What AMC’s streaming troubles say about the greater TV industry | Hacker News Reader

What AMC’s streaming troubles say about the greater TV industry

nytimes.com

99 pointslxm210 comments

AMC's current streaming problems are emblematic of its inability to create and popularize content that enough viewers want to watch. But this has been happening for the better part of a decade now, even before streaming hit critical mass.

This is an interesting history of how AMC essentially invented prestige TV (outside of HBO) with Mad Men, followed it up with the mega-hit of Breaking Bad, and then the monster that was The Walking Dead, but failed to continue its success afterwards (and also touches on why TWD became a creative disappointment relative to the prior two). Subsequent original series like Halt and Catch Fire were also not marketed successfully, though I heartily disagree with his take that the title was bad. Any machine code reference in the title means your show is worth a watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhTJhMYsD60

Mad Men and Breaking Bad are both masterpieces. They made them before the "streaming wars" and proved that non-major networks and studios could make good stuff. They just didn't figure out how to bottle that magic, and let it get away.

Mad Men had Matt Weiner, who wrote on The Sopranos. Breaking Bad had Vince Gilligan, who wrote on The X-Files.

I suspect the common theme here for what makes good television is the creative staff in general and the writing in particular.

This jives with my theory of what makes bad TV: bad writing. It's exactly why I've never revisited Lost, even though I loved the first few seasons. The suspense and mystery never paid off, and it was too important a piece of the entire show to bother trying again.

Oddly, Battlestar Galactica has provided a pleasant rewatch every year or two for me for the past decade. It has good writing within each episode, and even though it doesn't hold up in the final season, the writing is overall satisfying enough that I don't avoid it entirely.

I could probably write something really mean about Westworld here but I'll just instead say that it's really, really, really sad that they canceled it after season 1. I'm sure the writers would have built satisfyingly on the world established in season 1 instead of jumping off the rails and expanding into unnecessary niches of convoluted storytelling.

> It's exactly why I've never revisited Lost, even though I loved the first few seasons. The suspense and mystery never paid off, and it was too important a piece of the entire show to bother trying again.

I'm not gonna claim it was good or anything, but Lost was more than just the show - and a lot of the payoff for the island's mysteries came from the ARG The Lost Experience - https://lostpedia.fandom.com/wiki/The_Lost_Experience

> The narrative for the The Lost Experience was designed to be a parallel story line not part of the TV show. Considering the deep mythology to LOST, the Experience acted as a way to cover some background that could not be feasibly addressed in such depth on the main show. In particular, TLE developed the backstory to the DHARMA Initiative and its parent company, the Hanso Foundation. It also established some clues about the Island and the true meaning of the numbers.

Some people still think Lost was good after around the first 3 seasons. Like you, I gave up after that because it was pretty clear that the show would be nothing but red herrings and new distractions.

When my parents tuned in to watch the final episode, I predicted that the ending would be bullshit and not resolve anything. That's exactly what happened. Yet so many people who watched the show all the way through are in denial to this day.

> I could probably write something really mean about Westworld here but I'll just instead say that it's really, really, really sad that they canceled it after season 1.

Funny, because by the end of Westworld season 1 my first thought was that it was just going to be like Lost. The "maze" gave me "hatch" vibes, and I noped out permanently.

Don't look back - you made the right call. I enjoyed Westworld S1, and just finished S4. So full of self-important idiocy. Every line half-whispered as though it's the ultimate drama, but not a single character anyone might care about or identify with.

One of their problems was dragging various actors/characters through season after season - I got absolutely sick of every single one of them. I don't know how they managed their lines with a straight face.

Another was setting everyone up for this ongoing global-stakes quest. Andor just showed that you can make an exceptional story out of small slices of a bigger setting. It often feels to me that when a show/movie sees its character attain super powers, they struggle with storytelling afterwards, being forced to invent higher and higher stakes. Marvel movies (outside of something like Logan), The Matrix (IMO), etc.

Westworld had so much potential and in the end it just all became basically magic pulled out of thin air. Even going to the real world I thought was awesome - it just got TOO out there

Was it best just wrapped up as a nice, concise package? As an example, Ex Machina was great, but I don't need to see Ex Machina II: The Adventures of Ava.

Or if there's value in Westworld (the other themeparks, James Delos storyline, etc), tell a fresh story in that world. Dragging out Maeve and her daughter was tiresome.

It ended up with zero tension, despite all the grand standing. I just didn't care who was about to fight who and even less who might win. The ideas were convoluted and pointless. S2-3 had some decent ideas/plans mixed in. S4 had almost nothing I think would be worth keeping.

