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Comment by lanrh1836 | Hacker News Reader

Yikes. A little more than half the estimate. I’m pretty sure that is the worst miss the company has ever had.

With recent news that reruns like the Office and Friends are leaving next year, it would be really funny if a large chunk of Netflix subscribers are literally subscribing just to watch decades old reruns. It could be a bit of an Emperor Has No Clothes situation for them.

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Netflix is a heavily data-oriented company; if a large chunk of Netflix subscribers just watch decades old reruns then they know it. What Netflix needs to do is build content specifically for these people and I don't believe they're doing that.

My anecdote on this: My collage age daughter watches Friends on Netflix basically continuously -- she's probably watched every season a dozen times now -- when she gets to last episode it just cycles around again. This is because she keeps on it in the background when she's studying or doing school work.

What can you build for those people except reboots of those old shows, which they're doing (e.g. Sabrina, Fuller House)? They can't force NBC to license them the old reruns forever if NBC doesn't want to. There's no amount of money they can offer that will work once a studio decides it's going to reserve the content for its own streaming service.

Make new shows that appeal to that market.

Netflix content is a reflection of it's desire to compete with HBO, not NBC.

It's hard to make shows that appeal to the "leave 10-20 seasons of a show on infinite loop" demographic in a short period of time.

You need 10-20 years to do it.

You can’t make a new Office or Friends. Those were created by really special groups of people and I’m not confident today’s society allows groups like this to form.

This decade of outrage that we’re coming out of (hopefully) has crushed an entire generation of comedians and actors. Look at late night talk shows for example; they’re totally stale. Nobody has the balls to say anything, fearing the tweet storm will be turned against their production company.

It’ll take another generation before we’ll be in a place to create good shit again. Or maybe it will never happen again and the golden age is over?

You can't make a new Friends in the US anymore. But it is potentially possible in other countries.

Yeah those darn kids. Why won't they just get off your lawn. You know who said the same thing you just did? Every generation about the next generation. You can literally go back to how people were complaining books were causing corruption in kids and how things used to be better when. There are more comedy shows available than ever before on television and see the push off s button. Comedy is alive and well, it's just that comedy changes over time and what you find funny, the kids don't find edgy or relevant. Remember when Dane Cook was funny? How about Rodney Dangerfield? Hell, Richard Pryor before Eddie Murphy (Raw is still an amazing set). Comedy will always change and it's a reflection of the society that exists at that time, not the past. Plenty of comedians say really crazy things that don't create a tweet storm. Chris Hardwick survived a tweet storm based on some allegations from his ex and he's doing just fine now. Aziz Ansari seems to be humming along just fine too. I think the real point is that the kids are okay. You don't need to worry about their sense of humor it's still firmly intact.

Yes, they are doing this (Fuller House, Gilmore Girls), but Sanrina is about as far from a reboot of the 90s version as you can imagine. Horror/drama remake, not sitcom - more akin to Riverdale.

>Netflix is a heavily data-oriented company; if a large chunk of Netflix subscribers just watch decades old reruns then they know it. What Netflix needs to do is build content specifically for these people and I don't believe they're doing that.

I know that a significant portion just bing rewatch the Office and Friends, however they do not own the rights and these will go back to NBC who will just host them in their own streaming service.

This is the main issue facing Netflix. The more their competitors wise up and take their content elsewhere people will be more reticent to pay for a sub fee since there are now way too many options to choose from.

That is definitely what their concern has been the last 7 or 8 years and why they've made such a massive push with original content. With so many content producers starting their own streaming services, they have to lure and keep customers the same way the other content producers will be: with original content not sourced from elsewhere. It's the only way forward for them and fortunately for them, they were aware enough to realize it almost a decade ahead of time.

Personally I haven’t found the quality of Netflix originals to be anywhere close to the same level as HBO. Their approach is more “consistently release a ton of average quality shows” and hope a few stick. Will be interesting to see if that actually work long term.

I agree for the most part. They definitely have their great content (Dark, Stranger Things, first few seasons of House of Cards, OITNB, I Am Mother, etc.) but it is incredibly inconsistent overall. I think they were more focused on beefing up their library so they had _something_ when the third-party content left the service, and hopefully get a few hits like Stranger Things in the process. With reports that they intend to slow down their investment in original content, I'm hoping they start focusing more on quality than quantity now.

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