
Disney: Bob Iger bets the company (and Hollywood's future) on streaming - spking
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/bob-iger-bets-company-hollywood-s-future-streaming-1247663
======
ravenstine
While his position is [partly] accurate, it's not exactly revelatory. People,
notably internet pirates, were saying this 20 years ago.

People are going to get fed up if they've got to pay for dozens of streaming
services to get all the shows that they want. On top of that, a lot of these
platforms are still shoving ads in our faces. If streaming manages to become
worse than cable, people might just spend less time watching all that crap...
which is a good thing anyway.

~~~
RoyTyrell
> People are going to get fed up if they've got to pay for dozens of streaming
> services to get all the shows that they wa

I agree. You start paying $70 for internet, $15 to Netflix, $15 to Disney, $10
to Hulu and really you're back to where you were with cable. I think having a
couple offerings in the universe is great for competition reasons, but I will
not spend the equivalent of a cable bill to get most of what I want to watch
from mutually exclusive services.

I'm not saying I'll pirate the shows I can't get, but it certainly makes a
good case for that.

~~~
jrockway
I think we are close to seeing the "true cost" for TV show production and
distribution. I have a feeling that before the Internet, advertisers couldn't
measure the return on their investment, and so were paying too much for TV
ads, making TV cheap for the end user. In addition, people were forced to buy
channels they didn't watch, subsidizing them for people that did. Now we are
close to paying the true cost. I think that's better for the companies
involved and for the consumer; the only incentive is to produce TV that they
want to watch. You don't like it, you stop paying them, they go out of
business. That is the most fair of all business models.

------
whyenot
Amazon, Apple, Disney, HBO Max, Hulu, Peacock, ..., oh, and Netflix. How many
monthly memberships are people going to want to pay for, especially when there
is already a huge library of free content on YouTube? Interesting times...

~~~
echelon
This is strictly worse than cable.

Streaming in the 2010s was a breath of fresh air. You could find everything on
one platform, watch it at your leisure, and pay way less than cable.

Now we're going to have to pay more _AND_ switch between nine different apps
with broken UIs.

This is god awful. All of this because of greed and a lack of regulation.

We need to campaign for limited copyright (20 years), and build services like
Spotify that have everything and merely pay the rights holders.

Disney needs to be broken up. They own 90% of American pop culture. They're
going to begin protection racketing theaters and dumbing down everything to
appease the masses (and foreign governments).

God, I hate what the Internet is becoming.

~~~
scarface74
Yet another post on HN about a company that needs to be broken up because they
are big in some made up market. Now are we going to define a monopoly as the
“Pop Culture” market.

Would you also like the government to “build a market” so that everyone can
have all the software they want and have the government decide what a fair
amount for software is?

~~~
anoncake
> Would you also like the government to “build a market” so that everyone can
> have all the software they want

Yes, of course I would like the democratically elected government to run the
economy in a sane way.

> and have the government decide what a fair amount for software is?

No, that would be absurd. The fair amount for software is equal to its
marginal cost which is zero.

~~~
scarface74
So how should we pay for software developers? Should software as service
products that have hosting cost also be free?

~~~
anoncake
> So how should we pay for software developers?

Taxes, of course. That's how we fund things where individually charging people
does not make sense.

> Should software as service products that have hosting cost also be free?

Generally not, why?

~~~
scarface74
So now we are going to charge higher taxes to subsidize software developers.

Are we also going to have a centralized “5 Year Plan” for the economy? How has
this worked for China and Russia. They realized decades ago that this didn’t
work.

~~~
anoncake
> So now we are going to charge higher taxes to subsidize software developers.

What's wrong with "subsidizing", aka paying, software developers?

> Are we also going to have a centralized “5 Year Plan” for the economy? How
> has this worked for China and Russia. They realized decades ago that this
> didn’t work.

The lack of creativity on a website supposedly populated by engineers keeps
astounding me. Hell, you don't even need creativity to be aware that public
broadcasters exist.

Or to recognize that computing and communication technology has somewhat
improved in the past 30 years. Considering that the planners of the eastern
block had to greatly simplify their plans and still weren't able to finish
their calculations within 5 years, the state capitalist economy worked
remarkably well.