Final season of Battlestar Galactica was a flop because of Hollywood screenwriters strike which lasted 3 months

Interesting. I liked the original run of the Lost. I've liked it even more when I rewatched it a few times. For me the characters were the most important part of the show, and writers did a great job developing them. I also see a common thread about "good first seasons", but theses seasons were more about ever growing mysteries. Second half of the run gave us great episodes like The Constant, LaFleur, or Ab Aeterno. Me caring for the characters is what made them great.

And writing is what makes me care about these characters. The mysteries were fun and most of them resolved by the end of the show, but for me it is a lesser part of the show.

Lost was one of a breed of "mystery pilots," where high-concept pilots imply deep and complicated backstories to explain that concept, by filling themselves with surreal non-sequiturs. If the pilots get picked up, the writers have to come up with a story to connect the nonsense. In the worst case, which I believe is the case with Lost, the people who wrote the pilot have actually moved on to the next project once it gets picked up, and a completely different set of people have to interpolate some kind of sense out of the pilot to continue the series.

The continuing story of Lost (and similar series) was a desperate improvisation being written by hired guns of whom there's no reason to think that they would have any more affection for the show than a random person off the street.

For an on-the-nose example, check out the recent, similarly-named FROM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_(TV_series) For a fun (<- minority view) absolute commercial and storytelling disaster version, check out Aftermath(RIP): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftermath_(2016_TV_series)

This is not how Lost was developed. The original idea was from an ABC exec, they hired a writer that failed. They hired another two who came with the general plot, the theme and a plan for five seasons of the series. This was their show, not some randos.

I avoid anything by Abrams or Lindelof at this point because they are emblematic of this writing formula. You can see it in Lindelof's The Leftovers, Abrams' Star Wars, and of course LOST. It's also present in any pilot they help create, for example Once Upon A Time.

I agree with your deconstruction: these shows are optimized for selling an engaging pilot episode with only a back of the napkin roadmap for the rest of the show. The finale comes only when there's no more money to be made.

I'm very excited by writers like Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese who are able to write interwoven plots comparable to LOST, but with cohesive endings. Check out Dark for an example.

Watchmen is a Lindelof show, but well worth watching.

The Leftovers is also a Lindelof show that I thought it was really really good.

I really don't think that's a fair take on The Leftovers. It was adapted from a novel, which season 1 follows the plot of pretty closely and completely. The remaining two seasons are entirely new plot but iirc the author was involved.

The novel doesn't resolve the core mystery. I won't spoil whether the show does, but it's kind of beside the point anyway. One of the core themes is how people grapple with sudden loss, something beyond their control, something unknowable. In any case the show resolves itself with a satisfying amount of closure in three seasons. Much fewer open threads and plot holes than LOST. The unresolved aspects of The Leftovers are genuinely thought-provoking and deep.

I wholly agree with Wikipedia's summary: "The first season received mostly positive reviews. However, the second and third seasons were highly acclaimed, with many critics referring to The Leftovers as one of the greatest television series of all time, with particular praise for its writing, directing, acting (particularly Theroux’s and Coon's) and thematic depth."

You say "The finale comes only when there's no more money to be made" ... that doesn't jive with a final season having a 99% on Rotten Tomatoes and 98% on Metacritic!

The Leftovers is indeed aware of the show formula I'm critiquing, it's even in the theme song: "guess I'll just, let the mystery be." This is Lindelof indoctrinating the viewer to accept his style of writing, which doesn't burden plots with conclusions. He's still frustrated we asked 'why' of the LOST plot, to which there was no good answer. The Leftovers similarly offers no good answer to 'why'. Making that the point doesn't stop me from asking.

If the show was doing well HBO would have signed a fourth season and they'd have left enough room in the third for yet more surreal diversions headed nowhere. Online review aggregators are meaningless.

You asserted the show had "an engaging pilot episode with only a back of the napkin roadmap for the rest of the show", which clearly isn't possibly the case for a show whose entire first season was adapted from a novel.

The third season was written as a final season. Regardless of whether the mystery is resolved, the show's plot and character arcs firmly concludes in the finale. Professional tv critics nearly universally view it as one of the best seasons of any television show ever made.

Yes, there are unanswered questions. This is obviously intentional (although the theme song you reference was only used in season 2 and the finale in season 3). Similarly in real life you'll never find out which religion, if any, is correct. Or why the pandemic happened. You can still ask, and writers can still explore these topics, even though no one ever knows.

If you didn't like the show, or ambiguous art/media in general, that's fine, it's not for everyone. That doesn't mean it's all part of the same capitalist formula to produce bad art.

