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Comment by chii | Hacker News Reader

> they had billions of dollars to create original content

they had the wrong idea that original content is their strong point. It's not. It's disney's strong point.

Netflix should've used their dominant position to lobby for new rules to the game - prevent exclusivity of content! They should've lobbied gov't to mandate that studio productions of content be permanently untied to a streaming service, and be available to all players in the streaming space. Just like net neutrality, we might call this content neutrality.

Netflix is at it's core, a tech company that solves technical issues with streaming. They pivoted to content creation, and they aren't very good at it - sure they got a couple of hits, but they cannot possibly compete on this with actual movie studios that own IPs from a century ago to this day.

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> > they had billions of dollars to create original content

> they had the wrong idea that original content is their strong point. It's not. It's disney's strong point.

I guess there are different people watching content. Note that I mainly talk about TV shows, as I’m not a big movie fan.

Because I hate pretty much everything Disney. MCU is low-brow humor with plot-hole riddled writing and weak characters mainly fueled by action scenes and star power. I don’t know what Star Wars is, but nothing that interests me, I don’t think I’d even have liked the original trilogy if I had been older when it came out.

Netflix, both their English original content and many foreign shows (assuming good dubbing, which usually means the actors dubbed themselves) has far better content.

> I guess there are different people watching content.

and the different groups have different sizes. Your tastes, unfortunately, belongs to the smaller of those groups, so content-wise, disney's franchised content won't appeal to you. But they do appeal to a very large group. And this large group is where the profits lie, and why netflix is not competing well in. It's the wrong game to be playing for netflix.

I disagree - their issue was scaling it.

When they started out creating original content, they were hitting it out of the park. Orange is the new black, daredevil, house of cards were all big hits.

They scaled, quality was sacraficed for quantity, and their brand became very dilluted.

I'm sort of surprised there is less effort in poaching series with an existing fan base. This would seemingly be an antidote to the complaint of too-"algorithm says it will work" programming, because it bypasses that entire flow with an established "we see the audience, they exist in fandom forums and such."

I've never used Hulu, but there's a good chance I'll sub in the next few months for the new season of The Orville. I'd expect anime series would be a great similar target- there are plenty of manga/novel adaptations that did one 13-episode series that covered the first fewbooks, and now the source material is finished with 25 more volumes they can adapt.

>poaching series with an existing fan base

That only really works if you respect the original source material, which seems to be a problem for the "creatives".

> Orange is the new black, daredevil, house of cards were all big hits.

The original version of House of Cards was a four episode mini-series. There was a lesson there that Netflix chose to ignore.

Not disagreeing with the fundamental point, but the original HoC was the first in a trilogy. The BBC made 12 episodes across the three adaptations.

> There was a lesson there that Netflix chose to ignore.

What is it? Network television spent decades milking shows way past their expiration dates and still made bank.

The Office was originally a 14-episode arc built to an actual conclusion and NBC made who knows how much with middling season after season of the US version.

People watched because we're creatures of habit and you only have to get us hooked once.

That didn't change. What changed is the # of options. Instead of 1/25 shows catching on its 100/2,500 and it doesn't scale the same way.

Well but House of Cards had such a ridiculous tension arc, that you _really_ couldn't extend it past 3 seasons. And if you try it just gets absurd and nobody can stay emerged anymore. Add to that, that you suddenly need to deal with "you are not allowed to use Spacey anymore" and the attempt to push "women for every job" you end up with a predictable disaster. But even if either wouldn't have happened: They didn't have the writers to keep writing the same quality

I didn't watch the shows you mentioned.

I was late to Netflix.

The original movies I saw were beyond bad. In every movie they used every plot twist ever invented, and every bit of cliched writing. The overpaid actors just read lines.

It's almost like they locked sober hack writers in a room and told them just write. Write like your audience is an angry/perverted Forrest Gump, and can't speak English. (I threw in sober because even if under the influence--they might have written better?)

They just wasted money.

I understand comming up with original clever scripts is hard.

I felt they could have redone classic movies though--instead of the garbage they threw at us.

I was watching Dog Day Afternoon the other day. The movie aged very well, and is an all time classic. No one is going to top that movie on any level.

Netflix could have tried to remake it though with up to date references, and even change up the script. Sonny, and Sal could have made it on the plane, and go from there.

Dog Day Afternoon is a bad example because it aged so well, but their are other good movies that could have been brought up to date?

I believe it's too late for Netflix.

In retrospect, I would have rather had them throw money at students in film school.

(I don't bet on stocks, but we all saw this comming. Every studio was working on their own pay per view service a year after we started talking about Netflix. Someone brobally made millions shorting that company.)

I don't think you remake excellent movies like "Dog Day Afternoon", you remake the bad ones, usually B-movies, that showed potential. Maybe revisit "A Boy and His Dog", for example.

> Netflix is at it's core, a tech company that solves technical issues with streaming.

Netflix used to be a tech company that solves the problem of content discovery, too. Then they chose to not generate recommendations based on data but instead push their in-house content.

Netflix was a dvd mailing company with a website and they pivoted to streaming. Amazon did too. Streaming tech is pretty much tablestakes for any company with a billion to spare. You can’t keep insisting that’s all Netflix should focus on.

I’d also argue Amazon prime has fared far better with OG content than Netflix in a fraction of its budget. The blame should entirely fall on its current ceo who imo should be ousted and Hastings needs to come back to salvage his baby.

Totally agree. If streaming video could get the same terms as streaming audio/radio (standardized mandatory licensing fees) and services could compete on encoding (cost efficiency on their end) and UI/UX (which Netflix is... not great) that would be an entirely different ballgame.

> Netflix should've used their dominant position to lobby for new rules to the game - prevent exclusivity of content!

Countries like India already have protections like these in place. They haven't regulated the streaming space yet. However, the other channels are very well regulated and content cannot be tied to the delivery channel. This means consumers win at the end of the day and competition is preserved. Content can be acquired by competitors _without_ consolidation.

No chance that would've worked. Netflix saw themselves as a content creation company because they realized that having great content is the only way to keep growing.

Netflix failed precisely because it's a tech company at its core. It can't outlobby the copyright industry, because it lacks the experience, the goodwill, and the political connections. And the celebrities supporting its goals. If Netflix wants to be successful in the entertainment industry, it must act like an entertainment company and give more power to the producers and the creatives.

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