<story><title>Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/technology/amazon-snaps-up-james-bond-owner-mgm-845-bln-streaming-war-heats-up-2021-05-26/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kangaroozach</author><text>We have not yet approached the  pre-streaming willingness to pay (WTP).  People used to pay $150 to $200 plus onDemand for the whole package with their cable provider.  Today you can have YouTubeTV, HBO, Netflix, Prime, AppleTV+, Disney+, and Spotify for less than that.  So perhaps the average will hover around $100 with many paying closer to $200 a month.  We are creeping back up to those numbers because people will pay.</text></item><item><author>DrBazza</author><text>&amp;gt; Piracy is competition to bad content behavior&lt;p&gt;I really wish we had the bandwidth we have now, back in the Napster-era.&lt;p&gt;Napster, and others forced, persuaded and cajoled the music industry to consolidate, whether they liked it or not, on Spotify, and iTunes.&lt;p&gt;If we&amp;#x27;d had easy free sharing of movies, it&amp;#x27;s not hard to envisage something similar to what we see now in the music industry forced on the movie companies.  Now it&amp;#x27;s honey pot torrents all over the place.&lt;p&gt;No customer wants to spend X on Shudder, Y on Netflix, and Z on Prime, plus Hulu, HBO, and your cable&amp;#x2F;satellite fee either.  Paying 200 GBP&amp;#x2F;USD a month is utterly absurd.&lt;p&gt;Frankly, I&amp;#x27;m glad I have a waning interest in modern movies as I get older, and I&amp;#x27;m actually more interested in watching old black and white movies that are &amp;quot;free to air&amp;quot; in my country.</text></item><item><author>WarOnPrivacy</author><text>&amp;gt; We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution.&lt;p&gt;Piracy is competition to bad content behavior. It&amp;#x27;s a meaningful consumer response to monopoly, balkanization and other anti-consumer practices.</text></item><item><author>scyzoryk_xyz</author><text>So what we&amp;#x27;re seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930&amp;#x27;s-1950&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s VOD.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>watwatinthewat</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s a good point, though I think the time&amp;#x2F;generational factor may cause it to trend downward. My parents unhappily paid cable prices their whole life. I&amp;#x27;ve never once paid for cable TV and never will be willing to pay that much for subscription entertainment, but I&amp;#x27;m willing to pay for one streaming service and have considered a second at times. Anecdotally reading places like here, I don&amp;#x27;t think I&amp;#x27;m an uncommon case. Again to your point, even though there&amp;#x27;s fuss every time a streaming provider raises the cost (especially Netflix being one of the larger players and who has been around long enough to have increased prices more than once), it seems each service is viewed as cheap and well under what people are willing to pay.</text></comment>
<story><title>Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/technology/amazon-snaps-up-james-bond-owner-mgm-845-bln-streaming-war-heats-up-2021-05-26/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kangaroozach</author><text>We have not yet approached the  pre-streaming willingness to pay (WTP).  People used to pay $150 to $200 plus onDemand for the whole package with their cable provider.  Today you can have YouTubeTV, HBO, Netflix, Prime, AppleTV+, Disney+, and Spotify for less than that.  So perhaps the average will hover around $100 with many paying closer to $200 a month.  We are creeping back up to those numbers because people will pay.</text></item><item><author>DrBazza</author><text>&amp;gt; Piracy is competition to bad content behavior&lt;p&gt;I really wish we had the bandwidth we have now, back in the Napster-era.&lt;p&gt;Napster, and others forced, persuaded and cajoled the music industry to consolidate, whether they liked it or not, on Spotify, and iTunes.&lt;p&gt;If we&amp;#x27;d had easy free sharing of movies, it&amp;#x27;s not hard to envisage something similar to what we see now in the music industry forced on the movie companies.  Now it&amp;#x27;s honey pot torrents all over the place.&lt;p&gt;No customer wants to spend X on Shudder, Y on Netflix, and Z on Prime, plus Hulu, HBO, and your cable&amp;#x2F;satellite fee either.  Paying 200 GBP&amp;#x2F;USD a month is utterly absurd.&lt;p&gt;Frankly, I&amp;#x27;m glad I have a waning interest in modern movies as I get older, and I&amp;#x27;m actually more interested in watching old black and white movies that are &amp;quot;free to air&amp;quot; in my country.</text></item><item><author>WarOnPrivacy</author><text>&amp;gt; We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution.&lt;p&gt;Piracy is competition to bad content behavior. It&amp;#x27;s a meaningful consumer response to monopoly, balkanization and other anti-consumer practices.</text></item><item><author>scyzoryk_xyz</author><text>So what we&amp;#x27;re seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930&amp;#x27;s-1950&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s VOD.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>llampx</author><text>I have a hard time believing that that was the average monthly cost of a cable subscription. Mine was never more than $30-40 when I needed cable for the internet.</text></comment>