General Television Thread

[Adam]

At some stage, surely the number of streaming services is going to hit a wall? How many people are going to pay for more than one just to see all these different things. Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Warner, Hulu...am I missing any? It's getting a bit much.

[million$$man]

9 minutes ago, Adam es Tranquilo said:

At some stage, surely the number of streaming services is going to hit a wall? How many people are going to pay for more than one just to see all these different things. Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Warner, Hulu...am I missing any? It's getting a bit much.

ESPN+ , HBO, FX, WWE, UFC

 

Eventually it will get to the point where your viewing will be A La Carte, the cable companies were just a decade behind. Once Netflix started up, they could saved themselves from all the cord cutters, by immediately lowering prices and offering a pay-per channel option. Now, it's becoming a pay-per catalog system. 

Edited December 3, 2018 by million$$man

[Adam]

8 minutes ago, million$$man said:

ESPN+ , HBO, FX, WWE, UFC

 

Eventually it will get to the point where your viewing will be A La Carte, the cable companies were just a decade behind. Once Netflix started up, they could saved themselves from all the cord cutters, by immediately lowering prices and offering a pay-per channel option. Now, it's becoming a pay-per catalog system. 

Aye, well sports is another area where this is fast becoming a bigger problem too. I'm just not sure it's long-term sustainable.

[apsham]

The way I consume, it's not going to change much for me - I'll sub for a month, watch what I want and let it drop, grab a different 9.99 deal and keep that about the same.

[MalaCloudy Black]

I'd rather pay $5-$10 a month for a service than out my ass for cable or satellite. All I need is HBOGo, Netflix, Hulu and mmmmmaybe ESPN+.

Or Sling and Netflix. Really, Sling is a pretty good option

[K]

i'm not going to subscribe to more than two services. I don't care enough about what I watch, as long as I have new things to discover. I'm certainly not going to be drawn to some network for fuckin Friends, which you can pick up in its entirety on DVD for about £15 on ebay

[Colly]

All that being said, Netflix are not losing Friends. 

[JasonM]

It's not a particular good reason why i'm still doing it. But I have no issues paying 10 bucks a month to listen most of the music I want through Spotify, I also haven't pirated games for at least 2-3 years now because of how easy it's become to find a good deal and have everything work through steam or other services.

But television/films, I just can't be bothered. There's too many fingers trying to grab the entire pie at the same time, and what results is a complete mess and everyone being left completely unsatisfied.

I don't want to have to get Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Disney+, HBO, AMC, Videoland (Dutch programming), WWE Network, UFC Network (or w.e. it's called), FX, the sports package, and the list goes on.

Netflix had a good thing going, a convenient service that allowed you to watch series and films on demand through one service, the market realized that and decided everyone suddenly wanted to do the same thing as Netflix, where Netflix used to have that niche pretty well locked down with plenty of content, nowadays all the content has been splintered beyond tarnation and to hell with having to pay 10 bucks for every single service just because I want to follow that one series or watch that one film I like.

I know this is a lot of first world problems and i'm acting overly entitled as a consumer, but the market is just ruined anymore and studies show as much too. Piracy was going down between 2010 and 2016, but now it's been climbing back up again because people simply aren't prepared to pay top dollar for every single service. 

I used to have Netflix, I don't anymore. And the non-legit way has truly become more convenient to use than any paid service.

[Mx. Canadian Destroyer]

I saw a tweet that showed that while torrenting had gone down in recent years, it's becoming popular again. I think that absolutely makes sense. It costs a fortune to try and watch everything you want to watch legally. There are just too many streaming services, with even more on the horizon. 

[Josh]

Ironically, I could see streaming services end up taking a cue from cable services by offering specific (perhaps tiered) “packages” that grant access to several services. For loose example, say Netflix is a base price of $9.99/month, but you could upgrade to Netflix, Shudder, and BritBox for $25/month.

[livid]

1 minute ago, Josh to the World said:

Ironically, I could see streaming services end up taking a cue from cable services by offering specific (perhaps tiered) “packages” that grant access to several services. For loose example, say Netflix is a base price of $9.99/month, but you could upgrade to Netflix, Shudder, and BritBox for $25/month.

That is essentially what WB's plans are with their service, which I imagine has HBO included in one of their higher tiers. 

[GhostMachine]

We have Netflix and Amazon Prime. That's it. I *might* consider CBS All-Access once I find out exactly what the series with Patrick Stewart as Picard is going to be. Star Trek Discovery and the new version of The Twilight Zone do not interest me at all. Prime we have mostly due to the shipping thing, but I love it since they air The Grand Tour and a few other things. Watched the first couple episodes of Jack Ryan, but haven't had time to watch more.

Had Hulu for a bit several years ago, but dropped it because we didn't watch anything on it enough to justify paying for it. Lot of good foreign content and anime, though. Couldn't afford to pick it up again right now if I wanted to, though.

 

[livid]

MTV is about to start shopping the rights to a Celebrity Deathmatch reboot produced by and starring Ice Cube.

 

I assumed this would come sooner than later!

 

Edited December 5, 2018 by livid

[LL!]

22 hours ago, Josh to the World said:

Ironically, I could see streaming services end up taking a cue from cable services by offering specific (perhaps tiered) “packages” that grant access to several services. For loose example, say Netflix is a base price of $9.99/month, but you could upgrade to Netflix, Shudder, and BritBox for $25/month.

I've been saying this for a good while now. Everything is cyclical, and soon all cord cutters will find themselves staring at Cable prices again because they need to get the Netflix-HBONow-ShowtimeSpectacular-IndieMovieFestLooza-CBSStreamzone-NFLSportsAndOtherSportsFAST package.