As an interesting counter-point, consider Twin Peaks, a show where the network demanded that the creators promptly resolve the core mystery at the end of the first season -- much to the show's detriment.

Lost should have stuck with the "it's a snow globe" explanation. Except they just made it a throwaway line.

Sounds like a few tv studios could do well to pick up Jonathan Hickman as a long-term series developer.

WW bored me with the endless McGuffin of who is a robot and who is a human. Zzzzz. Isn't BSG the same?

Not really. BSG quickly established that there's only a few different models, and who most of them were, but many copies of each. There were certainly a few 'surprise, that person's a Cylon!' moments throughout the show, but I think they were all quite well done. (Though to be fair, for at least two of the cylon characters, you could immediately tell they were a cylon because it was a famous actor playing them.)

If anything, I think in the earlier seasons BSG went for more of the 'cylon, human, who cares, they're all screwed up' feel.

Not having an ending for “Westworld” is very on brand for a Michael Crichton property.

Justified and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia was also on FX. As another example of small networks making great stuff.

Also 'The Americans'

FX has always been a low-key prestige series powerhouse. They made The Shield, after all.

The Americans is the rare example of a very good show which never had a dip in quality throughout its run and absolutely stuck its landing.

I think one of the things that really made it for me was Keri Russell playing a character that was so different from a lot of what we were used to seeing her in.

"The Americans" is staggeringly good in my opinion.

I am blessed with a bad memory, so after a few years, I was able to watch the whole thing again, and except for a half-dozen things I remembered, it was like new content to me.

The only criticism is that you know the main characters are going to be OK, so it takes away a bit of the suspense. I wonder if you could have a similar show where the main characters are caught at some unpredictable point in the middle of a season, and then the show continues with new characters brought in to do the same job.

Fox has pretty successfully positioned FX as a place for more ambitious shows that wouldn't survive on a bigger network. To the point where I'm willing to give a show a try just because their track record has been good.

The tragic thing is, according to the video's narrative, AMC has made some very good shows since TWD - HCF, Lodge 49, and The Terror, which were all critically well-received. Critics even liked the Preacher adaptation. But audiences just don't seem to care about AMC anymore besides Better Call Saul.

Lodge 49 was excellent. It was a shame that they dropped it.

Also, while trying to remember the name of Jim Jefferies' very original show, Legit, I looked at a list of FX original shows and they really have had an astonishing number of high quality shows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programs_broadcast_by_...

The Terror and Lodge 49 are both great, but AMC also had Better Call Saul, which was incontrovertibly one of the best shows on television and, by the end, the acknowledged successor/extension of Breaking Bad --- which is just to say, until very recently, AMC still had Breaking Bad as a going concern.

Maybe it just shows to go you that the make/break for these networks isn't prestige content so much as broader business execution issues.

Gee, I wonder if their shitty streaming strategy could have anything to do with this?

Funnily enough Breaking Bad benefitted from Netflix quite a bit

[0]: https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/7/14/21312595/netflix-breaki...

Halt and Catch Fire was even better (though more niche).

It’s this, as well as (IMO) an atrocious user experience in the AMC+ app. I mean it is truly very bad, both from an interaction perspective as well as performance. It doesn’t even hold a candle to the major players in the streaming app space.

Another thing, they have taken some transparently user-hostile approaches to rolling out content (like splitting Better Call Saul up multiple times) in order to drive signups. The streaming ecosystem is a defragmented mess right now, but AMC have nobody to blame but themselves here.

Their user hostile approach to Better Call Saul just shows why they just don't get streaming. I cancelled them almost immediately when I realized I couldn't watch Better Call Saul episodes that had already aired earlier in the season.

> like splitting Better Call Saul up multiple times

This was the most annoying user hostile thing I've run into in awhile. I figured I would buy a months subscription and watch the last season then see if there were any other shows that looked interesting and would keep me paying for several more months of subscriptions. Not only did they remove the first episodes of the last season so I couldn't watch it, I couldn't even buy the episodes outright or pay extra to watch them. I finally gave up and hit the high seas.

It baffles me that corporations are so stupid they won't offer any way for people that are trying to give them money to do it. People that pirate your shows aren't going to attempt to pay for a subscription. The people who are willing to pay it don't want to put up with stupid BS tactics just to watch the content.

Yep. The _exact_ same thing happened with me. Seeing the forest for the trees appears to be a skill lacking at the top at AMC. What's worse, is that the entire thing killed my perspective on the brand. I didn't think of them as anything but the publishers behind two of my all-time favorite shows (BCS, BB) until the AMC+ debacle and everything around BCS. It's just bizarre to me. All of the major incumbents in cable took a "wait and see" approach after watching Netflix and Hulu eat their lunch. I don't know why AMC chose to wait, see, and then do everything wrong afterward.

