Disney TV Studios Eyes New Profit Participation Model | Hacker News Reader

Disney TV Studios Eyes New Profit Participation Model

deadline.com

71 pointshhs30 comments

Having seen what these negotiations look like from a technical perspective, I can see why they want to do this. A lot of the old contracts are causing issues when they want to go to streaming, because they aren't clear as to what platforms the license is for in the first place. This is why sometimes some music is replaced or a scene with a particular guest actor is cut from the streaming version of an old show.

These changes are effectively future-proofing. By making these contracts apply to all platforms now and in the future, including platforms that might be impossible to maintain individual accounting for each show, it makes it a lot easier for them to exploit the content in new ways in the future without having to track down all the old actors, their estates, and their agents to negotiate new deals.

It probably will also suck for the actors as it will limit their potential upside while providing them with more money up front, so you'll have fewer crazy rich actors but more middle class actors.

This is why sometimes some music is replaced or a scene with a particular guest actor is cut from the streaming version of an old show.

I’m aware of, for example, the unfortunate theme song switch for Dawson’s Creek, but I haven’t heard about particular actors being cut from streaming releases. Any notable examples in mind?

One show I loved from the 2000s the US version of Queer As Folk. I have been unable to find an HD version with the original soundtrack, which to me is 100% critical to the show. you can stream in HD online but the replacement 'music' completely ruins it for me. I've always wanted to spend the time to dupe my SD tivo audio copy with HD video!

I used to rewrite music like this. Always tried my best to do a good job and target the same emotional intent as the original score, but there was a lot of music to write on a tiny fraction of a “real” budget.

Same thing happened bringing Daria to DVD. The soundtrack was a big part of the show and MTV had access to whatever music they wanted so regardless of how long it took to write/animate an episode when the show aired you might hear a song that had just been released. Trying to secure the rights to all those songs decades later was impossible so they replaced nearly all of it with generic music. It's just not the same. The creators know it, and the DVD actually shipped with an explanation and apology.

if the runtimes and all that are the same, it wouldn't be difficult or very time consuming to do this with FFMPEG or even MKVTOOLNIX.

I'm obsessed with commentary tracks for movies and television -- and rarely does one copy have everything in one realistic-to-archive file size. Typically the offset between the two sources will be identical (assuming their respective sources are also consistent), which makes the entire process a breeze.

Nothing notable. I don't even remember the exact scene, I just remember it happened.

Or not having Teardrop as the theme song for House.

For years, the only legal copies of Married... with Children had the theme song (Sinatra's Love and Marriage) replaced with a soundalike. Luckily, between 2013 and 2015, Mill Creek Entertainment obtained the rights to rerelease the show on DVD and were able to restore the original music.

WKRP in Cincinnati got hit hard though. Still not sure if it's even possible to watch in it's original form, unless you find some old VHS captures from it's early syndication days.

> you'll have fewer crazy rich actors but more middle class actors

For me it has always seemed weird that for the last half century or so, the people we pay the most are the entertainers: actors, musicians and sport-stars. More middle class actors and fewer crazy rich actors sounds good to me. I would rather have more people being able to make a decent living off their craft than a few with more money than they know how to spend.

I don’t particular care who gets what cut as long as the content itself is worthwhile. Could be a mega budget blockbuster with $100M of special effects or a low budget indie film.

Only question that matters is, “Are you not entertained?!”

A lot of that has to be technology. You can entertain a few thousand people at a time with theater. You can entertain billions with cinema. I can only assume the wage distribution reflects that.

Instead its going to be more crazy rich executives and large investors.

You can't make being a first-rate anything-recordable-or-broadcastable worth less than it is without getting rid of the tech that enables recording and/or broadcasting. First-rate ate all the value of the second-rates and down, and then some. Doesn't mean the talent has to get as much money as they do, I guess, but the money'll still be there.

Sadder part's probably the loss of social capital for being a third-rate whatever. Lot fewer folk-song sing-alongs around the living room upright these days. Lot fewer cousin-bands playing at family gatherings. Ya know?

