Comment by basch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by basch | Hacker News Reader

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CBS/Viacom/Paramount/Nickelodeon/Showtime. Sony.

Disney/Hulu/ESPN count as one, though you can buy smaller packages.

ViacomCBS, NBCUniversal, WarnerMedia, and Disney will still be the big 4 of all the ones you listed. Amazon, Apple, and Netflix have minuscule content libraries by comparison. After people binge through new shows, the big 4 will be the ones holding all the old content. Netflix cant afford to produce content fast enough to backfill all their soon to expire licenses. Warner/Turner, Disney/ESPN, NBCSports also own a lot of sports coverage (CBS has a play as well) while Amazon, Apple, and Netflix barely have any coverage.

People are underestimating the play ViacomCBS will be able to make against NBCUniversal, WarnerMedia, and Disney now that they are united. CBS All Access and Pluto will be a killer combo, if they so choose to venture that route AND they own Philo to compete with Sling, Vue, ATT, Hulu, Youtube. CBSAA/Pluto/Philo is absolutely a threat to Disney/ESPN/Hulu's attempt at dominance; NBCUniversal(XfinityComcast), WarnerMedia(DirecTV/ATT/HBO whatever its named this week) wont go down with a fight either.

Discovery, Sinclair, AMC Networks all still exist as well. Verizon is making a bad play not gobbling up whats left.

At some point there will be a race to the bottom on price, and ad supported Pluto(CBS)/Hulu(Disney) like products will be dirt cheat to get people in the door. The extra money will come from people not wanting to watch ads.

The only streaming services that really matter are the ones that are global. Prime, Netflix, Disney. Netflix has a huge headstart. I believe almost 60 % of their subscribers are outside usa. They make local originals in every region they are. Just look at the amount of Spanish language originals that came out this year. Spanish, Dutch, Turkish, Korean, Italian, ... originals. It’s their ‘secret’ weapon.

I don’t disagree I just think it’s naive. The biggest grossing programs are still American, so the question is if the future is in blockbusters like Marvel / Game of Thrones or if the better play is smaller niche plays.

I don’t know, you said American, and even with the monthly premium, there are less than 400 million potential customers, right?

American shows have global audiences, as the rights are sold worldwide. For example, I stayed in Austria last night and watched Game of Thrones in German on something other than HBO.

> The extra money will come from people not wanting to watch ads.

Having both an ad-supported and paid ad-free versions of the same product is likely an unstable equilibrium— Customers with disposable income will gravitate towards the ad-free product, and those are the people that advertisers are really paying for access to.

I think that's opposite, whenever I see studies of ad-free and ad-supported it seems like most customers went for ad-supported solutions. Maybe though other forms of online content are different than video.

Also I'm not sure if disposable income is the only factor that advertisers aim for, I mean a lot of advertisers aim for the youth market which sure have some disposable income but more importantly have disposable time.

Why would a streaming provider not offer the customer an equal cost to not be advertised to, that the advertisers are paying to advertise to?

Plus, I would still expect ad free to allow an ad before the show starts, although its often an ad for other content, a la Disney Channel only playing ads for other Disney channel shows.

It’s tricky to nail down how much revenue loss each switch to ad-free will cost because you’re splitting your demographics. If you’re playing ads in the paid version, it’s by definition not ad-free; it’s some kind of hybrid that I haven’t thought enough about to address.

If enough viewers that actually buy things move over to your ad-free product, you tank the value per impression that advertisers are willing to pay. Thus you lose not only the impressions of people who pay, but also the lower the value of each ad you’re still showing.

I suspect that this will cause most providers to be either primarily subscription or primarily advertising, to the extent that the less-popular choice doesn’t have enough customers to be worth keeping around.

How will there be a race to the bottom on price, when companies like Netflix are barely cashflow positive right now?

Will subscribers really decide to pay $5 a month for a subscription with a bunch of shows they don’t want to watch instead of $10 a month for a subscription with a few shows they really want to see?

How are these companies going to deliver more video ad value per viewer than someone like Google does with YouTube? They may have all of the big brand advertisers lined up, but will they ever even reach parity the revenue per user of Google and Facebook?

These companies will treat streaming like they treat all other markets dominated by networking effects and mindshare - dig into their vast scrooge mcduck money pits they have been accumulating (mostly internationally) for the last 10 years to sell the services below cost to try to attrition out the competition so they can reign alone as the last corporation standing.

And how is that different than VC backed startups?

>How will there be a race to the bottom on price, when companies like Netflix are barely cashflow positive right now?

I think netflix is in a bind cash wise, it costs cash to make content and they down own decades of library paid for in the past. The big 4 I mentioned are the ones that can race to the bottom. Disney might want to raise prices in 3 years but itll be right as ViacomCBS and NBCUniversal go into full swing.

> Verizon is making a bad play not gobbling up whats left.

they're the phone company, they don't have to care. The content companies will gobble their knobs now to be allowed access to the pipes they must have. They'll take what they're given and say "thank you."

I hope thats just cynicism and it isn't that way really. Look at how they behave.

Ironically, being the last pure last-mile operator makes you more neutral than your content-integrated competitors.

Verizon digital media is a backend CDN for over half the companies you listed. They’re betting the future of the entire company on cord cutters.

It also seems we are headed towards coupled offerings of content AND connection.

Certain content available via certain ISPs only.

> After people binge through new shows, the big 4 will be the ones holding all the old content.

Do most people really want that old content? Apart from a few shows, I say no.

I stopped watching real time stuff (news, local, etc) and like watching old series an episode or two a day. TNG was great and it took a few months.

Actually, I do think there is a market for that.

Like the "catalog" section of the old rental places, it surely would be interesting to watch an "old" movie sometimes (which by today's measure could be something like >3yrs)

There's a ton of old stuff I'd like to show my kid, but so much from my youth isn't available.

I'd also like to watch more garbage tv from the 80s.

arent Friends and The Office some of the most streamed shows?

I have to think Disneys back catalog of shows and movies will be a bigger draw short term than their new content. Are people buying it to watch The Mandalorian and the new Lady and the Tramp, or are they buying it so their kids can watch every disney movie ever made? Dont get me wrong, having a bunch of Marvel mini-series as their launch content is a brilliant move to make it not "just the old stuff."

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