
Netflix is moving television beyond time-slots and national markets - rbanffy
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/06/30/netflix-is-moving-television-beyond-time-slots-and-national-markets
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blfr
I've seen a couple of Netlflix shows and don't understand the improvement.
It's the same TV junk but over the Internet. Now even made by the same people.

Other forms of content have been completely transformed by the change in
medium. Podcasts have built upon their radio legacy and diversified
tremendously. YouTube allowed people to share nearly anything from incoherent
rants to whole college courses.

Netflix merely replaced the ads with subscription and remains the same
cognitive parasite TV was, pumping out stuff that you're better off not
watching at all. Another Grey's Anatomy or Glee, do you want that?

~~~
endisukaj
There's tons of great TV shows nowadays. Mentioning Grey's anatomy and Glee
does a disservice to TV.

Besides the obvious Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad there's Stranger things,
Black Mirror, Westworld, just to name a few. Hell, all of the above are much
much better than 90% of the crappy Marvel/superhero/blockbuster movie
Hollywood keeps spewing nowadays.

~~~
muse900
I'll agree with you and the OP.

I think what the OP is trying to say here is that for example netflix just
mass produces shows with the same people over and over again dropping the
quality of its shows. I'd say netflix has some good shows to watch, but the
way its going and the way its producing shows I'd say most of netflix shows
are garbage with only a few of them being nice to watch.

~~~
isostatic
What you consider garbage others consider good. Netflix knows what you watch,
they are the product, you are the customer. There's no competition for time
slots where people who like $goodshow are drowned out by people who like
$populartrash

With legacy tv you are the product, the show is the overhead, and the
advertisers are the customer. With Netflix you are the customer and the show
is the product.

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phobosdeimos
Actually it was pirates who did that in the late 90s/early 2000s. Nobody was
showing Naruto except kazaa. But noone ever gives them credit.

~~~
abritinthebay
Because the implied point is about it being _mainstream_. Which what you’re
describing explicitly isn’t.

~~~
slededit
Piracy _was_ mainstream in the early 90s/2000s. It was only when iTunes came
out and the RIAA lawsuits successfully killed the p2p clients that it tamed
back down.

~~~
wolco
iTunes changed the music business into what it is today.

The heyday of albums, bands, 20 dollar cds is over. But music has become less
special less mainstream and people are less likely to identify themselves by
subgroups formed around a music type. Young people are not on mass claiming to
be Punks, goths, hippies, metal fans, disco heads, something new etc. Which
has slowed down the evolution of music.

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mc32
As Netflix becomes a bigger player around the world and it flexes its
influence, I expect to see some international jurisdictions to question its
power and imperial projection (projecting its values on countries with
different values as well as for threatening the viability of local industries)

~~~
thomasfedb
Must say, as a Netflix user I'm continually impressed with the breadth of and
progressive nature of their original content. It's a bit selling point.

~~~
sergiotapia
Conversely it's alienating me more and more each quarter with it's
"progressive" nature.

~~~
SteveNuts
Can you give an example?

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JackCh
It's probably best for civility's sake if he didn't. Would it really add much
to the discussion if he did? I think it should suffice to say that the range
of netflix content is far narrower than the ideological range of the general
population.

~~~
learnstats2
Surely the opposite is true: Netflix is providing content for a broader
ideological range.

They are still listing Friends and Breaking Bad, you're just not furious about
those.

~~~
JackCh
I'm not furious about anything, did you notice that I'm not the guy upthread?
Though I do find your assumption that I like Friends and Breaking Bad to be
strange. Why do you assume that?

> _" Netflix is providing content for a broader ideological range."_

Furthermore, this is not actually the opposite of what I said. ( _" I think it
should suffice to say that the range of netflix content is far narrower than
the ideological range of the general population."_) You use the word
"broader", which is a relative term, but don't specify precisely what you are
relating Netflix to. I assume you are relating it to traditional television
programming (I assume this since the two shows you mentioned by name were
traditional television programming.) But if you'll read my statement again,
you'll see that's not what I was relating Netflix to.

I related the range of Neflix content to the ideological range of _the general
population_. Not to traditional television, to _the general population._ Do I
really need to explain that traditional television too only covers a small
slice of the ideological range of the general population? I'll do so:

There are ideas and worldviews out there in which you'll never find mentioned
or catered to in any mainstream television show _or_ any Netflix show. The
reasons for this are as varied as the ideas and worldviews themselves. Some
don't get on TV or Netflix because they are difficult to monetize or run
contrary to corporate interests. Some are too niche to bother recognizing, and
others are offensive to other larger portions of society (I assume you assume
it all falls under this later category, because you're eager to act morally
righteous. I assume that about you because you assumed I was furious.) Some
ideas and worldviews go unrecognized by television and netflix simply because
they've gone _unnoticed_ by television and netflix executives and filmmakers.

The sum of human ideology, ideas and worldviews is MUCH larger than the sum of
what traditional television _and_ netflix has on display. It's healthy to
recognize this because failure to do so necessarily means your understanding
of the world is contracted to the intersection of what mass media executives
think publishable (that is, what they can agree amongst themselves to
publish.)

~~~
learnstats2
Thank you for clarifying.

I now understand your statement meant something like "Netflix content has a
narrower ideological range than the ideological range of the whole population"

I recognise why you think this is an important claim here, but I don't think
it is a useful comparison - no content provider can provide for the complete
diversity of 7 billion people: it's not a fair comparison. A content provider
can only make decisions within the resources that they have.

