Hacker News Reader

Comment by PeterStuer | Hacker News Reader

IMHO The sheer lack of decent content output from the US media industry over the last decade will play a major role in the decline of these services.

View on HN

I find the European content quite good generally; the US content degraded, somehow, in a, for my friends and me, unbelievable over the top woke and inclusive ‘thing’ without a cohesive and usually simply weak/bad story. I hear from my US friends that they feel the same.

%100. Hollywood is now ultra woke and I just don’t enjoy the content anymore.

It seems as if the primary goal of production is now to virtue signal instead of focus on artistic excellence.

Got any examples of how it's getting too woke to enjoy? And how it's so bad that it would ruin an entire form of media?

If hollywood has anything to blame it's the reliance on less risky, more cookie cutter films. I mean how does generic crap like Holmes and Watson get made, because it's simple and they know it'll sell.

Someone here raised an interesting theory that the reliance on overseas markets require plot lines that translate easily and suggested this negatively impacted quality in storytelling. The Marvel cinematic universe films were cited as an example.

Disney famously courted Chinese audiences for everything. One big example was them removing Finn from the movie posters, simply for being black. That wouldn't fly over there. Then they turned around and cried about diversity and inclusion and they tried their insane 'latinX' garbage.

Netlfix wokeness is legendary, their mandates are insane.

It was all pandering from the beginning.

I watched the BET awards the other night and was absolutely disgusted. Not one black owned business got air time for commercials- was all P&G, google, amazon commercials. All going on about what they do for the black community.

Like the pride month commercials, I'm just so sick of the bullshit pandering, but I'm also tired of people believing it.

We used to call companies out for this shit. Everything is metrics and visuals, all they care about is money. The rest is bullshit to help them make more of it.

Edit to add re:netflix- they recently dropped a lot of' woke' content. Anti-racist baby, the cartoon by Megan Markel, etc- heads and shows have been rolling. Someone coined the term 'pivot to profit'. Ricky Gervais' new special Supernature, meanwhile, was like their most watched special this year,and they backed Dave Chappelle.

I think now that they have to batton down the hatches the pandering wokeness was the first thing overboard.

Also friendly reminder Netflix greenlit 'Cuties'.

Starting your post with misinfo isn't a great outlook for the rest of it

https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/v2g7xr/whats_...

Not that I have any love for mainstream media but here[1] you go.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2015/12/08/asia/star-wars-china-racist-p...

They distributed Cuties but it was fully produced before that. Greenlit implies they had a hand in funding the production.

Fair point, but makes them no less culpable.

"Cuties" still became their public face. I'd give individuals a pass for obliviousness, but not a media company that's in the business of public opinion.

In what sense did it become their public face? You ask anybody about Netflix and the odds are they're going to be referencing Stranger Things or a year ago Squid Game.

I imagine most people have forgotten about it

It was newsworthy for at least a few months. Stranger Things is probably their strongest association, though.

You're kidding, right? I mean this is a joke isn't it? Examples? LOL

In fairness, this is because big productions can be extremely financially risky and often bomb. I think 1-3 big flops could be enough to tank a studio.

Well, you can pretty much tell who the murderer is in the story. It's gotten to the point that non-whites are starting to complain that they're locked out of evil roles. It's always the Russian.

I think it's a purely economic stance. Going full throttle on the woke train will assure you enough customer to not fail totally. Even if you are producing a shitty content artistically speaking, you prefer being sure to stay afloat financially, using political correctness and ideology validation as a security belt. In particular in the subscription world. I'm pretty sure there a lot of subscribers not even interested in the new content but keep they subscription alive like there where subsidizing a political party or lobby.

What does ultra woke even mean? It seems like these threads are just an excuse for people to come and bitch about their personal pet peeves and blame whatever problems exist on it.

The obsession with identity politics, choosing actors based on their race, gender, and sexuality rather than talent, berating fans as bigots when they don't like the content, etc.

it is actually market saturation. In the UK we have:

Now TV, Britbox, Channel 4 player, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney plus, AppleTV+

Each of those offer a subscription service for a chunk of content. Channel 4 actually offers a free version that is Ad supported, but you can pay more to have no Ads.

We then have BBC, ITV, Channel 5, UKTV Play - all of which show content they broadcast. Mostly free, the BBC is has no Ads.

We then have the boutique streaming services like Paramount and that appear in other streaming services (like Amazon) and want a further fee.

It is impossible to pay 9.99 for everything. It is impossible to subscribe to enough of them to cover everything you would like to watch. I seriously just looks for a DVD on Amazon Marketplace these days if I can't find a legal stream on the ones I subscribe to - and usually get it for <£5 and keep it "forever".

BBC isn’t free you need a tv license

Well - no. You need a TV licence to watch live TV. It just happens to fund the BBC.

https://www.gov.uk/tv-licence

> You must have a TV Licence if you:

> * watch or record programmes on a TV, computer or other device as they’re broadcast

They haven't quite got Netflix style streaming yet... but they did plan to add it. They do have:

> * download or watch BBC programmes on iPlayer – live, catch up or on demand

Notice, BBC is only mentioned in regards to iPlayer - the first part is any live TV, streamed or broadcasted over the air.

How would you watch BBC shows without iPlayer that's not an illegal source and not covered by the other paid streaming services?

The TV license covers you watching any broadcast content, no matter if it is received via antenna/aerial, satellite dish, cable TV or over the internet. If it is broadcasted, it is covered and you need a TV license to view it. It's not exclusive to the BBC. There used to be a loophole that if you didn't watch BBC, it wasn't included - they closed that. Then with the dawn of "live streaming" simulcasted content, you managed to get away with that other than BBC, now that is also closed. If you watch any broadcasted TV, no matter how it is received, it requires a TV license to watch it in the UK. The BBC is funded by the license, but the license is for broadcast TV in general.

On the other hand, streaming "on demand" or "catch up", currently only covers the BBC iPlayer. But I expect they will attempt to close that loophole if they continue with the TV license in the UK, because so many people just don't watch broadcast TV anymore, and if you also don't use iPlayer or watch live TV using a service like NowTV, you can watch whatever you like with no license.

> How would you watch BBC shows without iPlayer

If you paid for a service like Netflix or BritBox you can. They have legally licensed the content. It you watch anything on iPlayer, you need to pay the additional license fee. I don't think anything I have said didn't contradict that, right? If so, sorry for any confusion.

I read somewhere that the movie business runs sophisticated algos/ml to maximise reach of upcoming movies. Makes sense, given how expensive and complicated those projects are. Unfortunately end-products end up entirely forgetful

Or it's most likely that competition has ramped up once the major studios realized that they can just make their streaming platforms.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com