All the old television networks, Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Apple, and others are pumping out more mediocre TV than anyone wants or cares to consume. The quality is too low and the quantity is too high.
It’s telling to me that the most-watched shows on these networks are often sitcoms from the 90s and 00s, despite a mountain of newer content going unnoticed.
A shakeout would be a good thing.
I realized as a 20-50 middle income white guy I was the target demographic for 90%+ of the shows on television. Even if I thought X new sitcom was garbage at least I could relate to it. Now that isnt true so that show probably seems even less appealing than it did before.
So I just dont watch it. That's fine. And once in a while a squid games, BEHIND HER EYES, or damn it even love is blind pops up and I get to enjoy bingeing a show with family/friends. More content is coming out and it is more targeted. Those that are hits get renewed and those that flop dont. It's the same system as always but more targeted.
Forgive my ignorance, but is syndication even relevant to many of these shows/networks anymore, now that you can just drop something onto a streaming service and leave it there in perpetuity?
Who wants to have Neflix, Amazon Prime, Paramount+, HBOMax, Disney+, Hulu, CBS Whatevertheycallit, Peacock (NBC), etc., etc., etc., until you're paying $500/mo.? They'd love for that to happen, but there's no way. Nobody is going to do that.
Every content producer want 100% control and 100% profits. They're just going to kill the golden goose.
I'm not sure I agree that it's not a competitive marketplace though, just look at all the players! What I would agree with is that it's not consumer friendly, and I agree no one will pay $500/mo, but a lot of people have been paying $100-$150 for cable for decades, and for that budget you can still get a lot of good stuff without needing to get everything.
All that said though, the vertical integration is pretty interesting because this is how the movies studios were set up in the first half of the twentieth century. They owned the production (including actors as highly paid indentured servants) and the theaters. It was only in 1948 that anti-trust action was taken to force them to divest theaters. That's super interesting because it's hard to imagine that type of anti-trust action today.
Imagine that you could only go to AMC theatres to watch Spider-man. No other theatres could carry it.
Imagine that you could only buy Coke from 7-11. No other stores could carry it.
Imagine that you could only buy an iPhone from Verizon. No other carriers could sell it.
Imagine that you could only buy a computer with Windows pre-installed. There was no way to get a computer without giving money to Microsoft.
When the product being sold is captured by a single storefront or service, that actively harms consumers. They cannot choose the location with better service without choosing a different product. They cannot chose a better product without choosing a different service. Exclusives rob the customer of choice by making every choice an all-or-nothing offer.
That was movie production for decades. Same script, same characters, same ending all the time, to the point that suspension does not exists.
And if all theaters play all movies, there’s pretty good incentive for the business not to be dependent on one person.
And with indies, that don’t fall into “all movies” categories, there’s a pretty good incentive for a theater to optionally try them out anyways, as a differentiator beyond service.
The fact that Hollywood managed to do anyways I think is despite the incentives being against them.
Whereas in the current system, Disney and Netflix need to make the exact same movie twice so they can both have it in their catalog, to meet whatever checkbox. Or ape each other’s unique movies to avoid the “you need 5 subscriptions to see everything” problem
When the producer is also the broadcaster, they no longer have an incentive to license it to a competing broadcaster unless they think it'll earn them more money than remaining the exclusive broadcaster.
With TV, it makes more sense to syndicate after the show has run its course - the "first run" channels would have more new content that would be better suited to the prime-time slots than the stuff they have previously broadcasted. You have a limited number of timeslots to fill, do you really think advertisers will put in their biggest bids if they know they're going to be shown during re-runs? No, it is more profitable to get some new content that'll attract more eyeballs.
But with streaming, it's all VOD (video on demand). It doesn't matter when the content was produced because if you're the only one in town with show X, people have to subscribe to you to get show X (or pirate it, but most people prefer legal means). You don't have the limitation of filling timeslots on a TV channel and getting advertisers to out-bid each other anymore, because advertisers aren't even in the picture (or rather, they're doing product placement in your shows instead of also paying for airtime). Syndication means you are no longer the exclusive source of show X - and if you don't have a large pool of exclusive content, you will not get many customers.
