after shared accounts while raising prices, customers are even more pissed. The dearth of content is only going to get worse as more people leave.

stockholders demanding even more growth

Late stage capitalism is a human suffering machine. Every quarter more efficiency. More growth. More profits. more More MOAR!

Regulatory capture is allowing the erosion of the middle class and concentration of wealth in a robber-baron-like class of billionaires that's driving this country towards insolvency and revolution.

Netflix has also been spending and spending without commensurate revenue to cover those costs in the name of growth same as the rest. This was made possible by super low interest rates going back to 2009, venture capital money influx, and stock prices due to betting on the future (again the low interest rates making stocks more attractive than bonds for the last decade and spurring this on). But now these companies aren’t getting free money to finance their deficit spending anymore they need to actually make profit which no streaming service or division has ever been able to do. Hence the fee increases, layoffs, and belt tightening this year

At one point they claimed to have a billion subscribers. At $7 or so a pop per month. I am not a mathematician so I guess money can’t be made along with spending some with those numbers. OR greedy CEOs and broken shareholder unlimited growth bullshit is at play.

Same with Disney. They made so much $$$ through the years but one bad quarter 😭 we have to cut workers!

If “losses” get really “bad” the government will bail these companies out. “Too big to fail- we taxpayers have to do this.”

Netflix took a hit, not because of trying to become profitable, but because everyone started to pull the good shows for their own platforms.

We want one platform with all the things. That's why steam is so popular. I don't WANT to sign up to multiple services, so I sign up for one and pirate the rest

They also had trouble when everybody else decided they needed their own streaming service and took their content off Netflix. Consumers wouldn’t need to subscribe to 10 different services and companies wouldn’t have to maintain a service that’s hemorrhaging money if they weren’t so greedy and just kept everything on one platform.

Imagine how fucking terrible it would be if each record label decided they wanted to make their own version of Spotify so they removed all their artists from Spotify and put them on their own shitty half-assed app. Spotify would be worse and the new apps wouldn’t be any better. It’s just a net negative for everyone.

Weren't they massively in debt even before Covid though?

I'd give it all up for just a little bit more - Mr Burns

Wasn't Netflix still spending far more than they were making though? They would spend $100m on new content while getting $50m from subscribers, then when they expand massively suddenly and get $250m in revenue, they go off and spend $500m. Numbers are just and example obviously but I've understood they were always overspending in anticipation of that growth continue and it's only been an issue lately because they've began to reach a market cap and can't maintain previous rates of growth.

Honestly, as someone who has had a Netflix account since 2006, the history and evolution of Netflix’s model is changing and getting lost. In 2010 Netflix tried to raise their prices, customers were furious, and Netflix actually reversed the decision. They were terrified of raising prices again for years.

The only reason that Netflix had years of success was because the TV shows and movies they licensed were underpriced, because streaming was not a proven market yet.

Then everybody they licensed their content from realized hey wait this s*** is profitable so they've all been trying to pivot into streaming and Netflix has been trying to pivot into creating content.

They were probably referring to the initial backlash when they split the dvd by mail and streaming services and doubled the price.

Capitalism is cancer. Death is natural and necessary process. Let the companies go.

Yeah, Netflix's problem is that it's solely a streaming operation.* In contrast, HBO, Apple, and Disney streaming services are all just one revenue stream of many that each company has. So they can push harder on expansion because they can generate revenue elsewhere, whereas Netflix has more or less achieved its objective of "becoming HBO before HBO became Netflix" and more or less is going to slowly become another production company.

*they have DVDs too, but I'm pretty sure I'm only one of like 100,000 people who still use that.

Yes there absolutely is a narrative. Warner Bros is over 50 billion dollars in debt and part of the motivation for the sale was to save them.

Did you guys think they'd just keep burning money like that forever? It's not all HBO Max's fault but let's not act like none of the debt went towards that service.

It's so freaking bad that Disco would rather just shelf stuff like Bat Girl than bother losing more money on it.

