I get that you're kidding but look at Warner Bros or Paramount. They're so deeply in debt that they are going to get gobbled up by someone else and it's not going to be for the better.
Hate to say it but the US Government is getting REALLY close to needing to start forcibly breaking up corporate monopolies. We’re not there YET…but almost.
In this one instance, it seems Americans are being harmed by there being TOO many streaming options. Also might be hard to claim monopoly when profit is hard to come by.
I believe what they’re saying is most households pick 2, maybe 3 streaming sites max. There is so many options out there that it is difficult for most to maintain steady subscriptions.
Too many options is bad for companies, not enough exclusive content to draw steady subscriptions. And very expensive to produce. It’s also bad for people, it’s way too expensive to remain subscribed to everything.
We should have been there a long time ago IMO. Not for streaming specifically but there's way too many big conglomerates that make it virtually impossible to compete
You may joke, but ExCeL London, currently hosting a Disney 100 exhibition, is owned by a company from Abu Dhabi.
There are companies in that part of the world who could buy a major studio or a controlling interest.
WBD debt isn’t that big of an issue. Most of their debt is very long term debt at fairly low fixed rate. The debt becomes an issue if they aren’t making money and need more of it. They’ve already paid off over $10B in debt. The debt comes from them assuming it from AT&T for the merger to even happen so I don’t think the debt would be the reason they would be gobbled up.
Meanwhile is far more dire news Disney's cable channels and ABS saw a year on year decline of operating income of 22%.
The linear channel bundle just keeps shrinking faster and faster.
It is not a good position for Disney or any of the other legacy media companies to be in.
Cable dug its own grave when all of the niche channels decided to dump the programming that made them popular with their fans in favor of cheaply produced reality shows. And they never embraced an a la carte business model. Why pay for 800 channels of crap you have no intention of watching?
You're definitely right, though ironically new versions of these niche channels seem to be popping up. My tv's "WatchFree" thing is essentially just channels devoted to one show (star trek for ex) or a genre (martial arts) 24 hours a day. There's ads, but compared to some streamers, its hardly much different and works great for that super casual background viewing.
Prices kept going up. Ads took more and more of the time and became more intrusive (like banners at the bottom of the screen, super-fast-forward through credits in order to free up time for ads, or even speeding up the playback of shows to fit in more ads). And as you said, so much of the interesting stuff just wasn't on cable TV anymore and so much of it was a race to the bottom of quality and price.
And meanwhile, they still required those stupidly overpriced and stupidly low-tech boxes to access, require you to purchase bundles with not just things you don't want, but at times actively require that if you want something, you're also helping pay for something you are actively against (for instance, frequently bundling cable news with other entertainment channels).
Exactly my thought. I had cable for years. But once they ratcheted up the prices, stopped letting me use my own DVR easily, and created overly expensive plans for basic programming, I bailed.
If a la carte was available, I would have stuck around. Instead of getting $50/month from me for some channels, they get $0
Yeah I thought I was losing my mind for a second. D+ launched in Nov 2019.
Did COVID cause them to change their go to market strategy? Yes, definitely (and probably for the worse). But they had been planning a streaming service for years before COVID.
I believe they wanted to do a slower roll out, which made sense at the time as they were riding a massive high off their FY2019, but COVID basically forced them to accelerate any plans they had because their primary income outlet (the parks and cruises) generated literally no revenue. they were desperate for any income while everything was closed.
The only reason Netflix is doing so well is because they've had themselves ahead of the curve for years and when other companies tried to replicate it, they just threw tons of cash out to try and get it done expeditiously.
If many of them had gotten started earlier, they probably could have had a chance. But the problem they run into is why Netflix thrived as a service in the first place: The content itself. Netflix paid for the content from other places, those places got to license their popular stuff to Netflix, people subbed to Netflix to watch so much of this stuff in a single convenient place. And then when these companies dared to break that relationship, build their own thing, and try to get some of that money directly...it failed.
It failed because people saw so much good content being split off into many services, and having to pay to access those services. And the prices kept going up, and it got to where people evaluated if the money was worth it, and more decided with each passing year & price increase that it wasn't.
Netflix has the edge of showcasing content from others, and at the same time providing some of its own original content. However, let's not forget that even they also made some bad decisions to their own content. So many shows suffered the "Netflix curse" and got cancelled before proper ends, but some of their shows got to proper ends (Lucifer, even though it was a Fox pickup; Cobra Kai, which has final season on the way; Stranger Things, which is due for its end soon) while others did not (Marco Polo, which got cancelled after 2 seasons despite ending on a cliffhanger; GLOW was another I was ticked on, even though there is still room for it to get a proper ending since COVID did have an impact on the cancellation, and they could do one more season now).
> Netflix paid for the content from other places, those places got to license their popular stuff to Netflix, people subbed to Netflix to watch so much of this stuff in a single convenient place. And then when these companies dared to break that relationship, build their own thing, and try to get some of that money directly...it failed.
You’re missing a key part of that loop: Netflix was able to get all that stuff cheaply because none of the studios thought they could make a profit in streaming (see: Starz signing a deal for peanuts to let Netflix stream all their movies basically made the channel irrelevant). Now that Netflix is established, they can’t afford to license all of that content again unless they charge close to what you’d pay for a legacy cable bundle.
The studios were still getting paid for their content(via cable TV) and Netflix was a nice bonus for them. Eventually Netflix started making up a larger and larger percentage of views coinciding with cord cutting resulting in lower revenue from the traditional viewer model.
Netflix mostly has a very different strategy than others. While Disney+ has like 6 shows a year (5 of them being Marvel and Star Wars), they got multiple new thing coming every week in every genre possible seducing a large and varied audience and giving them the feeling there's always something new coming (which help keep people subbed, whereas you can sub 1 month a year to Disney and won't have missed much). And you don't have the expectations of what you get like with Disney and its big franchises (and very little outside of that), you have new stuff all the time. Like Baby Reindeer came out of nowhere and is a huge hit.