In the past, you were just 1 of 100+ channels in a cable bundle. You needed to give consumers a reason to tune in, and you could only show one thing at a time. Now, you are 1 of (probably) less than 20 streaming services, and you can serve your entire library at the exact same time to anyone across the globe (pending licensing restrictions) - what's your pitch for why anyone should subscribe to you if they can get all your content elsewhere? If others have exclusives and you don't, you're going to lose. And not creating a streaming platform when everyone else has means you're earning less than you could - investors want returns, and they're going to start asking "ok so when do we get a bigger slice of the streaming pie?"
All this to say that we are in a competitive marketplace...just, one that competes on content and nothing else. You don't need to provide a better customer experience if you have something a lot of people want. It's like how YouTube has no incentive to improve because of the network effect relegating their former competitors to niches they have no incentive to pursue.
This marketplace sucks for consumers - if you want to watch Disney content (or any of the non-Disney content they've gobbled up), you have one option. Star Trek? AMC+ or Paramount+. Rinse and repeat for just about every other show.
I remember when people would complain about having to buy a cable bundle for just a handful of channels, especially when you only watched a few shows that weren't in the basic cable package. Then Netflix came around, and at its peak, it had 99% of what my mom and I wanted, and what was left, we were ok with just not watching or waiting until it ended up at the DVD rental store. Now, the shows my mom and I (legally) watch only take a little bit less than what we were paying for cable (and the lone DVD rental place left in town has become a CBD store with a couple shelves of disks gathering dust).
Uh, the CBS one is called “Paramount+”. Hulu and Disney+, I expect, will eventually merge since they are both fully-owned by Disney now. And there's more consolidation in progress.
Culture that fractures when electronic entertainment content produced by a tiny number of companies is siloed is not a culture that was worth preserving in the first place.
Take the sitcom Frasier (1993-2004). It is streaming exclusively on Peacock in the US, but they can still sell the broadcast rights to networks around the world. So in the UK, Frasier episodes are shown daily on Channel 4 in the mornings. That's an extra revenue stream right there, and it doesn't cannibalize Peacock as it doesn't operate in the UK.
The production studio that owns the show pays out the royalties, based on the income they receive from the channels syndicating the show. (Fox TV, for example, made Modern Family, which aired on ABC. Fox TV pays out the royalties received from the channels that syndicate reruns of the show, not ABC.)
When Modern Family was first made, that would have been a bigger distinction. Now, it's “which of Disney’s pockets are we talking about”?
> I don't think we are. I agree the the amount of just okay content that is being released seems overwhelming.
Agree.
It's a search space problem. If there was a perfect amount of ideal content, everyone would be glued to their screens 24/7.
Large and medium budget projects come in two forms:
- Easy win tentpole features. Marvel, Star Wars. Typically generic and bland (though they don't have to be) that can attract lots of eyeballs and starve your competition.
- Bold bets that garner attention by surprise. These surface the unknown or unmet interests of a broad number of consumers. Stranger Things (80's nostalgia and horror fantasy), Squid Game (Battle Royale / Hunger Games still has gas).
Netfix is trying to find a lot of the second category by firing shots into search space. It's producing mixed results, which should be expected. Unfortunately they can't slow down yet, because their third party content libraries are drying up.
The problem is that it's all too expensive. Difficult and costly to make, and too many things that can go wrong and turn any good project into something that sucks. Everything has to be perfect.
Netflix can afford to do more curation in the future once consolidation has happened. Perhaps buying NBC, CBS, or the new Discovery could give them some breathing room.
They collect shit-ton of data on everything of the users, and track eyeballs (not literally, I think)- what are people watching, what are people binging, etc.
They are forming clusters of users based on demographic, purchase power, etc, and mapping those clusters to features in content.
And if a certain overall kind or discreet feature is worth the amount of eyeball it is attracting, a designed, soulless series gets created with those features, or two.
This is what modern, app-TV feels to me. No art, no quality. Just content tailor-made and factory produced to match the taste of favored demographics with purchase power. And they not only want to match. They want to maximize.
They want the maximum amount of people to watch something, not small amounts of people finding their niche.
I cannot tolerate this kind of content, and I am unsubscribed to all services except Amazon Prime for free delivery of goods.
That doesn't mean there aren't some good TV. I would consider Bosch to be quality TV, and Ozark is okay-ish. The Expanse, too.
But I am done with conveyor-belt driven app-TV.
I will just binge The Wire when I am sick. Thank you.
Reed Hastings was furious after that call ended. Conversation still ringed in his ears. Another journalist implying how bad tech giants exploit the data, “spy” (gasp!) on customers.
