Streaming Services (business / market / service, not content-focused)

[Zorral]

https://deadline.com/2022/04/netflix-disney-amazon-streamers-regulated-ofcom-uk-government-white-paper-privatization-channel-4-1235013652/

Netflix, Disney+ And Amazon Prime To Be Regulated For First Time, Under UK Government Plans

 

[Zorral]

Television Is in a Showrunning Crisis
More and different kinds of people can now aspire to TV’s most important job—but streaming and COVID have set them up to fail.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/epxeze/television-is-in-a-showrunning-crisis

Quote

 

.... A lot has changed in the last few decades. Some of it is good—when there were only a few opportunities on a few channels, they overwhelmingly went to straight, white men. That, slowly, has changed, and is changing. Writers’ rooms are more diverse than ever. 

But the hunger for content brought on by the explosion of streaming has stretched the old, ad hoc training system to its breaking point. There simply are not enough experienced showrunners to head all the shows being made. Moreover, shorter episode orders and script writing for a whole season finishing before production has begun has robbed new writers of concrete experience they would have gotten even a few years ago. When those writers go on to pitch their shows, there’s a chance they’ve never seen one of their scripts actually get filmed. And, again, there aren’t enough experienced showrunners to pair with them.

Then there’s the other change that keeps writers from seeking the help they need: the rise of the idea of “showrunner” in the public consciousness, even as the industry itself is losing a grip on what the job means, and once did. 

What was once an inside-baseball term for a job that encompassed everything from writing a pilot to making sure everyone was fed on set has, as TV has entered its “auteur” phase, taken on a more mystical air. The term showrunner, according to Jeff Melvoin, first appeared in print in a profile of John Wells’ work on ER, meaning that the general public has only been aware of the term for, at most, a few decades. In that time, “showrunner” has come to mean visionary or genius, and in an age where fans feel entitled to be heard, the showrunner has also been the person lauded or jeered by fans. This can mean that writers entering television for the first time, pitching their stories, feel like they should have that title, while not truly being aware of all the non-creative work that goes with it. Or, as Rogers put it in a recent tweet: “I have followed my bliss to become a weaver of dreams and now I'm on the phone with the line producer screaming about how expensive it is to move the trucks.”  ....

 

 

[Zorral]

In every area of life we're regressing.

This is going back to all the shyte that kept me away from tv for most of my life.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/10/business/media/netflix-commercials.html

Netflix Tells Employees Ads May Come by the End of 2022
Executives said they were aiming to introduce an ad-supported, lower-priced subscription tier in the last three months of the year, sooner than originally indicated.

[SpaceChampion]

Paramount considering shutting down Showtime and migrating its content to Paramount+

 

Edited September 14, 2022 by SpaceChampion

[Iskaral Pust]

9 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

Paramount considering shutting down Showtime and migrating its content to Paramount+

 

They might need to.  We’ve switched on Paramount+ twice in the last few months for some specific content, and then found absolutely nothing else worth watching and just allowed it to lapse after a month.  We turned on Showtime once briefly this year and it didn’t have enough to keep active.

Peacock is similar except I keep that active year-round for English soccer and European rugby.  But nothing else in their catalogue has been worth watching.  And they’re steadily adding more and more commercials.

[Rhom]

16 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

They might need to.  We’ve switched on Paramount+ twice in the last few months for some specific content, and then found absolutely nothing else worth watching and just allowed it to lapse after a month.  We turned on Showtime once briefly this year and it didn’t have enough to keep active.

Peacock is similar except I keep that active year-round for English soccer and European rugby.  But nothing else in their catalogue has been worth watching.  And they’re steadily adding more and more commercials.

That's funny.  I keep Peacock for the WWE.   

[SpaceChampion]

Epix to rebrand as MGM+

Quote

The MGM-backed premium cable network and its streaming counterpart are being rebranded as MGM+. The change, which will become effective in January, better aligns the brand with parent company MGM after the studio acquired full ownership of Epix from previous owners Viacom and Lionsgate in 2017 in a deal valued at $1 billion.

The rest of the Epix portfolio will also be rebranded to reflect the focus on MGM. Epix 2 will become MGM+ Hits; Epix Hits will become MGM+ Marquee; and Epix Drive-In becomes MGM+ Drive-In.

 

Edited September 29, 2022 by SpaceChampion

[Myrddin]

Seeing that Amazon owns MGM, I'm surprised they're not just folding Epix into Prime Video.

Is there even anything on Epix to make it worth keeping longer than a 7-day free trial once a year?

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

@Zorral

Yikes.

Entirely predictable and pretty logical. I've been following some UK news for a while now and the situation there just keeps getting more depressing.  

When you consider the price of a Netflix sub and the utility it provides, if people are cancelling for budget reasons you know things are pretty bad. 

 

[Zorral]

33 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

predictable and pretty logical

Ya, I've been saying this was happening already for a few months now.  Going to impact our watching choices here too -- and a lot of us will have to drop our subs as well, for the same reasons.

[SpaceChampion]

HBO Max and Discovery+ to merge under the named Max.

[Rhom]

4 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

HBO Max and Discovery+ to merge under the named Max.

I’ve had Discovery+ for a while; but never had HBO Max.  I do wonder how much this will now cost.

[Myrddin]

14 hours ago, Rhom said:

I’ve had Discovery+ for a while; but never had HBO Max.  I do wonder how much this will now cost.

The... Max... they think they can squeeze out of us.

I'm the opposite. I've had HBO Max on and off, but never Discovery+.

ETA: Stanley Tucci: Finding Italy is on D+. I watched it a few years ago on HBO and wanted to show it to my family before we go to Italy. Looks like I'll be signing up for a bit.. 

