
The week old Hollywood finally died - woldemariam
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/16/business/media/hollywood-studios-firings-streaming.html
======
DrBazza
Streaming services may be 'in control' but they're still as bad as, or
controlled by, the studios they're replacing.

In the UK, suppose I want to watch Forbidden Planet, or Gone With The Wind, or
Carry on Screaming. Show me a streaming service that has those films. I either
wait 6 months and hope the TV shows them or.... hello bittorrent. Even more
recent films.

Suppose I want to listen to Louis Armstrong, or Ella Fitzgerald? Spotify,
Apple Music, and Amazon Music all have those songs.

It's just a shame we didn't have higher bandwidth in the Napster era to do to
the studios what it did to record labels.

~~~
dageshi
You can rent all of these for sub £5 on amazon (probably itunes as well).

There isn't a world where you can pay $20 a month and get everything, every
movie, every tv show, ever, the finances just don't work.

~~~
maccard
The lack of unified interface is my biggest gripe. I pay £12/month for
Netflix, £8/month for Amazon Prime, £6/month for Disney+. Used to have to pay
£8/month for NowTV to watch GoT in 720p. My Android TV has a Google Play store
embedded in it for me to rent/buy in one tap. I often find myself jumping
ebtween 4 different apps on my TV to figure out what content is where to
watch, and occasionally end up finding out it's an iTunes exclusive. That's
assuming the content is available in the UK at the time - many TV shows just
aren't available on any of the UK equivalent streaming services until months
later than the US (Mandolorian for example)

I don't want the content for free/bargain prices. I want the content in a
reasonable format, that I can play legally on my TV, phone or laptop, and that
I can discover easily.

Compare that experience with something like popcorntime, where a user can type
in a movie name, and have it streaming in 1080p/4k/highest available quality
in under 30 seconds.

I want that, but paid.

~~~
jacobr1
The search on my Roku is across services. I'd like to have a cross-service
discovery app too, but the in my roku (and even better, on my roku phone app
where typing is easier) I can type a movie name and see if it is on one of the
services I use, or if not in Amazon to rent/buy).

~~~
maccard
That's really helpful. My Android TV will let me do voice commands to "Play X
on <Service>" but if it's not on the play store, it won't respond to "Find
<X>". Unfortunately, I'm not in the roku ecosystem right now, but this would
be something that would make me change!

~~~
xbmcuser
Kodi plugins are available for netflix, amazon prime and disney+ so you can
use these 3 from kodi interface not sur about google play or apple.

------
apress
Coca Cola sold Columbia Pictures to Sony and Rupert Murdoch bought 20th
Century Fox in the 1980s, General Electric got Universal Studios 20 years ago,
sold it to Comcast, Stephen Spielberg sold Dreamworks to Sumner Redstone, who
had taken Paramount off Gulf+Western, but sure NETFLIX brought a "ruthless new
culture" to Hollywood.

------
madrox
As someone who worked on early Disney streaming efforts and watched the recent
Disney restructuring that saw massive layoffs, I find this article
disingenuous and blatantly anti-tech.

The fact is, content consumption is more pro consumer than ever, and I think
anyone who argues otherwise is looking at the past with rose-colored glasses.
Content delivery has changed and the business models have followed, but this
business is all full of the same people. Disney was full of ex-Warner people
and vice versa. Many of my ex-Disney colleagues are now at Netflix.

The only thing that’s really different right now is the pandemic. Many of the
people who’d normally jump from Warner to another company are having trouble
getting new jobs right now because Hollywood production is still not at 100%,
which means no one is hiring. Doesn’t matter if a Hollywood exec can do their
job on zoom. Production can’t. Tech hasn’t solved that yet.

So I’m disappointed that the only thing this article has to say is “look at
yet another example of how tech ruined everyone’s fun.” Between this and the
Blockbuster Airbnb you’d think everyone is longing to go back to the 90s.

------
dalbasal
I think considering TikTok a threat to hollywood, or a sign of diminishing
relevance is naive... disingenuous even.

The medium, art and distribution methods shift. This isn't the first time.
Television encroached on film. VHS. Cable. DVD box sets. Home cinema. The rise
of the cinematic series.

Shifts sometimes hurt, they may even have some casualties.... but this is not
dying. Hollywood, and old media generally, are in much better shape than I had
expected.

Remember "information wants to be free?" Remember the initial response to
ipod? The scoffs around early DRM? Disintermediation? The end of record
labels? None of this came to pass.

The true economics of "content" is centralisation, exclusivity and
manufactured scarcity. Tiktok (youtube moreso) demonstrates the point. It
doesn't matter that you have millions of viewers. That doesn't translate into
money, power or value. 0.1% of the viewership is not worth 0.1% of the money.
It doesn't divide. Centralisation itself is where the value is. Content is not
a "sum of parts" game.

For success, you need centralisation & control. Theatres, PPV services, cable
deals, streaming services... This is why spotify is buying the top podcasts,
to exclude them from itunes & youtube.

Porn is the counterexample. As a pariah, it had no ability to affect DRM,
Copyright, other legal frameworks and the details of how they will be
implemented.

When online payments started working, Porn had its "DVD Boom." When streaming
started working, the industry collapsed again. That's what a free media market
looks like. Extremely high volatility.

The record industry & hollywood have never dealt with this kind of thing.
Never will, probably.

The main thing shaking up hollywood is that they're being introduced to
startup/tech economics. Market caps. Short term equity plays. This takes some
getting used to, but the structure is as secure as ever. They're just learning
that just because investors have valued something @ $Xbn doesn't mean it will
make $Xbn.