It was inevitable though. Fighting it would have just made them worse positioned in the new streaming market. Plus TV doesn't just compete with other TV, it also increasingly competes with other media forms. Fighting streaming would have likely lead to TV itself losing market share to YouTube, tiktok, twitch, etc. So the likely outcome would be studios would be further behind on streaming compared to Netflix, Amazon, Apple, and others who did get in if they had hesitated, and the overall pie they were splitting would be smaller too. In exchange for cable dieing slower, but still eventually dieing.
True but the problem for the legacy media companies is that streaming is vastly less profitable than the cable bundle.
The media companies were making so much money from the bundle they could lie to themselves that their prestige shows and films mattered but the don't and it's really going to change what gets made in the future.
>Meanwhile is far more dire news Disney's cable channels and ABS saw a year on year decline of operating income of 22%.
Cable in general seems to be in trouble. People are paying for things more "on the fly" and subbing to a service for a month.
>People are paying for things more "on the fly" and subbing to a service for a month.
This is something Redditors like to claim that they do, and pat themselves on the back for it. It isn't something the general public does. People are not that on top of subscriptions.
Well... it's better than a loss but 47 million in profit? And that's removing ESPN+ from the equation. With that factored in, they’re still losing money
This is the biggest thing about the "streaming wars" I feel like people keep missing. The only reason these services are losing money is because networks are throwing more money at media production/licensing than has ever been thrown. It's just more more more. As soon as that burns out, they will all scale back and reach profitability by operating a service platform that probably costs $3-5 per user per year to maintain.
The belts will tighten, and artists who still make millions won't make quite as many millions. The shoddy special effects that have been shoddy because they haven't needed to be perfect will get shoddier, and nobody will care because television effects have always been on the shoddy side of the professional scale. Writers will struggle, leaving them with more free time to write good content, which means lower-cost content will at least be well written.
And networks will invest in flagship talent factory shows, like soap operas and SNL were for broadcast television, and standup was for Comedy Central.
Adding Hulu really did them a favor. I ended up getting it because I’m a Hulu guy but enjoy the occasional Marvel movie. My son was born recently and I figure I can watch Pixar movies with him eventually, so it’s a great package overall
It was always this way abroad because Hulu mostly doesn't exist outside the US. The consolidation really helped them stateside to make it a more well rounded service. Also helps that Hulu has been releasing some pretty good stuff
It actually changed the game. So much content on Disney+ now with that bundle. Boggles my mind how they just did it now. MCU, Star Wars, The Bear, Only Murders, Die Hard, Shögun, 24, Always Sunny, The Americans, Pixar, all in one app? It’s absurd
The Hulu bundle took so long to happen because Comcast still owned 33% of it after the Fox acquisition. They only finally agreed to buy the remaining Comcast portion last year and started the process of merging the platforms together early this year.
Now it’s time to crack down on password sharing and boost those numbers!! Also raise subscriptions prices and decrease quality and quantity of the service!!!!!
Yeah everyone in Reddit talked about how they were quitting Netflix and it was the final straw, yet subscribers actually increased. So it worked for them
That was so funny to me. If they were already not subscribed, then quitting would have no effect on Netflix. The fact is a lot of people sharing an account might already be splitting payments so it’s not a burden to pay a few dollars more or just willing to fork over the money to get their own subs if they’re invested in a show.
I think the key thing to take away from that is that sometimes the minority opinion has the loudest voices. Of course people on Reddit going to specific interest forums are going to have opinions it just doesn't necessarily match reality though for the majority. For most people they don't care enough to ever share their thoughts.
People will come on here and with a straight face say how easy it is to set up Plex server or torrent a library and confidently believe the average person knows what they're talking about.
It's honestly hilarious. I haven't done any job like this in a while but I've done internet tech support and sold computers in previous jobs, the average person doesn't even know what a system tray is. Thinking they could set up a plex server or torrent is comical.
Because Reddit doesn’t equal the majority of people. You’ll hear endless negativity about Apple products on here and yet they are the most popular devices in the world. Endless negativity about Netflix but you rarely hear bad things about them when speaking to people. It’s not that they are wrong but most people just do not care about these “trivial” things and it’s just sad that people will accept it.
To match subscriber count, all they needed was one "family member" signup for each account cancellation. Easy peasy. Money is a little more complicated. But also not that hard. A lot of the people here weren't paying for accounts anyway.
At the end of the day Netflix is still putting out more quality content than the competition. Prime has The Boys and Fallout but that's mostly it. Disney is grand if you like Star Wars and Marvel but falls flat outside of those fields. Shogun was good, but they aren't doing two or three of those a year.
Meanwhile in the last couple of weeks Netflix dropped Dead Boy Detectives, Baby Reindeer, Ripley, a John Mulaney show and that's on top of their licensed content.
It seems like Netflix is the new cable, in that the folks who have clung most to keeping cable, when they eventually switch, get Netflix, and no matter what, don't want to move off of that. It's the mindset of not wanting to change.
I'm pretty sure the folks who did say they were quitting Netflix did (or, like me, I still have access to it, but only because they haven't cracked down on password sharing where I am yet so we're still using my MIL's account, but we barely touch it).
Is it just me or does Disney+ always forget where you were in the middle of a movie stream? Every time I go back to watch a movie I was watching, it starts over at the beginning. like, what the fuck?
I’m about to cancel my D+ subscription. The price jumped yet again, and at this point I’m fucking tired of this bullshit. Why does everything get to up in price (subs, groceries, home insurance, car insurance, etc.) except for my paycheck?
The entire value of goods and services produced by an economy has an associated labour cost. In a fairer system, this "cost" would rise just like other costs of doing business, but it doesn't (or at least not at the same rate) because we're at the disadvantage of needing an income in order to survive. This limits how far we can push this cost so that it doesn't risk those jobs disappearing entirely.