Now here I am ranting with like 3-4 posts about how bad of a taste in my mouth they've left. It didn't have to be this way!

It’s because your money isn’t enough. They want more of your money.

> Late last month, James Dolan, the company’s chairman, made clear how troublesome that was for the company…. It was a surprising admission for Mr. Dolan, _whose family controls AMC Networks_. (emphasis mine)

I think this is just another case of a cash cow getting nuked by incompetence through nepotism. His daddy is a billionaire and his claim to fame is not investing in satellite television. He went from trust fund rehab [1] kid to media executive.

Edit: [1] there’s nothing wrong with going to rehab but most people don’t go from rehab to CEO of Cablevision.

How the f did James Dolan become CEO of AMC? You're vastly underselling his shittiness as a person and businessperson. He also bought a chain of electronics stores right before the industry all but vanished, then bought a chain of movie theaters right before the industry all but vanished, and is possibly the worst sports franchise owner in North American pro sports, destroying a hugely storied team in the basketball capital of the world, banning fans and former players from the arena for criticizing him, and also firing one of the most legendary play-by-play guys of all-time for criticism.

Then there's bullshit like this: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/07/inside-jim-dolans-fe...

Apparently after tanking New York City's bid for the Olympics because he didn't want Madison Square Garden to have to compete with the new venues that would be built, he tried to do something similar in Inglewood, but had his lunch eaten by Ballmer because he let some underlings whose names he can't remember handle the details and didn't get the deal he thought he was getting.

Dude could give Meg Whitman a lesson on how to fail upward better. She might be President by now.

It amazes me that Dolan the relatively successful hockey team owner and Dolan the bad basketball team owner are the same guy.

HCF was an amazing show.

Chiming in to add onto this. Fantastic show that is very much worth watching. I'd describe it as similar to Mr. Robot: Halt and Catch Fire uses tech to talk not only about the history of the tech industry, but also to say a lot about people.

Yeah, I saw a reference to HCF cold, and was like wait - that can't be a reference to the assembly mnemonic! But it was, and a good show. Brought back memories from the 1980s-90s for sure.

Halt and Catch Fire is great but definitely does not have the same wide appeal as the others. Great show but just a more niche audience.

'Halt and Catch Fire' appears to have been an experiment in targeting nano-audiences. In the case of the show, older tech millionaires and billionaires, and the rest of us were able to go along for the ride. It was difficult not to notice how many ads during the show were for luxury goods and high-end gadgetry. This may be why it kept getting renewed despite the low ratings: they had succeeded in reaching their very narrow, very valuable niche audience they targeted, and advertisers were willing to pay a premium for that access.

This is no doubt the most boring and prudish opinion in the universe, but I would have enjoyed Halt and Catch Fire if it had more computers and less sex.

Sex scenes are a dime a dozen, but a good computer joke is pure gold in my book.

So I initially gave up on this show part way through the first season, but not because I hated it exactly it just fell off my radar and didn't grab me. The sex in it did seem...out of place and kind of shoehorned in. And the Joe MacMillon character's out of control Jobish behavior irritated me. But the season 1 finale was solid, I liked many of the characters and the subject matter so I went back to it and I'm so glad I did.

It is now one of my favorite shows of all time. The characters were slightly retooled after season 1 and their bizarre family structure is very compelling. The backdrop of the era was why I really showed up for the show but the characters and performances were why I loved it.

I watched AMC when they showed older American films of some note. Same with HBO, when they showed movies before they were available to rent. All the shows they produced themselves never appealed to me. I tried to like The Sopranos and Breaking Bad but they just got repetitive and uncreative.

This is the problem.

* Amazon Prime

* Disney+

* HBO Max

* Netflix

* Hulu

* Paramount+

* Peacock

* AMC+

* Apple TV+

* ESPN+

* Shudder

* Sundance Now

* Youtube TV

* Tubi

* Crackle

* Roku Channel

* Discovery+

Want to watch the old Newhart show? Even with all these options, you're out of luck. Try your library. Streaming is a nightmare.

Want to watch every game your favorite NFL team plays this season but you're not in their broadcast area? Try to suss out this mess.

https://www.nfl.com/ways-to-watch/

Don't forget WhatTimeIsItRightNow.com

> Don't forget WhatTimeIsItRightNow.com

That's the problem with Hollywoo. Too much fragmentation as a result of everyone chasing after the power vacuum created by streaming. Every small outfit thinks they can win.

