<story><title>It&apos;s hard to say who&apos;s winning the streaming wars, but customers are losing</title><url>https://apitman.com/27/#losing-the-streaming-wars</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>antasvara</author><text>Is there some difference between streaming companies and classic movie studios that makes this the case? Arguably, the current state of movies is a direct result of studios realizing that well-produced, middle of the road content is the most profitable.&lt;p&gt;Of course, I could be missing something about the industry and how streaming has shaped it. I just struggle to see how the streaming ecosystem has different content requirements than a normal movie studio.</text></item><item><author>ryandrake</author><text>There is also too much &amp;quot;content&amp;quot; being made, and not enough quality movies to watch. There&amp;#x27;s a recent reddit thread[1] about this weird trend lately where more and more of what&amp;#x27;s offered is junk &amp;quot;made for TV&amp;quot; quality content. Even the word we use for it is revealing: Content. So boring. So gray and bland. Like a dry cardboard media ration made specifically to be consumed by some global ISO-standard Consumer. Everything has this odd B-movie With Big Stars hue. But two months after you view it, you struggle to even remember what it was about. Polished, featureless content, but hey, it&amp;#x27;s in 4K and stars Dwayne Johnson.&lt;p&gt;High-quality, daring, inspired, more than superficially controversial, world-changing movies are another casualty of the rise of streaming.&lt;p&gt;1: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;old.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;movies&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;qx4rtu&amp;#x2F;i_think_movies_are_getting_this_weird_netflixy&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;old.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;movies&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;qx4rtu&amp;#x2F;i_think_movi...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>majormajor</author><text>If you look at twenty years ago, there&amp;#x27;s far more content available now, for far less money. Your minimum cable outlay back then would still cover the cost of a couple streaming services.&lt;p&gt;What there &lt;i&gt;isn&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; is a good way to get a single subscription to watch anything you want. The cable bundle was close to that for TV content, but very lacking for movies. So if you want to watch a really wide sampling of TV content, it can feel like we&amp;#x27;re going backward, since there&amp;#x27;s no more one-stop-shop.&lt;p&gt;Careful what you wish for? The big desire then was a la carte, and right now you can bounce between streaming services at will, and they&amp;#x27;re all still far easier to cancel than cable.&lt;p&gt;Some things have fallen through the cracks, particularly long-running (going back to the pre-streaming era) major-network content like the aforementioned Survivor (a random missing episode seems like a weird problem, would love to know what was going on). And getting US content stuff internationally is often sub-par, although... I don&amp;#x27;t recall stories of this being easy at all two decades ago.&lt;p&gt;So consumers are overall definitely winning, but it&amp;#x27;s not a perfect victory for everyone.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vineyardmike</author><text>&amp;gt; Is there some difference between streaming companies and classic movie studios that makes this the case?&lt;p&gt;Yes. Movie studios and streamers have different business models. Movie studios also deal with more &amp;quot;legacy&amp;quot; actor contract negotiations and the like (see disney v scarlet). Theater released movies make most of their money upfront, and make money out on a per-view basis. So they need as many viewers as early as possible.&lt;p&gt;With streamers, they can lose the subscription any month, and only gain it back if they lure you - so they&amp;#x27;re incentivized to give you &amp;quot;anchors&amp;quot; that keep you there. Think game of thrones keeping people subscribed to HBO month over month or Squid Games that gets lots of attention. Once you&amp;#x27;re there, they just have to have &amp;quot;something&amp;quot; for those days you don&amp;#x27;t really know what to watch. That &amp;quot;something&amp;quot; is different for everyone, so they have to make lots of low budget generic stuff that appeals, collectively, to a wide audience. Each show&amp;#x2F;movie can have few viewers, because its going for niche targeting en mass - think themed cable channels but one company has to make something for each theme. Once a streamer makes a show, its &amp;quot;free&amp;quot; to them to share it with as many people as possible, but also doesn&amp;#x27;t cost them anything to not show it.&lt;p&gt;Ben Thompson (stratechery) has talked about this a lot, check him out!</text></comment>
