This is how it worked a decade+ ago, when there was still alpha to be had on providing better streaming service. It was great and we got things like the Netflix Prize and all sorts of content ranking improvements, better CDN platforms, lower latency and less buffering, more content upgraded to HD and 4K. Plus some annoying but clearly effective practices like auto-play of trailers and unrelated shows.

Now these are all solved problems, so there is no benefit in trying to compete on making a better platform / service. The only thing left is competing on content.

> I want several companies that are able to license whatever content they want. And ideally the customer can choose between a subscription that includes everything, and paying for content a la carte, or maybe subscriptions that focus on specific kinds of content

This seems like splitting hairs, it's almost exactly what we do have. You can still buy and rent individual shows & movies from Apple and Amazon and other providers. Or you can subscribe to services. The only difference is there is no one big "subscription that includes everything", you need 10 different $15 subscriptions to get everything. Again, kind of splitting hairs though. The one big subscription would probably be the same price as everything combined anyway.

This should really be the end goal. We are worse off than cable right now with all these streaming services and worse , overlapping content.

This is how cable worked, no? And how streaming has been working. And it MIGHT be getting things cheaper, maybe? I guess?

But watching specific stuff you want is hell. The cognitive load of searching a bunch of services, or finding a site that tells you where to watch, then it’s not in that same service in your country, you might have to pay extra, or sign up for another streaming service or… Holy cow, it’s a terrible experience.

I’m not saying I have a better idea, or that it couldn’t be worse. But it’s terrible.

I want more than two parties competing to run the democracy, also.

The things you want arn't going to happen under the current operating procedures of the United States of America.

I hope that's clear.

This would be ideal. The cable model was inherently flawed; it was just a series of local monopolies that poisoned it. Give consumers a choice. But considering everyone operates like Disney anymore and is highly protective of its IP I doubt this world will ever exist without direct government intervention.

I think ideally you'd have 2-3 streaming services that all have all the content without exclusives? (So the spotify of movies and tv, the tidal of movies and tv, the bandcamp of movies and tv...)

HBO owns Westworld and stopped streaming it to avoid paying residuals.

Like we had for music on the radio, compulsory licensing

>Everyone likes a service when it’s subsidized by VC dollars.

Netflix went public in 2002. It was +8 years later that the streaming-only service was launched in 2010. The digital streaming wasn't "subsidized by VC".

Netflix had more content from everybody back then because the other studios licensed their content for cheap prices to Netflix. But those studios then realized that Netflix was growing rapidly on the backs of their content. Once those multi-year contracts expired, studios like Disney didn't renew with Netflix and instead, started their own platform (e.g. Disney+).

Netflix is still "competing" with discs at this point, although I would accept that discs aren't exactly winning. Most of the content I watch comes from blu-rays, and with a few exceptions (The Americans, grr), most of the things I want to watch have been released on disc. In fact, there is a small community of film enthusiasts who continue to purchase media outright, e.g., https://www.blu-ray.com.

I started using Netflix in 2001 as a DVD subscriber. It was wonderful for nearly 20 years. I ended up canceling before the service officially ended because it was clear that the writing was on the wall and the service was going downhill fast. You used to be able to get nearly any movie or TV series, domestic or foreign. It's a lot more work to find good stuff now, even with streaming in the mix.

That only happened because the content libraries decided to exit the music streaming game.

It also helped that the largest player in the music content library game (Sony) was not really as adept at software as Comcast, Disney, and NBCU were.

>you paid a pretty low price to get virtually everything you wanted

Depends what you wanted.

Both a deep back catalog of TV and film more generally were always pretty lacking on all-you-could-eat streaming services. Frankly, my biggest complaint with Netflix is that they basically drove local video rental out of business and then shut their own rental down.

>People were happy because they only needed one subscription and one app. Buying Warner Bros won't bring that back. If anything, it makes it less likely.

Plus a cable TV subscription in many/most cases.

As a rule of thumb maybe, but in this case it might well.

In their books (e.g. "No Rules Rules" Netflix seems extremely attractive to creators because they pay top dollar, as a general policy, and have the internal decision-making processes that support making bold bets on art without committees that push "safer" creative choices.

Totally fair. The rights around a lot of media is a giant mess. Is why songs used on some movies are not the same as the ones that were used in theaters. And is just baffling for people from the outside to consider.

Netflix really struggles to make quality content. If we could somehow divorce the studios from the platforms, that would be ideal. But that ship sailed a long time ago.

Speaking as someone who once worked at a company where these were real issues that came up - it's very often the case that intermediate parties in the contracts have dissolved.