Total losses from those four movies: -628 million source: https://deadline.com/2024/05/biggest-box-office-bombs-2023-lowest-grossing-movies-1235902825/
Total profit from avatar 2: 532 million source: https://deadline.com/2023/04/avatar-the-way-of-water-box-office-profits-1235328725/
-628 + 532 = -96
Depends how you count the loses for Avatar 2 since a lot of those costs are for Avatat 3 since they’re being made together.
Like infinity war and end game.
Also leaves out merch sales.
His point is that the source you included for the avatar costs may include costs for the next movie, which is not out yet and will earn more money. No need to get all pissy over the box office.
It doesn’t though. I literally proved him wrong with math and sources and he STILL doubled down. It’s like arguing with a flat earther, I wouldn’t have engaged in the first place if I knew it didn’t matter what I said
They weren’t refusing to be convinced. Your issue is considering every conversation as a win/loss scenario. Again, they didn’t deny your point at all, they added to it.
My kids and I like haunted mansion, Danny DeVito is superb! It's a good introduction to scary stuff or spooky things for kids. That said the Disney catalog on the streaming service seems very stale right now like it hasn't been updated in a while or something cuz we couldn't find a single thing we haven't watched already since a month ago which is strange.
It wasn't bad, but it did come out at the wrong time.
I just hope that they don't take the wrong conclusion from The Marvels and think that listening to the toxic chuds that hate it for misogynistic reasons is the way to go.
Doesn’t mean the film didn’t lose the studio a bunch of money. https://deadline.com/2024/05/biggest-box-office-bombs-2023-lowest-grossing-movies-1235902825/
It's sort of a Catch-22... lots of stuff being put on the app is expensive (and resulted in the decline in quality), but more frequent stuff is the only way to justify the service's existence.
Yes and those "losses" were completely offset (and then some) by the profit made by the rest of their business (linear networks, sports, parks, consumer products). Disney has made $7.7b in operating income through two quarters this fiscal year. So what's your point?
In US GAAP financial statements (and several other countries), income always represents the net profit or loss, or revenues minus expenses. Are you confusing how accounting uses the word income with how individuals use it to represent their annual salary? You can look at any financial statement or Google it if you don't believe me but I work in an accounting related field so I am fairly confident here lol.
I did cite the wrong number before as the $7.7B is segment operating income. But Disney is still overall proftable for the fiscal year.
It's wild to me that it broke even. Like, it didn't look very good from before it came out, the word on it was pretty meh, then it came out, and it wasn't reviewed well and I didn't see much word of mouth that it was good....
I get there's Marvel completionists, but damn, that many people really went to see it?
I think it was the last film that people gave the benefit of the doubt to. It has a massive opening weekend and dropped like a stone aftwr. No superhero movie has had a bigger opening weekend since, DC included
I don't see the MCU recovering. DP Vs W is an exception, but the rest of it is a dud. Their brand has been watered down with subpar or terrible stories while the money earning franchises lost their main stars.
Russo Brothers carried that franchise in the end, they don't have anyone with talent or a vision left.
Honestly I think it would be fine despite the dud movies, if we just had like, some solid avengers to actually care about. We're meant to be getting more avengers movies and I don't even really know who "The Avengers" will even **be** in those movies, so theres not much to look forward to
If they're going to be good long-term, they need to get back to the kinds of movies they started with: movies which stood well on their own but just happened to have one or two tiny things (mostly post-credits) which tied them together. And then once in a while, have a big one that brings everyone together.
It seems like everything in the past year or 2 has been 30% callbacks to things people don't really care about and doesn't advance the plot or characters of what you're watching, 40% setup of things for future shows/movies which doesn't advance the plot or characters of what you're watching, 20% big CGI spectacles which feel incredibly detached from the rest of what you're watching, and 10% actual plot/character development.
They need to make people care about characters again, so when they say, "there's a new big teamup movie!", we care about the characters already.
And we already know they can do it with lesser characters. Iron Man wasn't a top-tier comic book character before the movies. No one cared at all or mostly had even heard of GotG before the movies.
Guardians 3 is also an exception. Wakanda Forever was also an exception. No Way Home was an exception.
It seems more that Love and Thunder missed the mark, but still made almost 800 million. Quantumania was a dud. And The Marvels suffered the reverse of Captain Marvel releasing between IW and Endgame by following Secret Invasion and Quantumania.
The MCU will be fine. Captain America might do ok, but Thunderbolts on seems like back to what works.
In series things like this, a lot of the pain felt from a bad movie isn't felt on that movie, since so many are seeing it in theaters without reading reviews. Much of it is felt in future movies.
There's a reason why, despite making a TON of money, they hit the breaks on the Star Wars movies after the sequels. They had burned enough good will with fans that they knew they couldn't just keep it rolling.
Same concept here. Wakanda Forever and Love and Thunder were followups to 2 of the most loved Marvel movies. People were going to see those almost no matter what. Them being disappointed in the quality of those, regardless of how much those made, hurts movies going forward where people go, "well, wait, I paid to see a dud there, what's this next one going to be like?" And when Quantumania and The Marvels were both also duds and outside of Loki, most of their recent shows were duds, that's a problem.
I also don't see how Thunderbolts is back to what works. Do people care about most of the characters? Sure, people care about Bucky, Red Guardian had a fun introduction, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is always great, and....now we're looking at a dropoff. Like, are people really going to care about the other guy they tried to make Captain America in that really bad Winter Soldier show? Or the 2nd (or 3rd?) villain in that one Ant Man movie?
If they want to get back to what works, they need to get back to focusing FAR more on plot and characters in the thing you're watching.
I think D+ is actually hurting the MCU. Before people felt they needed to watch every movie to keep up. Maybe you didn't care about Ant-man, but a new Dr Strange movie is on the way and maybe Ant-man will set something up and you can't be sure if there will be a DVD or bluray release before the movie you actually want to see comes out.
