WB and HBO together have the franchises that Netflix has been trying to build. DC, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings (film + game rights - tv rights), West World, The Matrix, Mad Max, King Kong, all of Cartoon Network and Adult Swim.
What does Paramount or Hulu have? It's a lot of fluff on the same or even lower caliber than Netflix.
Amazon gives some good stuff away for "free". Apple has good shows, too.
Disney? Meh - they've got Andor and that's really it.
If whomever buys HBO also also buys A24, it's over. That's all I need.
Peacock says they have sports, but then doesn't actually show all of the matches and instead tries to prop up USA and Telemundo numbers. Many times I have to watch a match in a language I'm not fluent even though I'm paying for Peacock specifically as they have the rights. Can't watch USA as I cut the cord years ago, so I'm left with hoping I can find the right spot for my OTA antenna to be able to tune in.
If they purchase HBO, I assume HBO will regress to the baseline that is Netflix content, not the other way around.
Even less now that Taylor Sheridan has left for greener pastures.
Disney owns so much content, IP and nostalgia that they don't care much.
https://companiesmarketcap.com/walt-disney/earnings/
Meanwhile, Netflix is up $300B since 2019. And Netflix’s earnings are about to surpass Disney’s:
https://companiesmarketcap.com/netflix/earnings/
And Netflix has 13,000 employees, while Disney has 233,000.
And Disney is significantly more than just a single streaming service struggling to get content.
Their Direct-to-Consumer business (aka Netflix equivalent) posted a net profit increase 9.5x year on year (from 143 million to 1.3 billion) and has more than half the number of Netflix subscribers (196 million vs. 300+ million) in significantly shorter time than Netflix. https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/the-walt-disney-company-rep...
I like this post about how The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Mad Max and Harry Potter are all valuable IP written by somebody that appears to have never heard of Marvel comics, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, The Simpsons, any Pixar film, Avatar, The X-Files, or The Bachelor.
Should be:
> Except there's still Paramount and Disney/Hulu
Disney and Hulu are combining.
Needs a more sustainable story or oscillations and chaos are going to keep increasing.
Content has never overshot demand.
I would drown myself in content if it were good and abundant. It's not. It's lackluster and middling.
Content is scarce because it is expensive to produce. The wrong people get put in charge of projects (or tastes/reception is hard to gauge, and experiences hard to engineer). We wind up with a lot of expensive garbage.
There is a dearth of sci fi and fantasy. A few dozen titles get created, and half of it is garbage. I have money to pay to watch something every night. It just doesn't exist and isn't good.
I'd pay to watch original content. Original ideas don't get funded because it's "too risky". Which is a consequence of the big budgets, massive personnel and time investments, etc.
I see a film every other year or so where I'm not questioning the character arcs, the pacing. Where I'm fully enveloped and transfixed. That doesn't happen frequently enough. Where every note is perfect. It's rare and fleeting, and that's sad.
We're in the Precambrian times. Great content is nigh non-existent. There's a whole lot of "acceptable" and "good enough". But rarely anything sublime that steals away your brain for the rest of the day, forcing you to ruminate.
I want to live in a world where content fits my preferences like a glove and is constantly surprising and delighting me. Unlimited intellectual stimulation and adventure. I know that pinnacle can be reached eventually, just not with our current limitations. This scarcity trough.
No new ideas.
(Not saying this is your intent, and yes I do indeed watch what I like. I am not immune to the very thing I worry about)
I want to be catered to and subverted. I want to see things I'm comfortable with and things that make me question everything I know. Things that make me deeply uncomfortable. The full range of experiences.
I just want it to be great and hit the notes in ways that leave me in awe.
This does happen with current media, but it's exceedingly rare. It's a combination of great writing, fantastic direction, unusual stories, phenomenal acting. The mood, set dec and DP, the pacing and editing. Everything lining up in a stroke of brilliance.
And what's funny is that when it happens, people tend to disagree or have differing opinions about it. It's deeply personal.
You know when something speaks to you.