~~~
scarface74
Public broadcasting isn’t exactly producing great content. Do you really want
broadcasting to be controlled by the government? What happens when the “other
party” is in power?

China didn’t “work” until they started allowing private ownership and profit.

~~~
anoncake
> Public broadcasting isn’t exactly producing great content.

I frankly don't know if our experiences differ that much or if your mind is
clouded by ideology.

> Do you really want broadcasting to be controlled by the government?

Of course not, that would be even worse than private broadcasting is.

> What happens when the “other party” is in power?

I don't understand the question. Which "other party" do you mean? There are
many.

> China didn’t “work” until they started allowing private ownership and
> profit.

China didn't have an economy at all? That's news to me. Maoism must be even
more stupid than I thought.

~~~
scarface74
If the “public” is funding broadcasting and the elected officials are holding
the purse strings, do you really think they are going to be overly critical of
the government?

China had an economy but resources weren’t properly allocated and people were
starving in one region while the other region was producing things that no one
needed.

~~~
anoncake
> If the “public” is funding broadcasting [...] do you really think they are
> going to be overly critical of the government?

This is not a hypothetical question, public broadcasters do exist and do
criticize their governments. Will your next question be if public healthcare
can work better than what the USA is doing?

> If the “public” is funding broadcasting and the elected officials are
> holding the purse strings

Then whoever drafted that law didn't do their job which would have included
researching how public broadcasters around the world are organized. Or they're
British and think limiting the power of Parliament is for Europeans, Colonials
and other wimps anyway.

> China had an economy but resources weren’t properly allocated and people
> were starving in one region while the other region was producing things that
> no one needed.

Thanks for telling me things that I already know. I didn't write "Considering
that the planners of the eastern block had to greatly simplify their plans and
still weren't able to finish their calculations within 5 years," for
decoration.

~~~
scarface74
And a quick Google search....

[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-33654279](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-33654279)

~~~
anoncake
Carry on?

------
wolco
I'm surprised by how little content will be offered for the price point that
will increase shortly. The Simpsons and a new star wars show plus 500 movie
titles. Max 50 titles by 2024.

People may pick it up to try it but if there is nothing to keep them watching
many will drop them.

Surprised they are only spending a billion in new content per year and
spending 150 million for 10 star wars episodes.

Surprised they are going in-house for the most part. The level of quality they
are demanding is high. High movie ticket prices use to cover those costs and
generate record profits. Under this new model they will start losing money
until they reach peak subscriber if those targets are slower than expected
that will put pressure to reduce the amount of new content and live off of
their back catalogue.

~~~
paganel
Maybe people with kids will pick it up? Which, granted, it's a pretty big
market, but even so I think you are correct on your assessment when it comes
to the very few titles they'll have available.

And to be honest I don't know how much they'll be able to milk the Star Wars
brand, it starts looking very, very stale. Even Pixar has started losing a big
part of its attractiveness since it has been acquired by Disney, which I
didn't think possible at the time of the acquisition.

~~~
seanalltogether
My daughter just started getting into Winnie the Pooh shorts and movies, which
we're happy to let her watch and rewatch and rewatch, mostly because they
don't annoy us. I have no doubt we'll be buying in to disney+ for her to have
access to higher quality cartoons.

------
grawprog
>including all 30 seasons of The Simpsons;

Never thought I'd see the day when a Disney service would air the Simpsons.
The idea of the simpsons airing on the disney channel back in the day would
have been ridiculous. Seems so strange to go from being considered one of the
most notorious shows around to being carried by Disney. The very antithesis of
what it was when it started. Not sure what that says more about though, Disney
or the Simpsons.