~~~
anthk
>Porn is the counterexample. As a pariah, it had no ability to affect DRM,

Bullshit. Porn DEFINED the fucking media, no pun intended. They pushed the VHS
against Beta. They were pioneers on online payment methods, and live chats
over the web.

Currently, porn CDN's are HUGE, and the industry pays MILLIONS worldwide. You
have no idea.

------
rendall
"TikTok has succeeded as Quibi — Hollywood’s premium alternative to user-
generated content — struggles to find an audience."

I had never until this very moment even heard of _Quibi_

~~~
BelleOfTheBall
That's because it's not only poorly marketed but also a completely awful idea.
It's 8-minute shows, chunks so small that it's hard to get invested because a
full season can be less than a feature-length movie but has the ambitions of
one. Some episodes are actually less than 8 minutes, most show concepts are
horrid (they relaunched Punk'd!) and the people at the helm are... unusual.

This interview gives great insight into the mess it is:
[https://www.vulture.com/2020/07/is-anyone-watching-
quibi.htm...](https://www.vulture.com/2020/07/is-anyone-watching-quibi.html)

My favorite quote from that: "When I ask Whitman what TV shows she watches,
she responds, “I’m not sure I’d classify myself as an entertainment
enthusiast.”"

~~~
toyg
I wouldn’t call Whitman and Katzenberg “unusual”. Katzenberg, by all accounts,
is stereotypical power-Hollywood. Whitman is an average tech ceo. Their
coupling might be a bit unusual, but it makes sense in from an “opposites
attract / complement” point of view.

I do agree that 8-minute video-chunks are silly, that’s youtube territory and
people are not going to pay for that as long as YT is free.

------
someperson
It sucks for the employees and executives laid off (especially during this
pandemic), but audiences continue to consume a steady stream of high quality
scripted content (ranging from low budget sitcoms to high budget action
movies). If executives at Warner Media struggle to meet shareholder
expectations as audiences vote with their wallets and opt for streaming
services instead of cable bundles then so be it. The executives at Netflix
have earned their place (and one day, they too will be replaced).