Now you can be confident it will be on D+ in a few weeks, so you can catch it there instead. I think it just removed a lot of FOMO with the movies.
"Disney’s entertainment direct-to-consumer business, encompassing Disney+, Hulu and Disney+ Hotstar, turned a profit in the quarter: Operating income was $47 million (compared with a loss of $587 million a year ago) on revenue of $5.64 billion (up 13%) for the period, which was the company’s Q2 of fiscal 2024."
Make no mistake, Hotstar is dragging it to profit.
Hotstar used to be the king of Indian OTTs. Other than the Disney shows & movies, it used to show HBO shows as well as sports streaming like lots of cricket, premier league and formula 1. All of that for prices starting from less than $5/year. It has lost lots of things recently but still has streaming rights of the cricket World Cup so lots of ppl still use it.
It does but you gotta factor in India's 1.4 billion population which is obsessed with cricket, even if 1% of the population gets the subscription that's 14 million PPL * 5 = $70mil, they also have plans worth 10$ and 18$/yr giving better quality and more screen support like Netflix
They get ad revenue as well. Even with premium plans, live sports like cricket still have commercial breaks.
If not for ad revenue, the price paid for global cricket rights a little while ago would have made absolutely no sense.
I just got my Hulu on Disney+ a couple days ago. It’s a game changer. The amount of content that’s just on that one service all in one place is just absurd. Honestly it may be my favorite service now. Apparently they’re adding espn to it and we’re cooking. Boggles my mind how it took them so long to realize
Yeah but subbing ad free to both bundled costs less than ad free to each individually, or one ad free and one not. And I was cool with ads on Hulu but yeah again cost less
Just swap subscriptions every month. Cancel immediately, respectively. Try to watch as much content as you can in a month. The prices for all of them at once, aren't worth it. Some streamers drop their content if they aren't up to viewership par. Talking about you, Max.
I know people say to do that, but keeping up with what releases when and where and what is leaving one platform for another, and wait, season 1 and 2 of this show are here, but 3 is over there, and where do I even find 4? is just fucking exhausting.
Depends on what you're looking for. Don't have to binge watch multiple shows/movies all at once. Just try to utilize what time you got in the schedule you can maintain.
I tend to stick to genres or a majority cast that I enjoy. Mostly Action, Comedy, Sci-Fi and certain adaptations.
I don't use the Trakt TV website to help me maintain my lists and see recent and upcoming episodes. Same goes for movies.
For example, some TV things I watched on these streamers:
Peacock, WWE PLEs, Resident Alien, Brooklyn Nine Nine, George Lopez/Vs, SNL, Chucky, Ted, Psych,.Scrubs, etc.
Netflix. Recently One Piece, Avatar, Yu Yu Hakusho, Warrior, The Gentlemen, Evil, etc.
Disney. Star Wars and Marvel.
Apple TV. Ted Lasso, Shrinked, Acapulco, Severance, Foundation, Invasion, Hijack, etc.
HBO Max. It's been awhile, but watchlist was Last of Us, Titans, Doom Patrol, GoT, Warrior, Barry, etc.
Oh good, I was worried about them struggling financially
I get that you're kidding but look at Warner Bros or Paramount. They're so deeply in debt that they are going to get gobbled up by someone else and it's not going to be for the better.
Hate to say it but the US Government is getting REALLY close to needing to start forcibly breaking up corporate monopolies. We’re not there YET…but almost.
In this one instance, it seems Americans are being harmed by there being TOO many streaming options. Also might be hard to claim monopoly when profit is hard to come by.
Nobody is being harmed by having multiple streaming options. What the hell does that even mean?
I believe what they’re saying is most households pick 2, maybe 3 streaming sites max. There is so many options out there that it is difficult for most to maintain steady subscriptions. Too many options is bad for companies, not enough exclusive content to draw steady subscriptions. And very expensive to produce. It’s also bad for people, it’s way too expensive to remain subscribed to everything.
just make free subscriptions with ads then?
Then we can just broadcast it from a tower with. City WiFi. Wait…
Why the hell do you have to be subscribed to everything?
we are not being harmed by corporations...it is our choice whether to buy it or not.
IF we are given accurate and honest info before we purchase a product or service, yes.
We should have been there a long time ago IMO. Not for streaming specifically but there's way too many big conglomerates that make it virtually impossible to compete
I hope they start with Ticketmaster.
They've been at that point for a very long time. Just not doing it.
Who would buy them? Mid East oil?
I can't tell if this is a joke but Sony in combination with Apollo has an offer for $26 billion for Paramount
You may joke, but ExCeL London, currently hosting a Disney 100 exhibition, is owned by a company from Abu Dhabi. There are companies in that part of the world who could buy a major studio or a controlling interest.
Pretty soon it’ll just be a fire hose of media coming at you. One massive company
WBD debt isn’t that big of an issue. Most of their debt is very long term debt at fairly low fixed rate. The debt becomes an issue if they aren’t making money and need more of it. They’ve already paid off over $10B in debt. The debt comes from them assuming it from AT&T for the merger to even happen so I don’t think the debt would be the reason they would be gobbled up.
Meanwhile is far more dire news Disney's cable channels and ABS saw a year on year decline of operating income of 22%. The linear channel bundle just keeps shrinking faster and faster. It is not a good position for Disney or any of the other legacy media companies to be in.
The demise of basic cable was probably inevitable, but all these companies going all in on streaming accelerated it.
Cable dug its own grave when all of the niche channels decided to dump the programming that made them popular with their fans in favor of cheaply produced reality shows. And they never embraced an a la carte business model. Why pay for 800 channels of crap you have no intention of watching?
I miss old History Channel.
Discovery channel too. It went from nature documents where you could watch lions and tigers eat gazelles to shit like storage wars
A la carte would have killed those niche channels even faster, they were propped up by bundles.