~~~
chrisseaton
The Simpsons was never really that controversial was it? It's fairly family-
friendly. Didn't have any bad language, almost zero sexuality, zero nudity,
any violence is very cartoon, its satire is pretty gentle, plot-lines are
usually wholesome in the end.

~~~
jhbadger
It totally was controversial in the beginning. It was considered worse than
South Park or Family Guy are today. George H.W. Bush (the father) even made a
statement that the American family should be "more like The Waltons and less
like The Simpsons." ("The Waltons" was a series about a wholesome family in
Virginia surviving the Great Depression)

~~~
chrisseaton
> George H.W. Bush (the father) even made a statement that the American family
> should be "more like The Waltons and less like The Simpsons."

Yeah... I get that the plot is that the family in the show are chaotic.

But that doesn't mean that the show itself is controversial, does it? It's not
advocating for being like the Simpsons are.

~~~
jhbadger
I guess what people like Bush didn't like about it was that Homer was seen as
stupid (and traditionally the father figure on shows was wise and could give
good advice to his children) and that Bart was a troublemaker.

~~~
chrisseaton
Father figures have been buffoons and families have been chaotic on TV for
decades - the Flintstones back in the 60s for example.

~~~
behringer
What parents didn't like about it was it dealt with grown up themes, had grown
up jokes, and covered grown up problems, but it was a cartoon, one of the
first of it's kind on regular tv aimed at adults. It was a show for adults.
Just because the show was probably clean enough to air on tv doesn't mean kids
should be watching it.

On top of that all the characters are mildly annoying when their catch phrases
are repeated ad nauseam by little kids.

------
friedman23
I think Disney+ will be more successful than anyone can imagine. I don't know
how Netflix will survive when the competition of Disney+ and HBO Max will have
95% of the best tv shows and movies.

~~~
scarface74
Netflix’s issue is not the quality of content - it’s their business model.
They are borrowing billions to create content with the only way to recoup the
cost is mostly by subscription revenue. Their initial rationale was that they
were building a content library that would have value. But, they admitted
during the last conference call that subscriber growth was slow expectations
because they didn’t have any new big releases. No one is going to are about
“House of Cards” in five years.

Compare that to Disney’s library. People still care about Disney’s animated
movies from the 30s and even adults are nostalgic about the 90s X-men animated
TV show and the original Star Wars from the 70s.

Besides, Disney makes billions from their content from theatrical releases,
video on demand, network and cable TV, theme parks, toy sales, etc.

~~~
mattmaroon
I think what you're describing is squarely in the realm of content quality.
They're spending large amounts of money and getting content that's largely
junk, and even when it's good, it's buried under so much junk that it's hard
to find. HBO spends 1/7th of what they do and has better shows. Netflix has
spent billions trying to get one Game of Thrones and failed miserably.

That's what's killing subscriber growth. Lack of quality content. HBO has
about the same number of subscribers, at a 50% higher subscription cost. The
revenue is there to be had for someone with good enough content.

Despite spending $10b a year, Netflix's biggest shows are still ones it
licenses (Friends, The Office, etc.) and they're losing them one by one.
They've shown that for whatever reason, quality content isn't a problem you
can solve by spending alone.

~~~
jogjayr
No one can predict what will be a hit ahead of time. There are only 2 reliable
ways to have a library of hits:

1\. Produce a ton of stuff, over a long period of time, and some of it will
turn out to be good.

2\. Buy someone else's content library.