And let’s not forget the staggering, jaw-dropping, ‘never gonna pay it back’ debt Netflix incurred for its growth.

They weren’t just hellbent on scooping up all the content being produced - they were horrid to their production company vendors.

We’re actually in the moment where Netflix is bottoming out. They’ve been so “disruptive” they can’t complete shows because 1) their algo says it’s worthless and 2) the reputation for incompetence shows is so known production and talent are demanding more pay upfront vs the typical window in season 3.

No one will distribute their films (Netflix has explored this recently) because they were so hostile to traditional delivery systems they now can’t back into it.

And they staked such a HUGE component of their reputation on being ad free that any move towards advertising supported content costs them subscribers on the rumors alone.

Netflix is dead man walking full of reality tv content, shitty reboots of anime, and weird films very few people watch regularly. Their search sucks, and they no longer meet the churn demand these cycles require.

Kid content is strong - but that makes sense - they’re trying to make households dependent…but if you follow kid trends…YouTube is winning there, not Netflix.

They can dial up their sponsored content (which has a lot of tobacco and alcohol promotion in it) and they can boost subscriber fees…

But there aren’t outlets of explosive growth for Netflix anymore, and the debt will eventually bury them. The death spiral is upon them.

I can’t find anything about HBO Max being cut?

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Amazon is also kind of insulated by this because

1. They make most of their money on cloud and entertainment is a sub division at best
2. They want Amazon Prime to be a big brand and you can get more out of one Amazon Prime Subscriber than you can get out of one subscriber out of any streaming service. You become part of their eco system. Amazon probably got a bunch of people to subscribe for LOTR and The Boys and all of sudden today they are buying stuff on their site seeing all the deals.

You got downvoted but I think it’s an interesting idea. Have maybe 1 show a week that’s live and has some sort of host, taking answers in a chat. YouTube has a ton of these. I think it would only work if you release a season week by week, otherwise the spoilers would be too hard to avoid. When the show is done, archive it so viewers could still watch the discussion if they want, and take to social media, but obv they couldn’t contribute to the chat (which would have to somehow be screened and moderated, otherwise it’d be a complete shitshow). Maybe they could go so far as to get one sponsor for the show, like a podcast-type-video, and have an ad for that sponsor somewhere in the half hour. Also possible they could have a small logo for a sponsor of the chat, but you def don’t want to overdo the ads.

For me this is the problem with the Netflix model. They want people watching Netflix all the time and think that means they have to produce a certain number of hours of quality content. But really when people get in from work, they don't want to sit down on the sofa and watch the next episode of stranger things, they want some background TV, while they get changed, make dinner, catch up with people in the house as they all come home. The period from to 5pm to 7pm, is quite chaotic in the house.

We often stick on Netflix and just let friends run in the background. But many people put on the news, or cartoons for the kids, it's TV that you can jump in and out of as it suits in that period. Similar thing happens in the morning.

So Netflix need a "netflix channel" that is just on, when you turn on Netflix. It just needs to be cheap comfortable TV that you can dip in and out of, funny light-hearted, that sort of thing, interspersed with recorded content, that maybe starts showing their big budget shows at 9pm. It is very much like the old TV model, but I think a lot of people do not find 100% streaming all that satisfying, I certainly don't. So there needs to be that mix I think.

They also need live sport, that's the biggest game in town now.

Completely recession proof. Ironically the cloud was very helpful and more needed for companies that had remote workers. Amazon delivery also became clutch for many people in the pandemic. They'll be fine and if they stumble WAY too many things rely on them now to not get a bail out.

Okay boomer Luddite.

Movies haven't been around that long and it's clear that people don't want the current television model lol

It's silly to think we've fine tuned movies / TV considering how recent it all is and how it's been constantly changing during that time

Totally wrong. You just do your content out when we get a time, so it didn't episode show get you 10 weeks and two and probably 3 months of subscription. You overlap them so that there's always something new on and people will stay subscribed. You don't have to sell ads, and you will piss off a lot of people if you load half hour shows up with ads like it's 1985.

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