You're definitely right, though ironically new versions of these niche channels seem to be popping up. My tv's "WatchFree" thing is essentially just channels devoted to one show (star trek for ex) or a genre (martial arts) 24 hours a day. There's ads, but compared to some streamers, its hardly much different and works great for that super casual background viewing.
Prices kept going up. Ads took more and more of the time and became more intrusive (like banners at the bottom of the screen, super-fast-forward through credits in order to free up time for ads, or even speeding up the playback of shows to fit in more ads). And as you said, so much of the interesting stuff just wasn't on cable TV anymore and so much of it was a race to the bottom of quality and price. And meanwhile, they still required those stupidly overpriced and stupidly low-tech boxes to access, require you to purchase bundles with not just things you don't want, but at times actively require that if you want something, you're also helping pay for something you are actively against (for instance, frequently bundling cable news with other entertainment channels).
They tried to make money off of cheap reality tv but YouTube and twitch creators can do reality even better.
Exactly my thought. I had cable for years. But once they ratcheted up the prices, stopped letting me use my own DVR easily, and created overly expensive plans for basic programming, I bailed. If a la carte was available, I would have stuck around. Instead of getting $50/month from me for some channels, they get $0
I got tired of paying for crap I don't want to support like fox news.
I hope Buzzr never stops airing old game shows
No, Covid actually accelerated it. Their plans for streaming were still years away before the closure of theaters forced them to speedrun their plans.
This isn’t a one or the other kind of thing. They both affected things.
I mean, Disney+ Launched before Covid
Yeah I thought I was losing my mind for a second. D+ launched in Nov 2019. Did COVID cause them to change their go to market strategy? Yes, definitely (and probably for the worse). But they had been planning a streaming service for years before COVID.
I believe they wanted to do a slower roll out, which made sense at the time as they were riding a massive high off their FY2019, but COVID basically forced them to accelerate any plans they had because their primary income outlet (the parks and cruises) generated literally no revenue. they were desperate for any income while everything was closed.
God I hope it finally ends.
The only reason Netflix is doing so well is because they've had themselves ahead of the curve for years and when other companies tried to replicate it, they just threw tons of cash out to try and get it done expeditiously. If many of them had gotten started earlier, they probably could have had a chance. But the problem they run into is why Netflix thrived as a service in the first place: The content itself. Netflix paid for the content from other places, those places got to license their popular stuff to Netflix, people subbed to Netflix to watch so much of this stuff in a single convenient place. And then when these companies dared to break that relationship, build their own thing, and try to get some of that money directly...it failed. It failed because people saw so much good content being split off into many services, and having to pay to access those services. And the prices kept going up, and it got to where people evaluated if the money was worth it, and more decided with each passing year & price increase that it wasn't. Netflix has the edge of showcasing content from others, and at the same time providing some of its own original content. However, let's not forget that even they also made some bad decisions to their own content. So many shows suffered the "Netflix curse" and got cancelled before proper ends, but some of their shows got to proper ends (Lucifer, even though it was a Fox pickup; Cobra Kai, which has final season on the way; Stranger Things, which is due for its end soon) while others did not (Marco Polo, which got cancelled after 2 seasons despite ending on a cliffhanger; GLOW was another I was ticked on, even though there is still room for it to get a proper ending since COVID did have an impact on the cancellation, and they could do one more season now).
> Netflix paid for the content from other places, those places got to license their popular stuff to Netflix, people subbed to Netflix to watch so much of this stuff in a single convenient place. And then when these companies dared to break that relationship, build their own thing, and try to get some of that money directly...it failed. You’re missing a key part of that loop: Netflix was able to get all that stuff cheaply because none of the studios thought they could make a profit in streaming (see: Starz signing a deal for peanuts to let Netflix stream all their movies basically made the channel irrelevant). Now that Netflix is established, they can’t afford to license all of that content again unless they charge close to what you’d pay for a legacy cable bundle.
The studios were still getting paid for their content(via cable TV) and Netflix was a nice bonus for them. Eventually Netflix started making up a larger and larger percentage of views coinciding with cord cutting resulting in lower revenue from the traditional viewer model.
Netflix mostly has a very different strategy than others. While Disney+ has like 6 shows a year (5 of them being Marvel and Star Wars), they got multiple new thing coming every week in every genre possible seducing a large and varied audience and giving them the feeling there's always something new coming (which help keep people subbed, whereas you can sub 1 month a year to Disney and won't have missed much). And you don't have the expectations of what you get like with Disney and its big franchises (and very little outside of that), you have new stuff all the time. Like Baby Reindeer came out of nowhere and is a huge hit.
It was inevitable though. Fighting it would have just made them worse positioned in the new streaming market. Plus TV doesn't just compete with other TV, it also increasingly competes with other media forms. Fighting streaming would have likely lead to TV itself losing market share to YouTube, tiktok, twitch, etc. So the likely outcome would be studios would be further behind on streaming compared to Netflix, Amazon, Apple, and others who did get in if they had hesitated, and the overall pie they were splitting would be smaller too. In exchange for cable dieing slower, but still eventually dieing.
True but the problem for the legacy media companies is that streaming is vastly less profitable than the cable bundle. The media companies were making so much money from the bundle they could lie to themselves that their prestige shows and films mattered but the don't and it's really going to change what gets made in the future.
>Meanwhile is far more dire news Disney's cable channels and ABS saw a year on year decline of operating income of 22%. Cable in general seems to be in trouble. People are paying for things more "on the fly" and subbing to a service for a month.
>People are paying for things more "on the fly" and subbing to a service for a month. This is something Redditors like to claim that they do, and pat themselves on the back for it. It isn't something the general public does. People are not that on top of subscriptions.
Stats disagree, something like 30% now switch every few months. Not that I do, so I have no idea why I'm arguing for it. lol
Wow, they did it? The numbers still look fairly small but it's a hell of a step from their position last year.