------
v77
Hell hath no fury like print media commenting on tech companies encroaching on
their space. When did anyone actually love studio executives and their
excessive compensation?

~~~
fmajid
Yes. The actual talent is doing very well with the streaming boom, even if
it's not sustainable.

------
api
Old Hollywood died when they stopped creating anything and started doing
nothing but sequels and comic book films.

The record industry died when it stopped discovering, polishing, and promoting
real creativity and instead started manufacturing pop that all sounds the same
because its written by the same couple Swedish guys. There have been no major
new breakthrough styles of music since the early 1990s because the industry
stopped performing its talent scout function, which was its primary value add.

People will support you if you have something to support. Add no value and you
are redundant and the market will go around you.

If the streamers ever stop making fabulous original content, they too will be
disrupted.

------
sradman
> The corporate shifts at WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal in recent days signal
> that the technological shift you’ve been reading about for years is finally
> taking concrete form, accelerated by the pandemic.

Echoes of the collapse of Blockbuster. For those familiar with Clayton
Christensen's overlapping s-curves [1], the only remaining questions were the
timing of the transition and whether any of the leaders in the old ecosystem
could navigate the disruption; the pandemic pulled the rug out from under old
Hollywood.

I'm curious how the social aspects unfold if/when the pandemic subsides. The
summer blockbuster directly targeted teenaged boys and their dates
(indirectly). Will a new public space emerge as an alternative meeting place
for teenagers or will the smartphone be the main platform for teenage
courtship moving forward?

Is the first date now an anachronism or maybe I'm the anachronism that missed
this already long established shift.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma)

------
jjk166
It's the classic innovation implosion:

Prior to video streaming progressing to a viable point, there was no reason
for anyone in the industry to have the skills to work with it.

Netflix comes along with a business model of providing these services to the
industry by hosting their content on its platform

There is massive success, everyone is making lots of money doing what they are
good at

The industry, lacking the skills to recognize the value netflix provided them
in technical skill, tries to get a larger cut of the pie because "how hard
could it be?"

Very hard. The competition leads to cannibalization of the market and the
industry has a lot of catch up to do just to get to Netflix's level. Meanwhile
the carpet being pulled out from under netflix allows other, actually
technically competent, competitors to pick up real gains.

Where before the industry were the customers of the streaming partners, now
they are competitors. Both are out of their comfort zone, but there is a lot
more free-floating talent from the long term industry than the new niche
technology, so the streaming platforms can become content producers faster
than the reverse.

Repeated botched attempts at competition with the streaming services drains
the industry of both capital and morale. Acquisitions happen at an accelerated
rate as small companies run out of steam and larger ones need to demonstrate
something that looks like success to investors. Innovative but risky projects
get axed as the call to cut costs grows and the heads of their benefactors
roll. Seemingly safe projects repeating what worked in the past are the only
ones that survive long enough to produce results, but their failure to make up
for the losses continues the downward spiral of morale.

A few players are large enough to shield a division from the worst of it, and
they can develop a viable competitor. Others luck out on a convenient merger
that actually gets them the resources they need. These become players
alongside the newcoming streaming services, but their positions are much
reduced in stature. For the bulk of the industry though, there is no recovery
- those who can jump ship do, and those who can't re-prioritize to stay afloat
just long enough to retire.

It happened with the rail companies, it happened with cameras, its happening
with traditional media. It's much easier for a competitor to destroy your
empire than it is for you to seize theirs intact.

~~~
dalbasal
Competence (IMO) plays a role for a short while. Netflix may have been
especially competent early on, but that doesn't matter anymore. Streaming is a
commodity. Now they have to compete in other spheres. Hence the exclusive
content strategies.

I'm sure there was a time when printing newspapers was technically hard. You
needed chemistry, mechanical engineering... Some people/companies probably
succeeded by being good at it. Eventually though, printing becomes a
commodity. Being competent doesn't matter anymore. You buy a machine. The
machine is competent.

