
Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and Disney want Fox - prostoalex
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/13/netflix-why-att-bought-time-warner-and-comcast-and-disney-want-fox.html
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MisterTea
These companies are obsessed with fragmenting the market for the sake of
owning content from production to delivery. I have bad news for them: you're
going to lose. People don't want to go back to paying $100/month for a dozen
streaming "channels" with one or two good shows and a the same crap the rest
of the other "channels" have.

We want an on-demand nexus. A single hub. Just the other day I had the urge to
watch ghost in the shell. Not available on any of the major streaming sites
(Netflix, Hulu, Prime) but available on stars via prime. So I have to pay an
addition $7/month to watch a single show? No thanks. Off to a torrent site or
asking around to see if someone has rips or a box set. I have better things to
do with $7 like buy dinner.

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bookbinder
People don't want to pay $100 a month for cable TV either, but they did it
anyway (for decades) and continue to do so. Now we're being asked to buy a
bunch of streaming services and we'll bitch and moan, but ultimately we'll pay
because every major platform will have at least one show that justifies their
existence.

I associate CBS with bland procedural crime dramas and awful three-camera
sitcoms. CBS All Access would have been doomed without Star Trek: Discovery.
Admittedly, the show isn't particularly good, but I'm a trekkie so it doesn't
matter. On the plus side, I discovered The Good Fight (a surprising smart,
entertaining and well written show) so I now I have a legitimate reason to
give a damn about All Access.

And then Apple will offer their own gateway drug (Lord of the Rings?) and
Disney (...well they could just offer their back catalogue alone and still be
a major player) and so on.

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pwinnski
> People don't want to pay $100 a month for cable TV either, but they did it
> anyway (for decades)...

In the absence of alternatives, it seemed like what entertainment cost. The
alternatives for free or cheap are enough that many, many, many people are
opting out.

> ...and continue to do so.

Evidence[0] suggests otherwise.

Leaving evidence aside, I think that each service will likely have something
to attract some number of subscribers, yes. Amazon is doing LotR, Disney wants
a piece, CBS has Star Trek, etc. I don't think it follows that a large number
of people are going to subscribe to more than one or two on an ongoing basis.
People subscribe to CBS All-Access for one month, perhaps a trial month, and
binge all of ST:D, then cancel. They already have a subscription to Amazon
Prime for non-TV reasons. Maybe they share subscriptions with friends, or
maybe they turn to piracy, or maybe they just shrug and go back to watching
Netflix and YouTube, which is enough. Most people never had all the available
channels, including premium channels, anyway. Going without a show or two
isn't a problem for most people when the marginal cost is so high.

[0] [https://variety.com/2018/biz/news/cord-cutting-2017-high-
cos...](https://variety.com/2018/biz/news/cord-cutting-2017-high-cost-
cancellation-pay-tv-1202728922/)

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mjfern
I teach a startup course at a public university. We had a class on disruption,
where we specifically talked about Netflix. I polled my students and asked how
many have cable or satellite. A single hand went up, out of over 30 students.
I then asked how many had Netflix. Every hand went up. AT&T can buy Time
Warner and Comcast can buy NBC and Fox. It's not going to matter. Millennials
and Gen Z aren't going to pay for bundled linear content via cable and
satellite with heavy amounts of advertising. The model is in process of being
disrupted. Within a decade or so, I bet traditional cable and satellite goes
the way of AOL and landlines.

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makecheck
Companies focus on buying _content_ while ignoring the quality of the
broadcast experience. I am tired of competitors that skimp on this.

Netflix doesn’t shove ads in your face, works on every platform and almost
never has mysterious transmission failures. And _now_ they have excellent
content too. They have figured out so much more than some of the last-century
providers.

~~~
wvenable
Amazon prime shows ads for other prime shows occasionally and it just pisses
me off. I'm seeing less of them, so maybe they got the message.

Prime is also very much a superficial copy of the Netflix interface.

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makecheck
Pre-ads on services also don’t play well _at all_ with failures. Even a short
crappy promo for 15 seconds gets old if it keeps _replaying_ the crappy promo
every time my actual show fails to play. So the experience goes: $ad, $error,
$same_ad, $same_error, and before you know it you’re muttering about how much
you’re over-paying.

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p2t2p
I'm a simple man: if I the music isn't on Spotify or Bandcamp I'm gonna
torrent it. If the movie/show isn't on Netflix, I'm gonna torrent it. I'm not
buying any dodgy channel subscriptions full of crap.

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mywittyname
This is my view (except I don't pirate the content). In my eyes, content
creators know that these services exist, and how many people use them. So if
they make a decision to cut out a large portion of the market, then I guess
it's not important for them to be enjoyed by everyone.

I don't want to manage and pay for dozens of services. I use iTunes/Spotify,
Netflix/Prime, and Steam/GoG. Any new service is going to need to displace one
of those. This probably means being 10x better at 1/10th of the price.

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empath75
If those company think it’s about content libraries they’re going to lose.

All those companies think: we own a lot of media, we can just build a
streaming media platform. And I think they’re way underestimating how hard it
is to build the technology stack and processes that Netflix has.

Netflix has an engineering team and a development and deployment process that
has some production studios attached to it.

Disney can probably copy what Netflix has today, but by the time they’ve done
that, Netflix will have updated their platform hundreds of time, and I don’t
think they’re going to be able to build an engineering team that can keep up.