Well... it's better than a loss but 47 million in profit? And that's removing ESPN+ from the equation. With that factored in, they’re still losing money
ESPN+ sucks so bad
What, you're not excited about division 6 women's badminton?
My main problem is getting it to only show what I can watch. I don't have a cable provider so stop showing me stuff I can't watch.
They’re on track to be profitable with all streaming by Q4 this year including ESPN+
Has D+ had much/any new content lately? That can save money. People paying monthly for nothing
This is the biggest thing about the "streaming wars" I feel like people keep missing. The only reason these services are losing money is because networks are throwing more money at media production/licensing than has ever been thrown. It's just more more more. As soon as that burns out, they will all scale back and reach profitability by operating a service platform that probably costs $3-5 per user per year to maintain. The belts will tighten, and artists who still make millions won't make quite as many millions. The shoddy special effects that have been shoddy because they haven't needed to be perfect will get shoddier, and nobody will care because television effects have always been on the shoddy side of the professional scale. Writers will struggle, leaving them with more free time to write good content, which means lower-cost content will at least be well written. And networks will invest in flagship talent factory shows, like soap operas and SNL were for broadcast television, and standup was for Comedy Central.
Price increase was substantial for the no ads tier, they're making good money on those who are on the ad supported tiers now.
Adding Hulu really did them a favor. I ended up getting it because I’m a Hulu guy but enjoy the occasional Marvel movie. My son was born recently and I figure I can watch Pixar movies with him eventually, so it’s a great package overall
It was always this way abroad because Hulu mostly doesn't exist outside the US. The consolidation really helped them stateside to make it a more well rounded service. Also helps that Hulu has been releasing some pretty good stuff
It actually changed the game. So much content on Disney+ now with that bundle. Boggles my mind how they just did it now. MCU, Star Wars, The Bear, Only Murders, Die Hard, Shögun, 24, Always Sunny, The Americans, Pixar, all in one app? It’s absurd
The Hulu bundle took so long to happen because Comcast still owned 33% of it after the Fox acquisition. They only finally agreed to buy the remaining Comcast portion last year and started the process of merging the platforms together early this year.
Now it’s time to crack down on password sharing and boost those numbers!! Also raise subscriptions prices and decrease quality and quantity of the service!!!!!
I would agree with the sarcasm, but if it worked for Netflix, it's gonna pave the way. Also don't forget ads.
Yeah everyone in Reddit talked about how they were quitting Netflix and it was the final straw, yet subscribers actually increased. So it worked for them
That was so funny to me. If they were already not subscribed, then quitting would have no effect on Netflix. The fact is a lot of people sharing an account might already be splitting payments so it’s not a burden to pay a few dollars more or just willing to fork over the money to get their own subs if they’re invested in a show.
> then quitting would have no effect on Netflix It would save them money. Bandwidth isn't free.
I think the key thing to take away from that is that sometimes the minority opinion has the loudest voices. Of course people on Reddit going to specific interest forums are going to have opinions it just doesn't necessarily match reality though for the majority. For most people they don't care enough to ever share their thoughts.
They also think piracy is super common and easy when over 99 percent of people have no clue how.
People will come on here and with a straight face say how easy it is to set up Plex server or torrent a library and confidently believe the average person knows what they're talking about.
It's honestly hilarious. I haven't done any job like this in a while but I've done internet tech support and sold computers in previous jobs, the average person doesn't even know what a system tray is. Thinking they could set up a plex server or torrent is comical.
They also never had to pay a cable bill and don't realize even now how much cheaper streaming is.
Another takeaway is that successful tech companies probably know their user base pretty well
Because Reddit doesn’t equal the majority of people. You’ll hear endless negativity about Apple products on here and yet they are the most popular devices in the world. Endless negativity about Netflix but you rarely hear bad things about them when speaking to people. It’s not that they are wrong but most people just do not care about these “trivial” things and it’s just sad that people will accept it.
To match subscriber count, all they needed was one "family member" signup for each account cancellation. Easy peasy. Money is a little more complicated. But also not that hard. A lot of the people here weren't paying for accounts anyway.
At the end of the day Netflix is still putting out more quality content than the competition. Prime has The Boys and Fallout but that's mostly it. Disney is grand if you like Star Wars and Marvel but falls flat outside of those fields. Shogun was good, but they aren't doing two or three of those a year. Meanwhile in the last couple of weeks Netflix dropped Dead Boy Detectives, Baby Reindeer, Ripley, a John Mulaney show and that's on top of their licensed content.
It seems like Netflix is the new cable, in that the folks who have clung most to keeping cable, when they eventually switch, get Netflix, and no matter what, don't want to move off of that. It's the mindset of not wanting to change. I'm pretty sure the folks who did say they were quitting Netflix did (or, like me, I still have access to it, but only because they haven't cracked down on password sharing where I am yet so we're still using my MIL's account, but we barely touch it).
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It’s not pissing off their entire customer base, only Reddit lmao
I'm not pissed about it. They expect people to pay for a service they use? How absurd!
Is it just me or does Disney+ always forget where you were in the middle of a movie stream? Every time I go back to watch a movie I was watching, it starts over at the beginning. like, what the fuck?
increasing quality boosts profits though...everything else i agree with you
I’m about to cancel my D+ subscription. The price jumped yet again, and at this point I’m fucking tired of this bullshit. Why does everything get to up in price (subs, groceries, home insurance, car insurance, etc.) except for my paycheck?
I canceled back when they raised the price. Resubbed last month to watch a few things and cancelled again.
That’s the way to do it, save up a few shows or movies you want to watch then resubscribe for a month and cancel again
Ad free Hulu and Disney+ together cost 20 bucks a month. Not bad at all
The entire value of goods and services produced by an economy has an associated labour cost. In a fairer system, this "cost" would rise just like other costs of doing business, but it doesn't (or at least not at the same rate) because we're at the disadvantage of needing an income in order to survive. This limits how far we can push this cost so that it doesn't risk those jobs disappearing entirely.