I agree on the competition point. We know the game at this point. The
difference between owning 25% and 5% is not 5-to-1. It's 100-to-1. All the
returns are tied to centralisation, bottlenecks.

It looks like Netflix and the old studios will meet in the middle. A cluster
of content generation & platforms. They'll eventually find an equilibrium
where the major compete more modestly, focusing mostly on keeping out
newcomers.

~~~
jjk166
The software competence may be a commodity at this point, but there's a lot
more to streaming than that. The botched launch of HBO Max is merely the
latest in a string of poor performances by the classic industry. Sure they can
get a video to the end user, but that's useless if no one wants to watch it.

Netflix has been collecting detailed information on how people select what
they want to watch for a decade. Their recommendation algorithms may seem
impenetrable, but they obviously work on some level. They are refined enough
that they can optimize the content they produce for consumption by streaming -
they consistently have a show release every month which no one can really
explain why they just have to watch but nevertheless millions of people do. No
company has produced a better streaming UI than netflix and most are just
straight up copies.

There were no technical hurdles preventing Kodak from creating a competitive
digital camera, nor for IBM to keep making competitive personal computers.
These giants faltered because they thought the technical problems were all
they had to deal with, and did not recognize the non-technical changes they
would need to make to stay competitive.

Some of the old studios will figure out that the streaming content market is
neither about the streaming nor the content; they will adapt and even thrive.
Most though are making horrible strategic blunders, and by the time they learn
what they should have done it will be too late to recover. None will be as
successful as if they had just stuck with netflix, made it the one and only
must have streaming service, and maintained their oligopoly on content
creation while cashing fat licensing checks.

~~~
dalbasal
Maybe. I don't know that there's an objective way for us to convince each
other.

Subjectively, I just can't see "streaming media player that is good enough" as
a long term differentiator. Seems like too limited a domain. I'm not
dismissing "good software is hard," but this isn't iphone vs android. It's
more comparable to a single app.

Recommendation algorithms... I honestly think this is overemphasized. It's
selecting from a pretty shallow content pool. This isn't
TikTok/Youtube/Instagram/spotify etc. Discovery just isn't that big a problem
when there are circa 2000 options.