<story><title>It&apos;s hard to say who&apos;s winning the streaming wars, but customers are losing</title><url>https://apitman.com/27/#losing-the-streaming-wars</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>antasvara</author><text>Is there some difference between streaming companies and classic movie studios that makes this the case? Arguably, the current state of movies is a direct result of studios realizing that well-produced, middle of the road content is the most profitable.&lt;p&gt;Of course, I could be missing something about the industry and how streaming has shaped it. I just struggle to see how the streaming ecosystem has different content requirements than a normal movie studio.</text></item><item><author>ryandrake</author><text>There is also too much &amp;quot;content&amp;quot; being made, and not enough quality movies to watch. There&amp;#x27;s a recent reddit thread[1] about this weird trend lately where more and more of what&amp;#x27;s offered is junk &amp;quot;made for TV&amp;quot; quality content. Even the word we use for it is revealing: Content. So boring. So gray and bland. Like a dry cardboard media ration made specifically to be consumed by some global ISO-standard Consumer. Everything has this odd B-movie With Big Stars hue. But two months after you view it, you struggle to even remember what it was about. Polished, featureless content, but hey, it&amp;#x27;s in 4K and stars Dwayne Johnson.&lt;p&gt;High-quality, daring, inspired, more than superficially controversial, world-changing movies are another casualty of the rise of streaming.&lt;p&gt;1: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;old.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;movies&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;qx4rtu&amp;#x2F;i_think_movies_are_getting_this_weird_netflixy&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;old.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;movies&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;qx4rtu&amp;#x2F;i_think_movi...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>majormajor</author><text>If you look at twenty years ago, there&amp;#x27;s far more content available now, for far less money. Your minimum cable outlay back then would still cover the cost of a couple streaming services.&lt;p&gt;What there &lt;i&gt;isn&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; is a good way to get a single subscription to watch anything you want. The cable bundle was close to that for TV content, but very lacking for movies. So if you want to watch a really wide sampling of TV content, it can feel like we&amp;#x27;re going backward, since there&amp;#x27;s no more one-stop-shop.&lt;p&gt;Careful what you wish for? The big desire then was a la carte, and right now you can bounce between streaming services at will, and they&amp;#x27;re all still far easier to cancel than cable.&lt;p&gt;Some things have fallen through the cracks, particularly long-running (going back to the pre-streaming era) major-network content like the aforementioned Survivor (a random missing episode seems like a weird problem, would love to know what was going on). And getting US content stuff internationally is often sub-par, although... I don&amp;#x27;t recall stories of this being easy at all two decades ago.&lt;p&gt;So consumers are overall definitely winning, but it&amp;#x27;s not a perfect victory for everyone.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bryanrasmussen</author><text>&amp;gt;Arguably, the current state of movies is a direct result of studios realizing that well-produced, middle of the road content is the most profitable.&lt;p&gt;yes, if streaming movies well-produced, middle of the road, not terribly expensive is most profitable - as per this recent discussion &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=29247571&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=29247571&lt;/a&gt; on red notice&lt;p&gt;if cinema, big expansive events most profitable (currently)&lt;p&gt;if shows, high quality addictive, dramatic, character driven, etc. is most profitable&lt;p&gt;why is quality series more profitable than middle of road? because you have to get people to make the investment of spending 10+ hours.&lt;p&gt;why are medium quality competence streaming movies most profitable? because many people are willing to spend 90 minutes passing the time with something mildly enjoyable, despite the many draws on our time it&amp;#x27;s still not seen as a serious investment.&lt;p&gt;why are big events blah blah blah - because it costs a lot to go out it is a hassle compared to staying home, I tend to go to restaurant as well when I do it so for me at least it definitely has to have been a night worth it at the end, and something big is more likely to make everyone like whoa I had an experience I can&amp;#x27;t have at home.</text></comment>