Renegotiating the contracts would require lengthy and expensive processes of discovering the proper parties to actually negotiate with in the first place.

Although the contracts that were already executed can be relied upon, it truly is a can of worms to open, because it's not "Renegotiate with Studio X", it's "Renegotiate with the parent company of the defunct parent company of the company who merged with Y and created a new subsidiary Z" and so on and so forth, and then you have to relicense music, and, if need be, translations.

Then repeat that for each different region you need to relicense in because the licenses can be different for different regions.

The cost of negotiation would be greater than the losses to piracy tbh.

> Reality is, the people making these decisions don't want to change things, at least not enough to go through the effort of changing and renegotiating the licenses.

Which is a perfectly sensible reason for a business decision.

> "Well they don't because of 'licensing issues' with the source code." as if they were being stopped by a law of physics.

So laws should just be ignored? Issues created by human social constructs are very real.

I'm with you in spirit, but I think you are underestimating how wide and complex the dependency trees can be in content licensing. And simplifying those licensing structures often mean removing control from individual artists, which we tend to consider a Bad Thing.

The issue is that Netflix doesn't control those restrictions, the content creators (well, rights holders) do, and their incentives don't always align.

Licensing is really complicated and requires lot of paper work. The best example is the music soundtracks of old TV series. They even get substituted if they don't get the proper license to stream them. So some old show get new soundtrack or background music and they don't feel the same.

"The price of one subscription" being the price of Netflix plus the price of HBO. Streaming is turning back into cable where everything is trapped in one bill, no matter how expensive and uninteresting some part of that bill is.

Having Discovery's awful content push out quality HBO content was already a major blow.

Yeah but there is 0 chance that the cost would remain similar to what it is now

> Netflix and HBO Max content at the price of one subscription

Yes, the price of one subscription. I think some cable packages in the US are $200 per month?

I quit my 50% discount after realizing that if I don't watch it anyways.

Funny thing though. When I cancelled my subscription, they offered me 50% off for a month or something like that.

Oh no I am reminded of my dead physical Rolling Stone lifetime subscription!

> Hulu and Disney Plus have taken centuries in this endeavor.

Only in the US. Everywhere else Hulu has always been integrated into Disney+).

Part of that is because Disney didn’t outright own Hulu until recently. It was a joint ownership.

Everything about these big moves in the streaming space is basically to re-create the "good old days" of cable subscriptions and pay-per-view.

I think we can expect HBO streaming to continue as a premium subscription for movies and high-production-value shows. That would let everything else to land on Netflix with no conflict.

I can imagine an internal analysis that says:

Move show X, Y, and Z from Netflix to HBO Max because those profiles are likely to add the second subscription.

---

Piracy seems like the only thing that keeps prices/practices in check.

Yeah, I can easily see something like 2 separate at $20/month vs 1 super at $35/month (make-believe figures).

Assuming all WB and Netflix customers move to the super platform, that's a loss for Netflix (assuming the super platform doesn't significantly reduce their costs).

And the $35 might be more than some set of current Netflix subscribers want to pay, so they drop the service, so an even bigger potential loss.

Certainly, I have no desire to subsidize sports fans via a higher Netflix super package.

No, that was going to happen next year, but it never did and this deal has been agreed for the whole company.

WB pitched that to make it easier for them to be acquired by shunting all the debt to the channels entity - but it was unlikely the debt owners were ever going to go for that as presented, there would have been quite a significant chance of the channels group going under and them losing all the money.

But ultimately it turned out that enough entities were willing to bid now, before that split, that there was no point continuing to work out how to do it. Netflix will, presuming this deal completes, be the owner of CNN/TNT/Discovery at al.

Now, I am very sure they will look to sell several parts of those off - there is absolutely no way Netflix leadership wants to continue to own TNT - but that will have to come later.

If they like money, they'll just roll HBO into Netflix and raise prices. I really doubt Disney's complex bundling/pricing scheme is helping their bottom line.

Well all the content costs don't change, and they can combine CDN servers anywhere it makes sense regardless of whether it's one service or two. So revenue and margin numbers should track pretty tightly.

Yeah to be honest i see approaching 45-50/mo coming at some point in the next few years easily.

> They all had their chance. They blew it.

This is so silly. It's like saying "Sweet manufacturers all had the chance to sell the same sweets, and they blew it. So I just nick most sweets." Just say "I don't like paying for things and can get away with this, and my ethics only work in public or when I'm forced to obey them." And then we're done.

Or...don't pirate and rotate streaming services. Just because a new show drops doesn't mean you need to watch it next week

The comment you're replying to said "legally".

Yeah until Netflix adds tiered pricing for content and you end up paying more than what Netflix + HBO Max together would have cost because Netflix is the only game in town for that content..