[Gabriel]

Crave TV in Canada is already offering a tiered service. For $10, you get Crave content, tv shows, niche specials and older HBO/Showtime programming. For $20 a month, you get all of that plus access to a bunch of newer movies, HBO and Showtime channels and recent programming, and live feeds of a handful of HBO/Showtime channels. There were about a dozen movies on the service at the time that we re-signed back up that we wanted to watch, so we went with the higher priced package, as an extra $10 a month is less than it would cost us to rent those films through any other service.

Tiers are going to be a huge thing in the next couple of years.

Aside from that, Netflix made the announcement that they are keeping Friends on the service. While cancelling several other popular shows that are more relevant and harder to find outside the service, Netflix has thrown $100 MILLION at Friends to keep the rights to the show. I know this isn't how their service survives entirely, but to pay that off, 10 million people would have to watch Friends. Meanwhile, as I mentioned, more cost effective shows with decent followings have been axed by the service because they "aren't financially feasible" based on social media impressions.

Of course Friends gets more social media impressions than a show like that high school one that I'm forgetting the name of, with the kids in the AV Club. Friends has been around significantly longer, and thus, is more prone to discussion as more people have already seen it, and it's a god damn meme factory because of how old it is.

On the plus side... everyone should watch The Kominsky Method. Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin are on point. Two episodes in, the show is hilarious and heart-wrenching.

[livid]

13 minutes ago, Gabriel said:

Crave TV in Canada is already offering a tiered service. For $10, you get Crave content, tv shows, niche specials and older HBO/Showtime programming. For $20 a month, you get all of that plus access to a bunch of newer movies, HBO and Showtime channels and recent programming, and live feeds of a handful of HBO/Showtime channels. There were about a dozen movies on the service at the time that we re-signed back up that we wanted to watch, so we went with the higher priced package, as an extra $10 a month is less than it would cost us to rent those films through any other service.

Tiers are going to be a huge thing in the next couple of years.

Aside from that, Netflix made the announcement that they are keeping Friends on the service. While cancelling several other popular shows that are more relevant and harder to find outside the service, Netflix has thrown $100 MILLION at Friends to keep the rights to the show. I know this isn't how their service survives entirely, but to pay that off, 10 million people would have to watch Friends. Meanwhile, as I mentioned, more cost effective shows with decent followings have been axed by the service because they "aren't financially feasible" based on social media impressions.

Of course Friends gets more social media impressions than a show like that high school one that I'm forgetting the name of, with the kids in the AV Club. Friends has been around significantly longer, and thus, is more prone to discussion as more people have already seen it, and it's a god damn meme factory because of how old it is.

On the plus side... everyone should watch The Kominsky Method. Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin are on point. Two episodes in, the show is hilarious and heart-wrenching.

Given how big Netflix is globally, Friends is actually reaching more people now than it did when it aired. It may be old but apparently a lot of people are still watching it. They threw the money at it because people complained about them losing it. If people complained about losing any of their other shows (minus the Marvel stuff because that that issue is related to other business dealings) like that then they'd keep them around too. 

[Gabriel]

That's fair. I forgot that a lot of regions didn't get Friends when it aired originally on NBC.

Still though, that just seems insane. They will talk about how they decided not to renew their own shows, which barely get a chance to develop an audience before they get cancelled, because of financial reasons... but they have so much content on the service that is probably costing them enormous amounts of money. It's the same type of short-sighted thinking that got WWE into trouble.

How many of these shows that we think back on and absolutely adore needed more than a season or two to really get going? I'm just afraid that they're going to wind up investing too much in the past, and not enough in the future. Or, similarly, I fear that the more larger deals that happen like the Friends one, the less we're going to get in variety.

I'm not saying they shouldn't have kept Friends on. I don't see their numbers, so I'm speaking only from my personal point of view... but is there not a world where that $100 million could have been invested through several other properties, still getting the network similar views while expanding their catalog?

It's 2018 and there are still so many great movies and tv shows from the past that aren't available in any form, legal or otherwise. Seriously, how is it that no streaming service has the rights to Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place? It's Ryan Reynolds, for christ's sake. Dump it on a service, advertise that it's Reynolds' breakthrough television performance, that led to things like Van Wilder and his subsequent career, and I'm sure it would get enough views to be worthwhile.

[St. Dubb]

Since Netflix doesn't publish its viewers numbers, for all we know Friends gets 10's of millions of views and that's why they decided to do that. A lot of shows popular to the internet/critical successes don't always translate into ratings on broadcast/cable TV...so for all we know, the critic darling shows on Netflix aren't bringing in the viewership that a show like Friends is for them. Similar to how Big Bang Theory continues to be the most watched show on TV every year despite it being close to universally hated (maybe exaggerating here but you get it) on the internet. 

[Adam]

I still watch Friends on tv fairly regularly when I just want to stick something on and earlier this year me and my girlfriend at the time went through all 10 seasons in order on Netflix, and I have literally seen every episode about 20 times already. I bet they feel justified in spending that money to keep it on.

[livid]

Yeah they shelled out the cash for it because it's a safety net. The reason why Netflix has been cancelling things is because they need stuff that moves the needle now moreso than ever. And the future is even more dependant on that than they have been. As media companies start to get their own streaming services out there, the choices Netflix has to license existing content will shrink so they have to rely on their own original programming.

They've already been pumping so much money into their original content ($11B this year) that they need to start making returns on it because they won't have the safety of a Friends in 2020 because that will be on WB's streaming service. That unfortunately means they don't have the patience to let some things grow. That doesn't mean they shouldn't but it's a hard needle to thread. 

In the meantime, if they have bonafide money maker they'll take it, even it means paying a premium for something they don't own.