Netflix is moving television beyond time-slots and national markets
economist.com
economist.com
Other forms of content have been completely transformed by the change in medium. Podcasts have built upon their radio legacy and diversified tremendously. YouTube allowed people to share nearly anything from incoherent rants to whole college courses.
Netflix merely replaced the ads with subscription and remains the same cognitive parasite TV was, pumping out stuff that you're better off not watching at all. Another Grey's Anatomy or Glee, do you want that?
Besides the obvious Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad there's Stranger things, Black Mirror, Westworld, just to name a few. Hell, all of the above are much much better than 90% of the crappy Marvel/superhero/blockbuster movie Hollywood keeps spewing nowadays.
I think what the OP is trying to say here is that for example netflix just mass produces shows with the same people over and over again dropping the quality of its shows. I'd say netflix has some good shows to watch, but the way its going and the way its producing shows I'd say most of netflix shows are garbage with only a few of them being nice to watch.
With legacy tv you are the product, the show is the overhead, and the advertisers are the customer. With Netflix you are the customer and the show is the product.
While the tidal wave of capeshit is unwatchable and depressing, this is not all the competition Netflix has to contend with. First, you have every movie and tv show ever made. Then you can watch them again. Most shows can't even beat a 7th rewatch of Seinfeld.
Second, you can do something else than watching TV, like hitting the gym, writing a blog, taking your dog for a surprise extra walk, playing with your kids, making a steak instead of having takeout, cleaning your room while listening to Jordan Peterson telling you to clean your room... anything really.
And, I would argue, all of these are a better use of time than anything on Netflix right now.
I fundamentally disagree - there's plenty of absolute gems on broadcast TV that are rendered unwatchable by ads and requiring a specific time. Brooklyn Nine-Nine is one I'm watching right now that I'd never watch on either TV, buy the DVD of or watch a limited selection of episodes on any of the broadcaster's streaming services that have ads.
The heyday of albums, bands, 20 dollar cds is over. But music has become less special less mainstream and people are less likely to identify themselves by subgroups formed around a music type. Young people are not on mass claiming to be Punks, goths, hippies, metal fans, disco heads, something new etc. Which has slowed down the evolution of music.
It was the emergence of iTunes that killed off unauthorised sharing - because the product was available at a reasonable price in the way people wanted it.
That’s a niche. Not mainstream.
I had to explain it to several others students in 2001. That is not “was mainstream in the late 90s”. That’s “was breaking out” at best.
They are still listing Friends and Breaking Bad, you're just not furious about those.
> "Netflix is providing content for a broader ideological range."
Furthermore, this is not actually the opposite of what I said. ("I think it should suffice to say that the range of netflix content is far narrower than the ideological range of the general population.") You use the word "broader", which is a relative term, but don't specify precisely what you are relating Netflix to. I assume you are relating it to traditional television programming (I assume this since the two shows you mentioned by name were traditional television programming.) But if you'll read my statement again, you'll see that's not what I was relating Netflix to.
I related the range of Neflix content to the ideological range of the general population. Not to traditional television, to the general population. Do I really need to explain that traditional television too only covers a small slice of the ideological range of the general population? I'll do so:
There are ideas and worldviews out there in which you'll never find mentioned or catered to in any mainstream television show or any Netflix show. The reasons for this are as varied as the ideas and worldviews themselves. Some don't get on TV or Netflix because they are difficult to monetize or run contrary to corporate interests. Some are too niche to bother recognizing, and others are offensive to other larger portions of society (I assume you assume it all falls under this later category, because you're eager to act morally righteous. I assume that about you because you assumed I was furious.) Some ideas and worldviews go unrecognized by television and netflix simply because they've gone unnoticed by television and netflix executives and filmmakers.
The sum of human ideology, ideas and worldviews is MUCH larger than the sum of what traditional television and netflix has on display. It's healthy to recognize this because failure to do so necessarily means your understanding of the world is contracted to the intersection of what mass media executives think publishable (that is, what they can agree amongst themselves to publish.)