Meanwhile, I was saying "Netflix content has a broader ideological range [than
equivalent TV networks and content providers]".

By picking those two shows, I was identifying that Netflix does not exclude
people who were previously satisfied with that narrower range of content.

~~~
JackCh
Netflix is no longer competing with traditional television, they're competing
with a user-driver modern web. Youtube doesn't allow all kinds of content but
even so it has orders of magnitude more coverage than netflix. And for the
content you won't find on youtube, it's usually pretty easy to find it on
other sites. I think this is a problem for Netflix that is only going to get
worse as the older generations that were primed by traditional television
become less economically relevant and new generations of "internet natives"
come in.

Personally if I'm going to sit down and passively consume media, I usually
like it to be about people making things, ideally with constrained resources.
Preferably nonfiction. At any point in time Netflix may have a handful of
documentaries that fit the bill, but compared to a platform like youtube it's
basically nothing.

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pndy
I'd be more satisfied with Netflix and other streaming services operating in
my country if these would offer wider content catalogs not limited by
licensing agreements - with ability to rent it, as classic vhs or dvd rental
was working (no idea if that was already a thing on Netflix - it operates here
since 2016). I had no clue that N. had Family Guy until I read on 3rd part
site that it's being pulled out without any information it was there in first
place. We're paying same money for the service but available content is
different; instead of popular series known and aired in tv, we're getting some
cheap uknown fillers. So you see the problem here.

Sadly, such rental it's not going to happen because companies want to hold
their deck of "cards" and refuse to share it with other tables in this video
streaming casino.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
> ability to rent

Netflix are clearly only interested in the subscription model, but if you want
a la carte rentals, they're available from
Google/Amazon/Rakuten/Sony/Microsoft/Apple.

> such rental it's not going to happen because companies want to hold their
> deck of "cards" and refuse to share it with other tables in this video
> streaming casino

From a more optimistic angle, it's neat that Netflix can exist at all at its
current pricepoint.

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chris_wot
Their biggest issue, I feel at least, is that their plots for original content
are getting slower and slower.

You can actually do faster paced, more engaging content. Just look at 12
Monkeys and Fringe.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I agree. I mostly stay away from the Netflix-made show, as it takes 13
episodes to discover there really was no plot to the show.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
It took six seasons to realise there was no plot to Lost.

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tyingq
I wouldn't dismiss their competition either. I specifically paid for Hulu
solely for "The Handmaids Tail", an incredibly well done drama.
([https://m.imdb.com/title/tt5834204/](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt5834204/))

Still dwarfed by Netflix with a ~$10B market cap, this battle isn't over.
Amazon has a decent shot as well.

~~~
amorphid
I love the Handmaid's Tale, but it drives me bonkers that they release new
episodes at the rate of one per week. Release all the episodes in one day darn
it! Making me wait pisses me off and (as I'm discovering) want to complain
about it online.

~~~
mac01021
Why don't you wait until its all been released to watch it, just like you
would have to if they released it all at once after producing all of it?

~~~
amorphid
I don't want to risk spoilers. Any Game Of Thrones fan will relate to that
concept.

~~~
icebraining
Wouldn't then the people who can only watch one episode per week be risking
spoilers?

~~~
mac01021
No. They watch each episode as soon as it is published. Noone else sees the
episode too much earlier than they do, so the probability that someone will
reveal something about the plot before you watch it is minimal.

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pinoyathletics
I havent watched normal television is so long. Cause there is never anything
good on anymore. Its either Youtube, Streams or Netflix now from here on in.
Even DVDS got phased out.

~~~
jstanley
> Its either Youtube, Streams or Netflix now from here on in

What makes you think the medium has stopped developing? It's quite likely that
something else will be invented that will be superior to any of those, and
that will make you wonder why you ever put up with them.

~~~
pinoyathletics
Jstaley i never meant these forms of media replacing television. I meant it
for my own personal preference. But i cannot see TV really gaining my
attention anymore. Too much reality TV Shows these days to ever get me hooked
on mainstream TV anymore.

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forapurpose
Netflix seems to be creating original content all over the world, which is
great. I've seen Netflix original movies and shows offered from Spain, Brazil
and many other countries; the quality is much higher when you take the best
from many places, and it's enriching and challenging to see other cultures -
even via an LCD display.

One odd and disappointing thing we've noticed: Unless required by the script,
almost all the protagonists are white-skinned (or very pale), no matter what
the country. Even in the U.S., that's only ~66% of the population; in Brazil?

It's bizarre to see and very troubling to me. I'm not sure I want to support
that, but there aren't a large number of options that are better. Looking at
Amazon, it's pretty similar. Here's a trick to gain some perspective as you go
through your day: When you look at a group of Americans - Senators, SV people,
faces on movie icons on Amazon, etc, - remember that they come from a country
that is only 1/3 white guys. It's striking to see.

~~~
SyneRyder
_> Netflix seems to be creating original content all over the world, which is
great..._

Keep in mind that many of the "Netflix Originals" are not made by Netflix at
all. In Australia "The Expanse" is a Netflix Original, even though it was made
by SyFy & streamed on Amazon US. Similarly, "Glitch" is labelled Netflix
Original in the US, but not in Australia, and it was made for the Australian
Broadcasting Corporation.

As far as I can tell, Netflix Original only means they have exclusive
distribution rights for a limited time in that country.