He opened the cabinet, took a whiskey bottle, and poured single malt into a heavy glass. His office was quiet again, anger subsided, and he was finally able to relax. Today’s call was fourth this week, maybe fifth. For the past couple of month all the media was hunting for were stories on ad targeting, behavior tracking, privacy breach…
Everyone and their dog implied that there is full-on spying on every single customer to drive the views. People who had no idea how this worked, who invested zero hours into building something meaningful, while spending all their life magnifying the rage through social media.
“I wonder if there is a trendy hashtag already, something like #trackingate?” — Mr. Reed caught himself spiraling again into the unpleasant memories of his latest conversations with the press. Poor fellas haven’t been able to scratch even the surface of how it all works.
“You don’t need to track every eyeball. Just a select few of them. Carefully selected.” Mr. Reed smirked, eyed a precious glass jar filled with white jelly marbles, and closed the cabinet door.
This is a subjective statement. You might even dislike shows on a particular service, but to say all of them are “objectively bad” and you think people watch more of “90s sitcoms” tells me that you probably prefer 90s sitcoms. :)
I’m basically cycling between these providers each month. The Expanse, The Morning Show, Hawkeye, Succession, For All Mankind.
Last year was the most television I’ve watched since I was a kid.
And this fact was noticed contemporaneously - remember all of the very serious thinkpieces opining that people were rotting their brains in front of the TV watching content so brain-dead that you need a laughtrack to tell the audience when to laugh.
Personally I think that was just snobbery - the mediocre sitcoms were fine and perfectly ok entertainment and there was no need for any kind of moral panic - but let's not pretend that that was some kind of golden age of sophisticated content.
I've just noticed that for many years, Netflix would show that their most-watched show was The Office. And I'm sitting here thinking -- all of this new content and the thing people are watching is over a decade old?
South Park, Family Guy, Friends, Sienfield... I've seen these promoted by multiple services as the most-watched shows available.
I don't think "created something more popular than The Office" is a good metric to decide that Netflix only creates mediocre content. The Office is really popular! There's plenty of room for creating high quality content, even if no single show reaches the level of popularity of The Office.
In the broadcast world, the relevant "inventory" (ie. TV Network Channel time slot) is very limited. Therefore only content with production quality that appeals to a large enough audience to attract advertisers gets greenlit. There's no such limitations in subscription supposed the digital content delivery (aka OTT) economic model. You only have to get sufficient audience to at least recoup your production costs and the minimal per stream delivery costs.
In the past year, my family has binge watched "blown away" a glass blowing competition, 3 series about weird/exotic vacation rentals/hotels, 2 children's mysteries serises, standup comedy by specific comediens, a series about music production and composition styles of different artists and a series about design. All of these above ran multiple seasons, so clearly there's sufficient profitable viewership for multiple seasons to be made even though it's very likely NONE of them would make mainstream broadcast TV. We didn't see any of the "big/popular" shows which do make it to broadcast TV. I'm very sure there are enough households like mine that drives multiple seasons of the above "niche" shows.
The only reason we have cable / broadcast TV connection at all now is when my parents or in-laws visit, they get very bored without their regular TV channels.
while you site a few cherry picked series that lasted a few years, netflix is really quick to cancel shows. Honestly the original content Netflix spits out has less diversity than broad cast tv, and they have about as much patience to keep those shows 'on the air'.
Netflix actually has extremely diverse programming on all levels. By genre, by budget, by language, by subject matter, by age rating, by quality, Netflix covers absolutely every quadrant.
What is "left leaning dystopian"? Never mind, I don't want to know. It's embarrassing.
I disagree with your claim about people are primarily watching old content (source?). Just looking at one list for Netflix [1], it's all fairly recent shows with the notable exception of Seinfeld. It's actually astounding what a money-making machine Seinfeld is 25 years after being on the air. Even before streaming, Seinfeld reruns would get >1m viewers on cable. It's crazy.
I actually believe the last 20 years have been (and seemingly continue to be) the golden age of television. Technology finally made practical heavily serialized content and TV enables types of content not possible in movies. Movies are just limited to ~3 hours in length (director's cuts of Dances with Wolves notwithstanding). Movies are for short stories. TV is for books.