X-men
And that “profit” was completely offset by the theatrical losses of “The Marvels”, “Dial of destiny”, “wish” and “haunted mansion”.
But none of those were released in Q1.
So profits and losses disappear at the quarters?
Losses do, profits get remembered in later earnings
Really? Those losses just vanish into the ether?
They get conveniently left out of quarterly earnings, yes
But they’re not gone. The loss to the company remains
Yes duh, I’m talking about the earnings reports
And I’m talking about profits and losses in general. Because the losses don’t vanish
Good for you, the article and the comment you were responding to are about the earnings report
They just Write It Off, Jerry!
And those loses were probably completely offset by Avatar 2.
Math doesn’t check out on that.
Let’s see the maths. Since all of them made some money so it’s not like Avatar 2 has to cover full cost of each.
Total losses from those four movies: -628 million source: https://deadline.com/2024/05/biggest-box-office-bombs-2023-lowest-grossing-movies-1235902825/ Total profit from avatar 2: 532 million source: https://deadline.com/2023/04/avatar-the-way-of-water-box-office-profits-1235328725/ -628 + 532 = -96
Depends how you count the loses for Avatar 2 since a lot of those costs are for Avatat 3 since they’re being made together. Like infinity war and end game. Also leaves out merch sales.
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His point is that the source you included for the avatar costs may include costs for the next movie, which is not out yet and will earn more money. No need to get all pissy over the box office.
It doesn’t though. I literally proved him wrong with math and sources and he STILL doubled down. It’s like arguing with a flat earther, I wouldn’t have engaged in the first place if I knew it didn’t matter what I said
He’s still right on merch dude. Merch is a major revenue driver for Disney, maybe more so over time than any movie.
Where exactly does it say in your source that the production cost of Avatar 2 will be shared with Avatar 3?
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Why even have a conversation if you refuse to be convinced? It’s pointless
They weren’t refusing to be convinced. Your issue is considering every conversation as a win/loss scenario. Again, they didn’t deny your point at all, they added to it.
My kids and I like haunted mansion, Danny DeVito is superb! It's a good introduction to scary stuff or spooky things for kids. That said the Disney catalog on the streaming service seems very stale right now like it hasn't been updated in a while or something cuz we couldn't find a single thing we haven't watched already since a month ago which is strange.
It wasn't bad, but it did come out at the wrong time. I just hope that they don't take the wrong conclusion from The Marvels and think that listening to the toxic chuds that hate it for misogynistic reasons is the way to go.
Doesn’t mean the film didn’t lose the studio a bunch of money. https://deadline.com/2024/05/biggest-box-office-bombs-2023-lowest-grossing-movies-1235902825/
It's sort of a Catch-22... lots of stuff being put on the app is expensive (and resulted in the decline in quality), but more frequent stuff is the only way to justify the service's existence.
Yes and those "losses" were completely offset (and then some) by the profit made by the rest of their business (linear networks, sports, parks, consumer products). Disney has made $7.7b in operating income through two quarters this fiscal year. So what's your point?
Income isn’t profit. There’s no point in continuing this conversation if you don’t know the basics.
In US GAAP financial statements (and several other countries), income always represents the net profit or loss, or revenues minus expenses. Are you confusing how accounting uses the word income with how individuals use it to represent their annual salary? You can look at any financial statement or Google it if you don't believe me but I work in an accounting related field so I am fairly confident here lol. I did cite the wrong number before as the $7.7B is segment operating income. But Disney is still overall proftable for the fiscal year.
Not confusing anything. You were wrong, not I
Probably Quantomania too at least to some degree, what a dumpster fire of a year
Quantamania was shit, no argument from me here, but technically the film broke even.
It's wild to me that it broke even. Like, it didn't look very good from before it came out, the word on it was pretty meh, then it came out, and it wasn't reviewed well and I didn't see much word of mouth that it was good.... I get there's Marvel completionists, but damn, that many people really went to see it?
I think it was the last film that people gave the benefit of the doubt to. It has a massive opening weekend and dropped like a stone aftwr. No superhero movie has had a bigger opening weekend since, DC included
They are showing quarterly results. It doesn't include performance of films released outside that quarter.
I don't see the MCU recovering. DP Vs W is an exception, but the rest of it is a dud. Their brand has been watered down with subpar or terrible stories while the money earning franchises lost their main stars. Russo Brothers carried that franchise in the end, they don't have anyone with talent or a vision left.
Honestly I think it would be fine despite the dud movies, if we just had like, some solid avengers to actually care about. We're meant to be getting more avengers movies and I don't even really know who "The Avengers" will even **be** in those movies, so theres not much to look forward to
If they're going to be good long-term, they need to get back to the kinds of movies they started with: movies which stood well on their own but just happened to have one or two tiny things (mostly post-credits) which tied them together. And then once in a while, have a big one that brings everyone together. It seems like everything in the past year or 2 has been 30% callbacks to things people don't really care about and doesn't advance the plot or characters of what you're watching, 40% setup of things for future shows/movies which doesn't advance the plot or characters of what you're watching, 20% big CGI spectacles which feel incredibly detached from the rest of what you're watching, and 10% actual plot/character development. They need to make people care about characters again, so when they say, "there's a new big teamup movie!", we care about the characters already. And we already know they can do it with lesser characters. Iron Man wasn't a top-tier comic book character before the movies. No one cared at all or mostly had even heard of GotG before the movies.
Guardians 3 is also an exception. Wakanda Forever was also an exception. No Way Home was an exception. It seems more that Love and Thunder missed the mark, but still made almost 800 million. Quantumania was a dud. And The Marvels suffered the reverse of Captain Marvel releasing between IW and Endgame by following Secret Invasion and Quantumania. The MCU will be fine. Captain America might do ok, but Thunderbolts on seems like back to what works.