Disney has done both.

~~~
mattmaroon
I don't think that's correct. I mean nobody can predict it with 100% accuracy.
but as I pointed out, Netflix spends 10 times the amount HBO does on content
and gets less from it.

HBO is batting at least .700, and Netflix is not even batting .100. That's not
randomness. I don't know nearly enough about the industry to know why.

but what I do know is that Netflix has probably spent more money on content in
The last two years then HBO has spent in its entire history, and HBO's library
is significantly more valuable.

I was in the valley during the time the music industry was being gangbanges by
technology and I have a good guess as to why. Tech people often make the
mistake of thinking non-tech people are stupid. Pure speculation on my part,
but I would guess that Netflix thought they could solve the problem by
throwing money and technology at it, and the people who have been making good
content for 20 years were just better.

------
cryptofits
I really used to be the biggest Netflix fan but their OC is really lacking.
And they do very little OC action outside their cartoons.

Really glad I bought in early on Disney+ and they are building something so
big at a cheaper price point.

Even before this report I was excited by the whole network, and really excited
for their OC.

------
nirav72
isn't that inevitable? physical media has be dying for a decade now. streaming
was something that was assumed to be on the horizon since early days of the
consumer internet.

------
z3t4
I think something like Steam store would work better for movies, series, even
live events. People will hoard.

------
stefan_
> For those films that are released in theaters, Disney doesn't plan on
> changing any windows to bring them sooner to Disney+, which means there will
> be around a seven-month wait for titles like the upcoming Frozen 2 and Star
> Wars: The Rise of Skywalker to hit the service (Toy Story 4 should become
> available in early 2020)

Betting the company. Thank god Iger found some time off from his book tour.

------
gatherhunterer
“Entertainment Company Releases Content on Well-Established Medium”

If they keep this up people might suspect that they want people to watch that
content and pay for it. Maybe next the Hollywood Reporter will break the story
on how they “bet it all” on theatrical releases, network television, VHS, DVD,
Blu-Ray and other things that people pay to watch.

Bob Iger definitely knows how to buy good press. Hollywood Reporter is owned
by Guggenheim partners and has deep ties with Disney, including acting as an
advisor to the Disney-Fox acquisition.

~~~
scarface74
It’s not easy for a company to give up short term profits like licensing
content to other providers, start a money losing service that may take years
to make up the difference. Business have failed to adapt to changing
technology for decades. That is the entire thesis of the “Innovator’s
Dilemma”. He could have not taken the risk, retired with millions and let the
next CEO figure it out.

~~~
kjksf
While late is better than never, Disney is too little too late.

I'm not saying they will fail. Of established players they are the strongest
and making the boldest moves so they have a chance at being a no 2.

But they launch when Netflix has 150 million subscribers. They almost
saturated the US market and are quickly devouring international.

Taking market share from a dominant competitor is almost impossible.

If Bob Iger wasn't asleep at the wheel, just like the rest of the industry,
Disney would have launched a competitor when Netflix had 10 million US-only
customers.

They had a chance then but not now, competing against Netflix's 150 million
subscribers and asymmetrical warfare from Amazon.

~~~
scarface74
Disney’s definition of success and Netflix’s definition of success is
completely different. Disney doesn’t have to depend on subscription revenue to
fund its streaming content. It’s already made money on most of its content by
the time it gets to Disney+. It’s just an additional revenue stream.

Netflix lives or dies by being able to create or license content at one price
and sell it via subscription revenue at a higher price - it has never been
able to do that. It gets it more debt every year trying to keep up.

In the words of Steve Jobs related to Dropbox. Streaming services are now a
feature not a product.

~~~
cortesoft
Except we are still expected to pay for each one as if they were a product...
the only one that is really treated like a feature is amazon prime
streaming... it is one part of being a prime member.

All the others are sold as stand alone products you have to individually pay
for.

~~~
scarface74
In the case of Dropbox - the alternative OneDrive is a feature. For the price
of Dropbox’s 1TB of storage, you can get a complete O365 subscription for six
users and a combined 6TB of storage.

But it’s almost impossible to have a sustainable business when your larger
competitors can price your “product” at just above break even as a bundled
offering and a platform play.

~~~
cortesoft
I understand what your point is, I am saying that only amazon currently does
that with its streaming service.

------
jimueller
Wow, such a visionary in 2019.

------
phkahler
Dear Disney. Instead of streaming, why not build a nationwide Disney network?
3-6 Subchannels of Disney 24/7\. I'll watch that with my kids, ads and all.
But were not paying for your streaming stuff.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
What? You'd show ads to your kids? And would watch on Disney's schedule, not
on demand? You can do your thing, but that sounds like exactly the opposite of
what I want.