I think like all media consolidation this will send a lot of people back to the seven seas..

I'm actually a little surprised that, some discounts for annual subscriptions notwithstanding, the streaming services haven't done more to discourage short-term jump on/jump off subscriptions.

But they have the data and I don't. I assume there's enough stickiness and inertia that most people are not canceling and restarting services all the time. I know I don't. I just decide I don't care enough about most content (and don't really watch much video or binge watch anyway).

Which is why it won't happen, what would the revenue benefit of that be?

In the medium term you'll get a D+/Hulu-esque split with maybe a discounted bundle of Netflix and HBO Max together - the evidence is pretty strong that bundles reduce churn.

If they ever do go to one library, it'll be because Netflix feel they are able to push prices to the same level as both services combined.

The Crown is absolutely a prestige TV show. Stranger Things is also high quality and high budget. You could probably include Bridgerton in there too, it's not my kind of show but I can still recognize that it's a well put together one.

Until Disney killed it because "they didn't like the numbers" the Avengers series, including Dare Devil, Luke Cage, etc were highly regarded by all my friends at the time. I don't know why Disney screwed that up colossally outside of wanting the show within Disney Plus.

Let's be honest, all the netflix plans will have ads just like they do now. They might not interrupt your show while you're in the middle of it, but you'll get ads no matter what. Ads as soon as the credits roll, a barrage of full screen ads if you pause a show for more than 10 seconds, full screen ads the moment you open the app, etc.

Netflix Plus (Netflix+) which is a side subscription to all of that which lets you syncopate different playback screens to one account, or some other esoteric value add which muddies the waters

There's still the one layer that comes with Dolby Atmos and access to the WB back catalogue

MaxNet if you want to go final form Fortune 100

"Maxflix" sounds like a name for a pornstudio but it is i guess better than the alternative of "NetB.O."

And then to X

then to NetMax

Technically Skydance is led David Ellison, Larry's son.

Though, he's a trustfund kid and you can make a case that Larry owns it indirectly. (But if you want to make that case then it implies that Larry owns two media empires given his daughter Megan Ellison owns slightly less successful Skydance rival Annapurna.)

That’s David Ellison, not Larry. (Same family, though.)

55” TV’s have been out for decades they really aren’t a replacement especially when put in a normal living space.

The issue IMO is so few movies are worth any extra effort to see. Steam a new marvel movie and you can pause half way through when you’re a little bored and do something else.

I remember being amazed when the Michael Keaton’s Batman movie was released on VHS in the same year as the theatrical release. I had never seen a movie come out for home use that fast.

It's the sound that's missing from a home viewing setup

Disagree, I'd gladly go and watch movies in a cinema, the experience cannot be replicated at home, at least not unless you're very rich.. a 55" tv and a soundbar just doesn't do it.

For me, the price is killing it (80% of the reason) and bad movies (20%)... two tickets, drinks, popcorn/nachos/candy/something, and we're in the 50eur+ range. Then add the messy audiences, ads, trailer#1, more ads, trailer #2, another ad for some reason, and it's been 20 mintues of technially all ads for something that i paid money for. Then the movie is a total disappoint. I'm not into superheroes nor into pedro pascal, so most of the movies are out before i even buy the ticket and the rest are somehow... just 'bad'. Watching a bad movie at home is ok... you fall asleep, press stop, it doesn't matter... whatching a bad movie at an artsy film festival is also ok.. it was low budget, the ticket was 4 euros, no popcorn, had beer before you enter, so you can fall asleep in the cinema and hope not to snore. But 50 euros and all the ads for a bad movie is just too much.

Movie theaters can compete by installing LED screens. My company has a movie screen sized LED screen and it looks so much better than modern digital projectors.

Begone, bot

I believe the Academy Awards and a few other things too also influence this. The rules to be eligible still very much favor legacy studios IIRC. But, with this that may change? Hard to say. I know that quite a few Netflix movies have had theatrical runs at random mom and pop theaters in Cali so they could meet eligibility requirements for the various awards.

Now I'm envisioning WB movie pass combined with streaming subscriptions. The business models can get quite funky in this paradigm.

> The entire premise depends on him being a monster, not some sort of misunderstood, sympathetic EMO.

This is a misconception on a similar level to thinking the monster's name is Frankenstein: "As depicted by Shelley, the creature is a sensitive, emotional person whose only aim is to share his life with another sentient being like himself."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein%27s_monster#Perso...

Personally, I didn't like it that much. Super long, droll, the casting was misstepped, and they changed the ending.