In series things like this, a lot of the pain felt from a bad movie isn't felt on that movie, since so many are seeing it in theaters without reading reviews. Much of it is felt in future movies. There's a reason why, despite making a TON of money, they hit the breaks on the Star Wars movies after the sequels. They had burned enough good will with fans that they knew they couldn't just keep it rolling. Same concept here. Wakanda Forever and Love and Thunder were followups to 2 of the most loved Marvel movies. People were going to see those almost no matter what. Them being disappointed in the quality of those, regardless of how much those made, hurts movies going forward where people go, "well, wait, I paid to see a dud there, what's this next one going to be like?" And when Quantumania and The Marvels were both also duds and outside of Loki, most of their recent shows were duds, that's a problem. I also don't see how Thunderbolts is back to what works. Do people care about most of the characters? Sure, people care about Bucky, Red Guardian had a fun introduction, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is always great, and....now we're looking at a dropoff. Like, are people really going to care about the other guy they tried to make Captain America in that really bad Winter Soldier show? Or the 2nd (or 3rd?) villain in that one Ant Man movie? If they want to get back to what works, they need to get back to focusing FAR more on plot and characters in the thing you're watching.
I think D+ is actually hurting the MCU. Before people felt they needed to watch every movie to keep up. Maybe you didn't care about Ant-man, but a new Dr Strange movie is on the way and maybe Ant-man will set something up and you can't be sure if there will be a DVD or bluray release before the movie you actually want to see comes out. Now you can be confident it will be on D+ in a few weeks, so you can catch it there instead. I think it just removed a lot of FOMO with the movies.
Stock is down 5% in premarket trading
"Disney’s entertainment direct-to-consumer business, encompassing Disney+, Hulu and Disney+ Hotstar, turned a profit in the quarter: Operating income was $47 million (compared with a loss of $587 million a year ago) on revenue of $5.64 billion (up 13%) for the period, which was the company’s Q2 of fiscal 2024." Make no mistake, Hotstar is dragging it to profit.
This is false. ARPU is under $1.00 for Hotstar. It's cutting into profits.
There's a reason why when talking about subscribers numbers they exclude Hotstar, and the ARPU is the explanation, it's almost worthless.
What is Hotstar?
Basically Disney+/Hulu/sports for India.
So what makes hotstar different from the services in other countries?
Hotstar used to be the king of Indian OTTs. Other than the Disney shows & movies, it used to show HBO shows as well as sports streaming like lots of cricket, premier league and formula 1. All of that for prices starting from less than $5/year. It has lost lots of things recently but still has streaming rights of the cricket World Cup so lots of ppl still use it.
Also the Indian Premier League for cricket; that's pretty huge too.
How could a $5/year tier possibly be leading their profit? That sounds like a major loss leader to break into a low income market
It does but you gotta factor in India's 1.4 billion population which is obsessed with cricket, even if 1% of the population gets the subscription that's 14 million PPL * 5 = $70mil, they also have plans worth 10$ and 18$/yr giving better quality and more screen support like Netflix
But the cricket rights were over a billion dollars ans they lost those didn't they?
They get ad revenue as well. Even with premium plans, live sports like cricket still have commercial breaks. If not for ad revenue, the price paid for global cricket rights a little while ago would have made absolutely no sense.
Ah got it, so it's not really a $5/year plan, it's an ad supported plan with a small annual fee which makes sense if it's profitable
I just got my Hulu on Disney+ a couple days ago. It’s a game changer. The amount of content that’s just on that one service all in one place is just absurd. Honestly it may be my favorite service now. Apparently they’re adding espn to it and we’re cooking. Boggles my mind how it took them so long to realize
You have to be subscribed to both right?
Yeah but subbing ad free to both bundled costs less than ad free to each individually, or one ad free and one not. And I was cool with ads on Hulu but yeah again cost less
has anyhing even good come out on disney plus recently?
It’s all ads.
I really have to wonder how much of this is due to Bluey.
That's a lot of top!
Credit where due: X-Men 97 =)
Numbers are wrong thru. See Disney Streaming group
Bob sucks
David sucks more.
Where’s this dude’s neck
never bet against the mouse
Probably due in large part to "X-Men 97" -- I was thinking about resubscribing just to take a retcon stroll down memory lane.
Yeah, X-Men 97 is why everyone’s clamoring to get Disney+.
Wait until they learn that it's really because of Bluey
Just swap subscriptions every month. Cancel immediately, respectively. Try to watch as much content as you can in a month. The prices for all of them at once, aren't worth it. Some streamers drop their content if they aren't up to viewership par. Talking about you, Max.
I know people say to do that, but keeping up with what releases when and where and what is leaving one platform for another, and wait, season 1 and 2 of this show are here, but 3 is over there, and where do I even find 4? is just fucking exhausting.
Depends on what you're looking for. Don't have to binge watch multiple shows/movies all at once. Just try to utilize what time you got in the schedule you can maintain. I tend to stick to genres or a majority cast that I enjoy. Mostly Action, Comedy, Sci-Fi and certain adaptations. I don't use the Trakt TV website to help me maintain my lists and see recent and upcoming episodes. Same goes for movies. For example, some TV things I watched on these streamers: Peacock, WWE PLEs, Resident Alien, Brooklyn Nine Nine, George Lopez/Vs, SNL, Chucky, Ted, Psych,.Scrubs, etc. Netflix. Recently One Piece, Avatar, Yu Yu Hakusho, Warrior, The Gentlemen, Evil, etc. Disney. Star Wars and Marvel. Apple TV. Ted Lasso, Shrinked, Acapulco, Severance, Foundation, Invasion, Hijack, etc. HBO Max. It's been awhile, but watchlist was Last of Us, Titans, Doom Patrol, GoT, Warrior, Barry, etc.
XMEN 97 is a draw brother