Edited December 6, 2022 by Myrddin

[Corvinus85]

14 hours ago, Rhom said:

I’ve had Discovery+ for a while; but never had HBO Max.  I do wonder how much this will now cost.

Initially it will probably cost the same as either of the two individually. They would want to attract customers, and they can attract a great number of subscribers from both, so they should still make money. But just like Netflix, Hulu, and others, they'll likely increase the price steadily over a few years.

[Zorral]

The continuing success of BBC's international strategies.

https://www.vulture.com/2022/12/bbc-american-tv-streaming-strategy.html#_ga=2.183677999.805530067.1670616615-2001107942.1670616615

Quote

 

.... According to Glashow, BBC Studios’ strategy of agnostically selling its wares to any platform willing to pay the right price is an outgrowth of the fact that the BBC is an entity funded by the citizens of the U.K. “We are a commercial arm of a public service business,” she explains. “Our ultimate [mission] is to deliver as much value to it so we can continue to make incredible content through the public service arm.” In other words, Glashow’s job is to figure out how to deliver as many pounds and Euros as she can so the BBC can keep doing what it does in the U.K. That’s why going all-in on a centralized streamer — the way so many media companies did a few years back — was probably never seriously in the cards. It would have meant giving up millions in guaranteed profits in exchange for years of losses as BBC tried to scale such a product.

Given what has happened in the streaming business this year, the Beeb’s decision to stick with a more traditional approach is looking very smart right now. Bigger companies such as Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney have conceded in recent months that going all-in on streaming has been far less profitable than expected. Had BBC gone down the same path, it would be feeling at least as much pain, if not more, given its relative size. Instead, BBC has been able to invest the money it saved by not launching a big streamer into developing more original content — programming that’s in turn being snapped up by the bigger platforms still hungry for subscribers.

And as noted earlier, BBC Studios is doing much more than simply finding U.S. homes for already-produced episodes of its U.K.-made programming. Its Los Angeles–based production outpost has never been busier, setting up a record number of adaptations while also working on wholly original ideas born here in the States. “We have developed, sold, produced, and launched more new shows in the past two years than we have previously in our tenure as a production company here,” says Valerie Bruce, general manager of BBC Studios Los Angeles Productions. Indeed, since 2020, Bruce’s division has been behind nearly a dozen series across eight different linear and streaming platforms, including shows at all four broadcast networks, as well as Netflix, Disney+, and Peacock. BBC’s Stateside success is most obvious on Thursday nights, where it has CBS’s aforementioned smash Ghosts (the product of a first-look development deal struck with Lionsgate back in 2018) and two half-hours on Fox (Call Me Kat and Welcome to Flatch, produced with Warner Bros. TV and Lionsgate, respectively).

While Netflix and other streamers have demonstrated that American audiences are more than willing to get invested in ideas produced in and for other countries — think everything from Squid Game to BBC’s own Fleabag — BBC Studios’ success with Thursday comedies underscores how U.S. platforms remain very interested in remaking proven hits specifically for domestic consumption. “We don’t have to just count on original ideas all the time,” Bruce explains. American networks and streamers often “like to invest in things with maybe a little less degree of risk,” she says, and that means companies with rich libraries of pre-existing shows — or “formats” as they’re called in the distribution business —  start out with a leg up in the eyes of potential buyers. “They can see the success someplace else without having to spend money on it,” Bruce says.  “You’re really in a fortunate position if you have IP, and in our case that’s formats.”

 

 

[Rhom]

Okay, that’s bizarre… the Rudolph movie was on CBS and Frosty after it… but they won’t let you watch it on a streaming service?!!!?

[SpaceChampion]

Only 9% of new subscribers are choosing Netflix's ad-supported tier.   

Quote

The plan accounted for 9% of new Netflix sign-ups in the U.S. during the month. Some 57% of subscribers to the ad-supported tier in the first month were people re-joining the service or signing up for the first time, while 43% downgraded from pricier plans, according to Antenna.

Since it is a new tier, might take 6-12 months to really see how this shakes out. 

[BigFatCoward]

I know there's avast of living crisis. But the difference is too small to make a I worthwhile. If it was £5/£20 maybe. 

Edited December 22, 2022 by BigFatCoward

[Heartofice]

It will be interesting to see how ads interact with the Browsing behaviour that Netflix seems to want to encourage.

Netflix is often a platform which is built on TONS of content and you being able to find new stuff, but that doesn’t work if you have to watch adverts before you can figure out if something is good or not. 
 

Right now I have NowTV which is a bad service and has adverts, but it does have some good HBO shows, these are the sort of thing I will specifically select for and watch, I’m not going to spend time looking around for something else. That’s why I am slightly prepared to watch ads, even if it’s irritating.

Other services like Amazons ad model I won’t touch, I considered it but most of their ad content is garbage straight to DVD kind of stuff, the exact opposite of the sort of thing i would be prepared to watch adverts for

[Luzifer's right hand]

If you are exempt from paying the fees for German or Austrian state TV because of low income you can get Amazon Prime for half price. 

An interesting approach.

I have cancelled Apple+ and will probably return after the next seasons of Severance, Ted Lasso and Foundation drop . I only paid for it for a month as I manged to stacked trials from LG and Sony and got 9 months for free. 

I mostly stream Sky X(Austrian version) right now as it has a lot of content that I missed over the years(mainly HBO stuff). Got a special offer though for half price. It also got the new season of Rick and Morty and stuff that I'm really enjoying like Resident Alien. 

I still have Prime and Disney+ and they are cheap enough to keep even if I don't watch much on them right now as I'm sharing them with someone else. I'm ok with Prime showing one teaser for something else before content but I will probably drop it if they increase ads. 

I will definitely cancel Netflix completely if they go properly after account sharing. Unless they add a cheaper one user 4k option.

There is some interesting content on Paramount+ but I decided against getting it for the time being.