~~~
coralreef
Getting the engineering to scale fast would be difficult, but IMO isn't a
fundamental issue. Streaming video is basically a solved problem and is not
where the money is.

People subscribe for the content, not the technology. HBO isn't a tech first
company but is probably doing a disproportionate amount of subscriptions
thanks to Game of Thrones.

~~~
chii
People do subscribe for the content, but the tech still has to work well for
people to continue subscribing. If the stream stutter or otherwise fail
constantly, the user experience is gonna drive customers away. Tech is a
functional requirement, not a feature.

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coretx
Loads of comments regarding what "I" want or someone else wants. I think it's
irrelevant and perhaps even dangerous to have the focal point on such
popularities because the matter at hand is far more simple. Copyright grants a
distribution monopoly >> Monopolists makes money monopolists style >> Internet
breaks the distribution monopoly >> And now: copyright distribution monopolist
buys ISP's ( distributors ) in order to regain control of the market. This is
not about you, me, "people", it's simply business.

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digi_owl
A large part of the initial appeal of Netflix, in particular for foreigners,
was that they seemed to house digitized versions of straight-to-VHS movies
that never left USA.

But after the initial raving success, the big studios have been clamping down
on giving blanket access to their back catalog of obscurities. Looking for
those extra percentages of leaving out the middle man.

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ascagnel_
Netflix got the rights to stream the entirety of Starz's cable library for
peanuts back in 2007 or 2008 -- that deal put them on the map since they got
some high-quality content for basically nothing. The movie and TV distributors
learned from the record labels -- they're deathly afraid of how iTunes
basically took over the market, and will go out of their way to make sure the
system stays as decentralized as possible.

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Tiktaalik
I wonder if this market segment will evolve to be similar to the games
industry, where market leadership shifts along with customers interests.

In the games industry a few big exclusives can shift fortunes significantly.
The Playstation 4's significant success has come at the expense of the Xbox,
and a driving factor of this success has been a superior exclusive content
library.

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fenwick67
The rhetoric by these gaint media companies about how "we're merging so we can
compete with Netflix" is a con.

They say "we have to get more vertically integrated like Netflix to survive",
but Time Warner Cable is _already_ as vertical as Netflix! They have their own
production and distribution already, and Netflix isn't an ISP.

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lev99
Why does cable TV cost money? Wouldn't the advertising cover the
distribution/production costs?

~~~
chii
If they can charge for it, they are going to charge for it. Since there's no
competition, there's no pressure to not charge the highest price.

Now that Netflix or other streaming services threaten this business model, the
old guard is scrambling to get back to the same business model.

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sureaboutthis
It's interesting it took ATT and Disney this long to figure out that this is a
thing.

~~~
r00fus
They were hoping Netflix would die or be acquired and lose it's edge.

It's possible they did know but couldn't replicate what Netflix has done with
any reliability or profitability. Innovators dilemma.

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richardthered
The two main pricing models, today, are: 1) fixed monthly fee for one
providers' content (e.g. Netflix) 2) pay-by-the-drink (e.g. $3.99 for this
episode)

I spend a lot less on pay-by-the-drink services than I do on recurring
subscriptions. Cognitively, every time I initiate a purchase, I pause, and
decide whether I want to spend the money. With a subscription service, I only
have to make that choice once.

What about a recurring 'credit' service? e.g. sign up for a $30/month
recurring service, and you get 50 credits to watch content from a variety of
providers?

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inanutshellus
With ISPs becoming content companies, and with Net Neutrality dead they can
charge companies like Netflix higher data rates....

Seems like Netflix needs to buy an ISP.

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inanutshellus
... or stop allowing these mega-mega-mega-mega mergers :)

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black6
Verizon wanted to divest itself of HuffPo almost immediately. The service
provider(s) who ignore content and focus on the network infrastructure
(Internet pipes, if you will) and practice(s) “net neutrality” as fundamental
to the business model will come out on top. The vertical integration of
service providers and content producers will only end poorly.

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TooBrokeToBeg
Netflix isn't that good, with such a crappy lineup and limited old mainstream
movies. It's just cheap. Our household and people at work (california)
struggle to justify paying for it.

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TACIXAT
This post's title is a nightmare. Original from the article:

>How Netflix sent the biggest media companies into a frenzy, and why Netflix
thinks some are getting it wrong

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bootlooped
I think maybe the title could use some punctuation or reworking

> Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner...

Ok, yes, they bought Time Warner

> Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner and Comcast...

They bought Comcast too?

> Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner and Comcast and Disney...

And Disney!?

> Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner and Comcast and Disney want Fox

AT&T bought Time Warner and Comcast; Disney want Fox?

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reubenmorais
"Want" disambiguates to plural subject, so it can only be "Comcast and Disney
want Fox".

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adrianmonk
You're absolutely right, but that still leaves it a garden path sentence
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence))
and thus a poor title.

The measure of good writing isn't that it's possible to parse unambiguously
with sufficient dedication. Good writing gets the idea across without placing
any undue burden on the reader.

(And it's easily fixed by adding a second "why": "Netflix is why AT&T bought
Time Warner and why Comcast and Disney want Fox".)

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bootlooped
Thanks for this, I didn't realize there was a term for the issue I was taking
with the structure.

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Bud
This re-written headline could really use some punctuation for clarity,
moderators.

~~~
dang
It's the HTML doc title as well as the URL slug, so not technically rewritten,
but let's have a disambiguating comma.