> The entire premise depends on him being a monster

Have you read the book? She emphasises how pretty all the body parts that Victor picked were.

I was surprised at how many shots that I thought were terrible CGI were in fact practical effects.

> The entire premise depends on him being a monster, not some sort of misunderstood, sympathetic EMO.

Uh, the "monster" is definitely the most sympathetic character in the original novel.

You're describing TV and movies since forever.

Ever year there are a few good shows and movies and a lot of mid-to-bad shows and movies.

This is not a Netflix thing, nor is it new.

By the definition of "stand out" you can't have very many right?

If all of them "stand out" then none of them do.

If WB was any good, would they have been snatched up by Netflix?

All these studios fought the good fight against big tech over many years but the writing was on the wall.

Hopefully a future Progressive presidency reviews all these mergers and breaks up big tech big time.

> It's about all the other projects that would have had great quality but did not secure funding because Netflix prefers to fund mass-produced mediocrity. In Germany we have a saying "Even a blind hen sometimes finds a grain of corn".

Did you see the show Dark?

U.S. version: "Even a blind squirrel (or pig) finds an acorn every now and then."

Same with Extraordinary Attorney Woo and a lot of "originals" on netflix. They'll just buy the rights to air something and then slap their name on it like they made it. That said, I actually appreciate them looking for good media produced overseas and buying up the rights to those shows to bring them to the US. It's a good thing (although it'd be nice if put some effort in making sure there are always quality subs) but it can cause some people to think netflix is producing more good shows than they actually are.

Netflix outside of the US is a very different experience.

In the US, it's mostly their own productions and older content they explicitly acquired, but elsewhere, especially in markets that don't have a local HBO or Disney streaming service, they have incredible backlogs.

I remember finding basically everything I could wish for on there when traveling in SE Asia almost a decade ago, compared to a still decent offering in Western Europe, and mostly cobwebs in the US.

459!? It must take a while to check your list…

If you want some considered thoughts on consolidation and antitrust implications, Cory Doctorow's writings are interesting. Some relevant examples:

"Hate the player AND the game (10 Sep 2025)" https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/10/say-their-names/#object-p...

"The one weird monopoly trick that gave us Walmart and Amazon and killed Main Street (14 Aug 2024)" https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/14/the-price-is-wright/#enfo...

"End of the line for Reaganomics (13 Aug 2021)" https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down

"10 Oct 2022 Antitrust is – and always has been – about fairness" https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/10/play-fair/#bedoya

And his archives for more:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/monopoly/

https://pluralistic.net/tag/antitrust/

The laws only exist if people are willing to apply them.

> Apple

do we really want big tech to also control our media?

> The majority of that list is quite old. Have you seen what they're doing now?

Adolescence (which won big at the Emmy's this year), Stranger Things, The Beast in Me, Last Samurai Standing, A Man on the Inside, The Gentlemen, Absentia, Baby Reindeer, Ripley, Arcane, Squid Game, Dynamite Kiss, Delhi Crime, etc.

I suspect the same would be the case for HBO. Their back catalog is more impressive than their current output.

I feel like people who say this never watched a lot of TV before Netflix. Every popular show overstays its welcome and gets cancelled once people get bored. That's just how TV works. Netflix isn't even the worst offender.

Far more shows go on too long than get cancelled too early.

Man a second season would be so great. They could even recast the main character, given their personality lives in a brain disk. But I'd rather they didn't.

I don't like they buried their own show, Westworld, to fuck the actors on residuals

>I just want to see more great art that really sticks, has ambitions and something to tell, and values my time.

Its out there, there just isn't great curation and in a world of ever increasing content more people just dont ever find it and accept whatever mediocrity they find.

I'd have to be younger, 3 notches to the left of Lenin, and in a perpetual billionaires-are-evil rage mode to find it compelling. Got through most of the first season, which is a rare point to quit a show... we either quit after the first episode, or make it all the way to the end. Painfully bad, and not half as much as the stupid Sex and the City way either.

Mostly agree but their original k-dramas for the US market are pretty good.

Note the OP's algo was *while* profitable. You're focused on shows that never make it. I think this is true of the cash cows, while dogs are historically (with only one or two channels so limited broadcast bandwidth) networks could be far more brutal while Netflix needs a much bigger catalog.

Yeah, I dunno. There's a guy on Instagram right now making techno-futuristic stories I equate to micro-episodes and...it gets old. Economies of scale would say that finding the good content in the sea of dogshit would be impossible if everyone was doing that. Premium is premium because it's scarce; not everyone is doing it.

Silo-ing is the biggest brake on human progress

Yeah lol, Sony still doing good in Music,Film etc

Sony just focus at their home market more