>
> I would drown myself in content if it were good and abundant. It's not. It's lackluster and middling
There is only an amount of time per day you can dedicate spending in front of a screen outside of work hours
In 5 years, compute to AI generate video will be super cheap, both through algo being added to silicon for (C|G|T)PUs, and just general increase in compute. Every day, you'll likely see 1000s of TV series, movies, and shorts added to youtube, all with more complex, intriguing stories than the bottom 1/2 of HBO's mix. And the effects will pass or be on par.
I think this will do for movies and TV series, what the internet did to newspapers and magazines. There's really nothing left there, all the deep talent and investigation is pretty much gone.
There will probably be some real gems come out of this. Yet how will you actually find it, through all the "look at mine!" astroturfing and its kin on every site you visit?
HBO might not be perfect, but at least its development process still begins with the story and the enthusiasm of the showrunner.
I am a subscriber and my dad didn't like the fight but is happy to have been part of the experience of seeing it.
I want to in-principle not pay money into this trash. But "humanity" seems to like to want to witness this trash. And I and my extended family are included!
oh dear
Keep up the good fight and I hope you make it out safe.
For cultural context, it's enough to subscribe for one month, once or twice per year, to catch up on a few movies or episodes of popular series. If a series is good enough for longer viewing and subscription, then the product has earned its keep.
There wre a few YouTube channels I like but they are all educational where one guy talks to the camera about a thing. Is there decent fiction on YouTube? I haven't seen any.
I agree that the majority of stuff on streaming services is complete garbage and nothing is really "binge worthy" like it used to be. The one thing I used to love about Netlfix was going back and watching old movies like Chinatown or To Live and Die in LA. Those are all gone now, replaced with its own produced content that I just think isn't in the same league.
They probably had some half decent stuff in the pipeline, but by now, I imagine there is no influence from the HBO of yore.
I don't want Ellisons to own more than they do. Netflix is boring, Ellisons are evil.
- any merger they propose will be greenlit by the Trump administration, giving them an advantage. The seller prefers them because the transaction is far more likely to go through.
- Netflix is interested exclusively in the assets and the studio, not in legacy assets like CNN. So Netflix is bidding for that alone. The Ellisons see themselves as recreating the Murdoch playbook. They already control CBS. Even if Netflix succeeds in buying HBO, the Ellisons can pick up CNN later and create a right wing news empire to rival Fox News.
HBO is a nice prize, especially with the prestige and popularity of its content library. But the Ellisons win no matter what.
For viewers and voters I don’t see a win here. HBO production gets Netflix-ified. Say goodbye to quality shows like The Pitt and prepare to welcome streaming-while-scrolling shows like Emily in Paris. And simultaneously you’ll have the Ellisons telling large parts of the population what they’re supposed to think.
So does Bridgerton. Adolescence is basically a single shot marvel.
Others - Stranger Things, Money Heist, Black Doves.
Not to mention their true crime documentaries.
Warner Brothers makes quality content. I think this is an almost perfect fit.
And yet, more than 300 million households around the world who pay a subscription every month
Would be a sad day. I typically equate HBO content with focused quality, and Netflix content as the opposite.
Good for Bollywood, chinese and russian cinema, and so on. For me personally, I have trouble imagining that HBO would ever again be involved in something on par with The Wire, Sopranos or True Blood, and it's not exactly hard to keep them around on a hard drive somewhere.
Just start a studio and put out quality content exactly the way you want it and see if you can do better! It's literally never been easier! If the chucklefucks who run these streaming services can figure it out, some smart filmmakers should be able to put together a workable business plan while Clooney and Pitt rizz up some investors.
Since I was forced to get a subscription, thankfully I never gave those bastards my CC info. I just created an account and went to Target or Walmart and bought a couple of $30 gift cards and put the code in. When my account ran dry, that was it. The only thing I pay for now is YouTube premium. That's about all the content I consume online. I figured I'd help support my favorite creators rather than using an ad blocker.
Edit: I payed for Disney+ for one month because she wasn't current on Star Wars movies. That was my first red flag with her.
All I read here is, I bought some gift cards, binge watched a couple of decent series, and then moved on.
ChrisArchitect•3h ago
Earlier on a different site with an actual named source; and mention of the stock fallout from the hint.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46141031