No wonder Netflix is bleeding subscribers – it’s become the new cable
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Their recent programming, beyond a few good shows and documentaries, is mostly lowest common denominator garbage. I think Netflix became data obsessed. The problem with that is good art or even entertainment is rarely made by analyzing a spreadsheet to determine what audiences want.
So now they have an app where it is hard to find things, because I guess it is more "sticky," and content that is brain dead, because I guess their data suggests a lot of people will watch it relative to the cost.
They should have remained focused on premier television. Big shows people want to talk to their friends about. Not Movies, because they do a terrible job promoting them and not reality TV, because no one is subscribing to a service to watch reality TV (though they will probably watch it once subscribed).
I do think that the pandemic disrupted filming so they bought what they could to fill the gap, so hopefully the quality picks back up.
I subscribe to Hulu to host Bachelor series watch parties.
However, I strongly agree that Netflix content is braindead and the service charges you more than its content is worth.
Garden Path Optimizing
transitive verb
1. to be misled by progressive or incremental optimization.
2. to achieve sub-optimality by pursuing incremental optimization.
Netflix used to rule with affordable access to the best new shows, but now they offer neither.
Exactly. I made this point a month or two ago. I cancelled my Netflix account for the first time since 2004. Because with all their data scientists and two decades of viewer data (more detailed than Nielsen ratings could ever provide), and billions of dollars... they still can't compete with AMC, HBO, etc. It's inexcusable. It's laughable. And it makes me think we are in a serious big data/data analytics bubble. When I unsubscribed, their crowning achievement was a "Top 10" leaderboard. Something any junior dev could throw together with a few SQL reports and a day or two of free time. That feature also highlighted the bargain bin nature of Netflix's catalog.
The other problem they have is they have eroded viewer trust. You can't actually watch new shows because you know they will be cancelled after a season or two. So new shows come out and no one watches and Netflix cancels them because of no one watching. It's a snake eating its own tail.
Plus people have realized they would rather wait until all seasons are out to binge watch than have to wait large gaps of time.
People forget that many huge shows, e.g. Breaking Bad, Battlestar Galactica, only became hugely popular several years into their run. The Wire is even more extreme: it only really became huge after the last episode was broadcast. But in each of those cases, someone made the call that a high-quality show was worth running, either because they hoped it would find a wider audience or because they believed it enhanced their brand.
I wish they had, at least, given it one extra season to wrap things up. I think there's a huge difference between cancelling a show and telling a show "okay you have one more season". Both in trust with filmmakers/writers/etc and viewers.
For this reason I have mostly just been watching shows that I know are either finished, 1 season, or guaranteed to be renewed due to massive popularity. I was sort of traumatised when they cancelled the OA.
To navel gaze, what makes good anything? (Forewarning I'm eventually heading around to talk about guessing ahead on whether we're making good software or not.) Good furniture, good cars, good bicycles... how & when are groups effective in these places? Or even in these cases, perhaps there secretly are individual craftspeople (I'd consider a moviemaker a certain type of craftsperson) defining the outcome, steering; we think of these industrial productions as group efforts but perhaps there really there are embedded decision makers.
Is good software made by analyzing a spreadsheet to determine what audiences want? In what cases? Who can determine what to build, based off what? Who directs the software, makes it happen, based off what?
How are we defining good, who gets to pick? Many more layers of questions here. In software, are we seeing & judging software as an appliance/application, or as technology itself is? If every engineer working on a thing says, this thing sucks, it's just the worst, but people love & use the thing, what does that say? What gives rise to tech that has a strong cult following?
Movies are interesting because we're incredibly bad at grabbing numbers about them. We can count the number of actors, budget & allocation of budget. But how do we rate & estimate story, it's value? How do we calibrate & rate the chemistry of the cast & the audience's reaction to these actors they may well already have seen in dozens of other films, how do we assess the photography department's choice of shots, or the special effect's team's spectacularness or believability? Everything is radically under-specifiable, as compared to a bike, where there are defined parameters & form, generally. Software too is another ill-defined thing, is more formless in nature; true to it's name. It has such a mound of cofactors constantly defining it. There's so much taste & necessary continual discernment, picking well, that keeps compounding, that comprises the whole, like a movie.
1. 80/20 rule: Target best performing shows, replicate success to capitalize on fan loyalty/momentum (new seasons or spins): The Crown, Money Heist, Designated Survivor, Narcos...
2. Validation: Look at high movie ratings, copy those categories: Korean dramas, documentaries, telenovelas, reality TV...
3. Culture: Follow trending themes on social media - feminism, financial freedom, woke...incorporate them into the screenplay, regardless of bias, craft, or message
4. Engagement: As long as we capture user attention and addiction, reinforce this habit via recommendations with AI algorithms
Like Facebook, they are focused on creating an addiction machine for short term gain, and this strategy is reflected on their increasingly low quality shows - this affects the brand, leading to low trust and rising churn
As a subscriber, I'm essentially footing the bill for Netflix's "spray and watch" technique which is getting hard to support when the content doesn't appeal to me. So maybe focus is key and perhaps don't cancel so many shows I was into before (Marco Polo, Daredevil, etc...)
I'm keeping Netflix around but if they start preventing my family from using a single account which we've had for a decade now, that's the last straw and I'm cancelling the service.
That still leaves them on the hook for lots and lots of other shows that they canceled. (My particular beef: I Am Not Okay With This, though the pandemic deserves a lot of blame for that.)
Eventually some are gonna get tired of the rug-pull, but I think a lot will say "As long as I have something to watch tonight I have a reason to keep the service."
Toning down cancellations would help with customer loyalty in my opinion.
Netflix didn't become cable. Netflix went from being a cable alternative to becoming a channel in the cable alternative.
It's as if a cable channel is not supposed to develop a strong brand. I mean, MTV did, back when it played music videos, but as part of the Viacom stable the then 65 Sumner Redstone decided unilaterally that we wouldn't be able to watch music videos anymore.
The ratings went in the toilet but who cares, Viacom is entitled to a certain number of cents per sub whether or not you watch and there is no way to accept or refuse MTV except to subscribe or not subscribe to the whole bundle.
People might think you have a brand because you have a logo but there is no benefit for the company in making the consumer believe that you stand for something because the consumer doesn't have a disaggregated choice: once you subscribe it doesn't matter if you watch or not.
It drives me nuts that people think GAME PASS from Microsoft is a good idea but I see it as "someday parents are going to be wondering why their kids aren't interested in playing video games anymore"... The answer will be that games wouldn't have been fun for twenty years and the parents just remember what it was like back when video games were fun, back when video game makers made money when they made fun games people want to buy. Once they got paid regardless, there wasn't any reason to make games fun anymore.
you can't just totally give up, but you need to find the cheapest way to be adequate, which turns into trash stuff that triggers something in our brain to seek out more of it.
It's the same with sugar and junk food.
I blame it on their pivot towards reality shows. We watched the Great British Baking Show (it's nice) and now there seems to be 10 different Netflix original baking shows, all bad. It's just spray and pray at this point.