It's because entertainer's product can be distributed to infinite numbers of people, each of whom have finite amounts of time. If I am going to spend 1 hour watching basketball, I am going to want to watch Lebron James. I'd rather pay $5 to watch a basketball game where he is playing vs. being paid $5 to watch a basketball game featuring absolutely excellent, but not world-class, players. I similarly am very discriminating about movies, music, etc. and will pay $6.99 to rent an Amazon movie vs. watching a free one on Prime because I have such limited movie-watching time. The rewards go to the top because the eyeballs go the top.

> If I am going to spend 1 hour watching basketball, I am going to want to watch Lebron James.

That's an excellent point.

- Is acting ability as unevenly distributed as athletic ability?

- Would Black Mirror be better if every episode had Jodie Foster or Jake Gyllenhaal in it? Or is it possible that using less well known actors would not negatively impact viewership?

Whether it is or isn't as unevenly distributed, popularity is! Popularity is a scale free network in fact. Simply check your Facebook friends (or that of your aunt if you don't have FB) and you're quite likely to see a couple of outliers.

I thought about this quite deeply and researched it a bit during my graph theory & complex network classes. Whether it is routers redirecting traffic or popularity, it is all scale free (ok not everything is, but a lot of things are).

Good point & totally agreed about popularity. People may want to see a TV show because someone popular is acting in it (using the Black Mirror example, Miley Cyrus was in an episode of the last season).

I guess the question is: what value is popularity? If Miley Cyruses increase in cost doesn't warrant the increase in revenue, then it's not worth it. If it does then it is. It sounds like the market is re-calibrating a little.

If Black Mirror cut out name brand actors and retained their popularity, that means more money for the creators and less for the actors, but not any less for the show.

As an aside, what a fucking incredible show that is. Mind bending shit.

As a counterpoint, a lot of folks are a fan of college football vs NFL. (excellent vs. world-class players). When it comes to going to sports, I actually really enjoy going to minor league sports games versus major league sports games.

Sure, there are things beyond absolute performance that can attract viewers. I would rather go to my son’s T-Ball game than the World Series.

> fewer crazy rich actors but more middle class actors

Seems like an overall positive change to me.

I wonder if this move to create a fair payment model for actor/creators, is simply to preempt monopoly criticisms before they launch there own subscription service?

The mouse has an impressive history of playing Chess while everyone else thinks they are playing Checkers.

> before they launch there own subscription service

They've already got a subscription streaming service - DisneyLife. No sure why everyone talks about it like it hasn't launched yet.

Because DisneyLife is only available in the UK, which is a relatively tiny market. While you are technically correct, Disney+ will launch worldwide.

It's part of the Direct-to-Consumer & International strategy.

Disney+ launch later this November will be massive. Disney will have Disney+, ESPN+, Hulu, Movies Anywhere and ABC, and others in different countries (Hotstar in India). Disney has acquired massive amount of content and multiple channels. To fully monetize it, they need the freedom to use everywhere.

As they are pulling all their content from other providers, it's interesting to see what happens.

> The mouse has an impressive history of playing Chess while everyone else thinks they are playing Checkers.

I wonder how the Mouse's recent company-wide conversion to Google Ad Manager for all ad revenue across online properties and channels is working out. I mean, who's playing chess and who's playing 5 dimensional chess in that match?

Disney's acquisition of Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, and the better parts of 21st Century Fox will go down as the stuff of legend.

I don't even understand how other media giants allowed this to happen.

Disney controls essentially all the most profitable global entertainment franchises into the foreseeable future.

They are the Thanos of entertainment. Gathering the entertainment world's infinity stones.

It will be interesting to see if this translates into streaming platform success...

Let's not forget that they have control of Hulu now too, although they're still waiting for CNBCUniversal to relinquish their 33% to them before they completely own it.

If the previous are the Infinity Stones, Hulu and Disney+ (and ESPN+) are their Infinity Gauntlet.

It’s not that other media conglomerates allowed it to happen. In the case of Pixar and LucasFilms, Jobs/Lucas trusted Disney not to ruin what they thought made it special.

Disney has a track record of doing acquisitions and leaving the acquired companies alone.

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