I now understand your statement meant something like "Netflix content has a narrower ideological range than the ideological range of the whole population"
I recognise why you think this is an important claim here, but I don't think it is a useful comparison - no content provider can provide for the complete diversity of 7 billion people: it's not a fair comparison. A content provider can only make decisions within the resources that they have.
Meanwhile, I was saying "Netflix content has a broader ideological range [than equivalent TV networks and content providers]".
By picking those two shows, I was identifying that Netflix does not exclude people who were previously satisfied with that narrower range of content.
Personally if I'm going to sit down and passively consume media, I usually like it to be about people making things, ideally with constrained resources. Preferably nonfiction. At any point in time Netflix may have a handful of documentaries that fit the bill, but compared to a platform like youtube it's basically nothing.
The real complaint being dog whistled is that there is _any_ content not matching GP's worldview.
Sadly, such rental it's not going to happen because companies want to hold their deck of "cards" and refuse to share it with other tables in this video streaming casino.
Netflix are clearly only interested in the subscription model, but if you want a la carte rentals, they're available from Google/Amazon/Rakuten/Sony/Microsoft/Apple.
> such rental it's not going to happen because companies want to hold their deck of "cards" and refuse to share it with other tables in this video streaming casino
From a more optimistic angle, it's neat that Netflix can exist at all at its current pricepoint.
You can actually do faster paced, more engaging content. Just look at 12 Monkeys and Fringe.
Still dwarfed by Netflix with a ~$10B market cap, this battle isn't over. Amazon has a decent shot as well.
The "no commercials" thing is a big deal for me.
https://www.hulu.com/nocommercials https://help.hulu.com/en-us/included-in-no-commercials-plan
If you add Prime for Mr Robot and Netflix for Stranger Things, it starts to get quite expensive.
I record and skip the ads at ×30. Not ideal but what options are there that don't involve DVDs?
There are only 8 billion people in the world, and each can spend at most X hours per day watching streaming video. It seems to be clearly in the interest of each provider to try to obtain all X of those hours.
Not so. You're confusing subscription-based revenue-stream with advertising-based revenue-stream.
Netflix's subscription is a flat rate, and they have no ads, so unlike YouTube they don't make money per hour of viewing.
The ideal case for Netflix is if I pay my monthly subscription, but don't watch anything at all. They get their money, but it minimises their server load. Of course, in reality, if they want to persuade me to keep my subscription, they'd better offer good content - if I'm watching nothing at all, I'm likely to cancel.
If they out-compete Hulu, they can charge more than Hulu. Sure. What's the worry? In a functioning marketplace, an inferior service is priced lower.
I don't think there's much risk that they'll go the clickbait route and start acting against the viewer's interests for revenue. I don't see how they could. Subscription services are much more resistant to that kind of thing than free services.
The competition is tough. They're unlikely to feel free to charge significantly more... because they aren't.
I'm fairly confident Netflix aren't dumb enough to try anything like adverts. Millennials hate that kind of thing, and it would be a real mistake.
Good. Between DRM, regions, anti theft videos and scratches, I’d given up in them before there was a good alternative.
What makes you think the medium has stopped developing? It's quite likely that something else will be invented that will be superior to any of those, and that will make you wonder why you ever put up with them.
One odd and disappointing thing we've noticed: Unless required by the script, almost all the protagonists are white-skinned (or very pale), no matter what the country. Even in the U.S., that's only ~66% of the population; in Brazil?
It's bizarre to see and very troubling to me. I'm not sure I want to support that, but there aren't a large number of options that are better. Looking at Amazon, it's pretty similar. Here's a trick to gain some perspective as you go through your day: When you look at a group of Americans - Senators, SV people, faces on movie icons on Amazon, etc, - remember that they come from a country that is only 1/3 white guys. It's striking to see.
Keep in mind that many of the "Netflix Originals" are not made by Netflix at all. In Australia "The Expanse" is a Netflix Original, even though it was made by SyFy & streamed on Amazon US. Similarly, "Glitch" is labelled Netflix Original in the US, but not in Australia, and it was made for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
As far as I can tell, Netflix Original only means they have exclusive distribution rights for a limited time in that country.