This is a structural change in the industry and despite the Big Brother-esque mediocrity we've also seen over this period, it's undeniable that we've seen some of the greatest entertainment ever to grace a screen in the last 20 years.
[1]: https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/tv-ratings-seinfeld-you-squ...
I realize this is just one data point, but the most-streamed show in 2020 was The Office, close to a decade after its last episode was released.
https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/the-office-most-stream...
In the broadcast world, the relevant "inventory" (ie. TV Network Channel time slot) is very limited and precious. Therefore only content with production quality that appeals to a large enough audience to attract advertisers gets greenlit.
In the past year, my family has binge watched "blown away" a glass blowing competition, 3 series about weird/exotic vacation rentals/hotels, 2 children's mysteries serises, standup comedy by specific comediens, a series about music production and composition styles of different artists and a series about design. All of these above ran multiple seasons, so clearly there's sufficient profitable viewership for multiple seasons to be made even though it's very likely NONE of them would make mainstream broadcast TV. We didn't see any of the "big/popular" shows.
The only reason we have cable TV connection at all now is when my parents or in-laws visit, they get very bored without their.regular TV channels.
When any field gets too saturated, the best way to shine is to focus on underserved niches.
There was also huge glut of forgettable content back then. Most 90s and 00s shows were low quality crap too. No one is watching those now. The handful of shows that survived and made it onto today’s streaming services are the greatest of that era.
Good content is not a fixed % of total. So if you increase total you might just water down the % of good content... Or worse, if practices focus on quantity entirely you may end up with 0% good content.
Even shows I used to enjoy seem to have taken a steep decline since about 2018.
The things in decline imho are due to studios taking their best people off the project to kick start new ones
The most recent has been the proliferation of Streaming services and original content to try and own unique content per-platform. Netflix and HBO did well from 2014-2017, and everyone else hopped onto the bandwagon to mediocre effect since
Agree. We remember the good shows from the previous decades, but there was a lot of thrash
Less is more.
It doesn't matter what you don't watch, garbage or not.
I don't think a 30-60 minute show is worth $14.99. Other things are only available on $50+/month live TV services. So, I end up waiting until there are a few things I want to watch on a subscription service, then buying or trialing it for a month, and cancelling. It's just annoying.
That said, I think more and more people are realizing this so I'm hopeful things would improve. For example, one of the most underrated streaming services IMO is HBO Max - they don't have a lot of content but the quality of of what they have is pretty good.
As the subscription money keeps flowing, there is an incentive to publish a minimum number of new series / shows / what not, and there are only so many good ideas at any given time.
Add to that, there is no clear profit/loss equation for online streaming (even though you have viewership numbers, there is no definite link between retention and viewership numbers for a given content. As an example, I just saw Eternals on Disney+, just because of the marketing and branding, but felt bored of it. Clearly I am adding to the viewership, but not to the pull factor that keeps me on the provider)
...yet the last few years have been quite hard! All of us are navigating a COVID environment where working remotely, educating kids, and entertaining ourselves have all blended together. There's a bifurcation of eyeballs - I simply don't have the time or emotional bandwidth to watch "prestige tv", but it's very easy for me to put on friends, or the office, or seinfeld, and carry on with my day!
Now, I think these creators are banking their effort/ideas in the hopes that theaters will make a comeback at some point. However, at some point it will become clear that theaters are dead and that there will need to be a new business model (or acceptance of the current model) that creators will simply need to accept.
This seems flaws logic. Many people have pride in their work regardless. And even if selfish reasoning they know a hit gets renewed season or goes on their resume for better future earnings.
On my experience, the only reason the world works is because many people has pride in their jobs and go beyond their pay grade to make things work. And rarely are the better paid as they are more worried about good results that better pay for themselves. When I find people like that I try to help them as a sign of gratitude.
They get to charge more (or determine if it even exists) for season 2+ if it is a huge hit.
Also for a lot of Netflix's original content it is licensing streaming rights, not full ownership. I have seen news reports that they own 10% or less of their "Netflix Originals". So merchandising rights remain with the original owners\creators of the content.
It also hides some of the good stuff because you can't typically filter, sort, or search based on things like reviews.
Right now you have about 10 going for a very general audience and there is no way that that will work.
I loved Disjointed on Netflix, but I understand it's too silly for many. If I want to find Ukrainian rom coms,I can find it .
This was unheard of 20 years ago.
Now you got me curious