Online streaming is a content game, ultimately. You can't win on tech, I
think.

~~~
jjk166
There are only a few thousand options on the streaming network, you are
correct in pointing out that picking a few recommendations for the user from
this list is not differentiating.

For picking what content should be created and added to the streaming network,
there are infinite possibilities. Selecting correctly there is very difficult
to do reliably. We've all watched movies that made us ask "what the hell were
the producers thinking?" Even experienced professionals can do little more
than guess what audiences are looking for. When you wonder why a weak movie
has 7 sequels, it's because re-using what worked in the past is a very simple
risk reduction heuristic that humans are good at applying. With little to go
off of beyond past ticket sales, a few test screenings, and personal anecdote,
there's little a human can do to improve upon this. You get the occasional
genius who has some fundamental understanding of what people like and they
regularly make hits, but these people are few and far between, and still they
are generally limited to a handful of genres they understand and enjoy enough
to work with.

If you had pitched to me an idea for a documentary about a gay redneck
roadside zookeeping convicted felon, I would find the idea that any
significant amount of people would watch it laughable. No sane person would
think of giving this top billing. But Netflix's algorithm spit out that for
some arcane reason this would be a hit, and alas now everyone and their mother
has watched Tiger King. Such is the power of analyzing tens of billions of
viewing experiences in exceptional detail.

Moving beyond this, there is a widely held belief that the key to a strong
streaming service is having the best content. Certainly if you are choosing
between two movies at the theater you're going to watch the one you think
you'll like more. Ditto for if you're flipping through the channels to see
which show you want to watch. But streaming isn't the same as going to the
movies or flipping through the channels. In those circumstances you have to
choose the best of a small number of options that are offered right now; with
streaming you watch what you want when you want. This leads to fundamentally
different viewing habits. People will binge a season of TV in a weekend, or
throw on a movie they've seen 15 times to have on in the background, or will
watch a new movie every night for a month, and so forth. Further, the
economics of streaming are different. Movies are about getting as many people
as possible to pay the price of admission, television is about getting as many
people as possible to watch ads, streaming is about maximizing subscription-
months. It doesn't matter if 99.9% of a service's offering is crap, if they
have 12 releases a year that you want to watch, and they space them out
appropriately, you'll remain subscribed. On the other hand, a much anticipated
blockbuster that has something for everyone but doesn't have much re-watch
value isn't going to get anyone past the free trial period. Success in
streaming is all about having the right combination of content being released
on the right schedule so that as few users as possible go more than a few
weeks without wanting to utilize the platform. When you have millions of
users, this is an incredibly difficult instance of combinatorial optimization.
This is why, for example, Amazon entered the space and succeeded with ease
despite no experience with content creation: online streaming is not a content
game, it's a big data game.

Ultimately, all such innovation implosions are a result of a mismatch between
the technical challenges perceived by those looking to get into a market and
the real technical challenges that actually face those in the market. The old
institutions definitely have the resources necessary to reach technical
parity, but they squander those resources solving the problems they think are
important, not the ones that actually are. At the end of the day, you don't
really know what it takes to win until you've won, and even then you may have
just gotten lucky somewhere along the way. Success requires the humility to
question the validity of our experience.

------
halfFact
I've been completely disconnected to Hollywood as I've found better content on
YouTube.

I admittedly like non fiction, and my wife likes the occasional comedy. Both
of these are often better than anything you can get from Hollywood because
it's more niche.

I guess I don't understand the problem. People really like their old school
classics?

------
btbuildem
Oh cry me a river.. execs routinely fire people with less than a day's notice.
People in leadership positions are expected to have a long-term vision of
their industries, if they're surprised by this, it just validates the change
of guard.

------
mixmastamyk
Was expecting to read about Olivia de Havilland et al. Oh, you mean the old
Hollywood of uh… five to ten years ago.

------
kazinator
> _(Like much of his industry, Mr. Redstone, who died last week at age 97,
> held on far longer than anyone expected._

Picture reminds me of one of the Duke brothers played by Ralph Bellamy in
_Trading Places_ (1983 film starring Eddie Murphy).

------
agustif
I've this crazy idea for a de-centralized pirate-media aggregator that could
fix piracy by going the pay what you want route.

I would only pay back to creators directly, no copyright holders, no studios..

Wonder how that would go...

~~~
dageshi
If it's a free choice between paying and not paying for a product, most people
will simply not pay because that's the simplest option. Paying what you want
actually is much more complicated because you end up having to try and
establish the value of something to you, again much easier to just pay zero.

On the otherhand, people will support people directly to create, patreon
already fills that niche, but in that respect "you" the creator are the
product not just what you create.

~~~
me_me_me
> most people will simply not pay because that's the simplest option.

I would disagree with that. If you are young and tech/internet savy and have
time then sure. But if I get back home after days work. All I have
time/strength for is to put on netflix to watch the show i heard from a
friend.

Convenience trumps piracy. As long as its more convenient.

The moment I need to figure out if that show is on Netflix Hulo or Amazon, etc
the convenience factor is diminishing.

I will check if its no netflix, no... hbo... no ah fuck it, piratebay it is.

> On the otherhand, people will support people directly to create, patreon
> already fills that niche, but in that respect "you" the creator are the
> product not just what you create.

I have monthly budget for patreon to support people I like. There is a lot of
high quality niche content that I want to see being made so I chip in.

------
reedwolf
Unpaywalled: [http://archive.vn/wcuxy](http://archive.vn/wcuxy)

------
optimalsolver
I'll be back.

~~~
nickpeterson
It may take awhile judging by your username.

------
unnouinceput
Good riddance.

------
brian_herman__
Did they use the wrong week? Shouldn't it be weak?