Consolidation will happen as clear winners emerge and failures continue to materialize.

(I have that sticker on one of my old laptops. Also a "Hollywoo" sticker on one of my current laptops. I love it because my startup is in that space.)

reminds me of my favorite game show: "Hollywoo Celebrities: What Do They Know? Do They Know Things? Let's Find Out! with J.D. Salinger"

That doesn't even count all the various Amazon Prime add-on services like Starz.

The big question is what is the solution to all this that doesn't involve 3 big players buying out all the rest? Is it even possible to get these guys to all play together in some kind of shared space.

I'm not sure there is one. There are some potential wrinkles like the way Amazon Prime offers add-ons like Starz. But even that is analogous to the cable world where you had premium channels like HBO. There's also the potential for some content to just go a la carte only sales through a purely distribution platform but I have to believe that ship has mostly sailed.

ADDED: But per another comment, things are better than the cable world, much less the pre-cable world that I actually grew up in. So some combination of fragmentation and consolidation is fine for me.

Regulation might be able to fix it: Prevent streaming companies from owning content production. Split up companies that already exist like this (e.g. Comcast, Netflix, Disney, et al) then the content creating entities will be forced to pick the highest bidder for exclusive access or try to maximize profit by syndicating their content across as many platforms as possible.

It would be a better world, IMHO.

Why would adding a middleman make anything better?

If society wants more people to be able to watch more TV, then society should just give people cash so they can buy access to more streaming services. Or reduce copyright terms to something reasonable like 10 years.

> Why would adding a middleman make anything better?

Because market competition is what makes capitalism a liveable social order for most people. Adding market competition makes everything better. Command economies (corporate or socialist) don't.

Adding middlemen increases the supply of middlemen, and hence puts pressure on the price of middlemen.

Disney can charge $15 to an individual, or $15 to a middleman, it makes no difference to them. It is just a waste of society’s resources.

Reducing copyright length so old Disney stuff enters the public domain quicker would increase supply and drive down price for the media.

This isn't middlemen providing no value. If any streaming service can pay Disney to serve Disney content, that means two might start doing it, and then people who want Disney can go with the one that manages lower prices and/or better service—more reliable, fewer compression artifacts, apps on more platforms, plays nicer with aggregators, et c, lots of ways one might be better than another. Lots more room for competition on business models and service quality.

Right now, if you want Disney content through a streaming service, you have one option. If it sucks, well, that's too bad for you, take it or leave it. And same for HBO, for Paramount, for all of them. Splitting up distribution and production creates a better competitive environment, given the existence of copyright.

I guess I never saw any difference between streaming service quality, at least using Apple TV. Though I’m not a TV aficionado either, all I is I press play and things usually start playing in sufficiently high quality.

The video quality is generally fine, but the quality of the apps is vast.

Anything that doesn't use system-provided UI elements is simply constitutionally bad. It's incredible that things that can't scroll smoothly pass basic QC.

Exactly, like they split movie theaters from the movie studios or car dealers from car manufacturers.

The paramount decree was rescinded 2 years ago, so movie studios can own theaters now:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/07/us-judge-ends-decades-old-mo...

And as far as I can tell, the only people fighting to keep car dealerships separate from car manufacturers are car dealership owners. I would like to be able to just order a new car online and have it be delivered directly from the manufacturer.

The “golden age” started with Netflix directing its cashflow into risky content like “House of Cards” and “Orange is the new Black”.

What’s the business model for a content production company that doesn’t have such sugar-daddy?

I would go further and require content producers to sell to all buyers at the same price. Or even that content producers must sell to all buyers at the same reasonable price. Since the dawn of mass media, media has formed part of our shared shared culture. And that means that the consumers have some claim of ownership over it too.

These companies would have a lot more of my money if they let me pay them for *.mkvs a la carte. I still pay the subs for a couple of them but my default is to just pirate the file, even if it's on a service I pay for. I'm not claiming this is a solution, but it would definitely earn them more money from my end.

Piracy is generally really quick and frictionless, but even so I do have to wait a couple minutes sometimes before I've found enough peers to start streaming something. If I could pay a couple bucks to just get the file off a fast CDN I absolutely would.

Yep, if I could buy the highest quality in one click without having to search through crap on torrent indexes I would. Then after transcoding if I ever want the highest quality I just go back to the site where I bought it. Nope, they aren't gonna offer that. And I'm not wasting my time storing and ripping Blu-Rays, I'm just gonna acquire it through Sonarr/Radarr. I know it's probably not important to 99% of users, but it would be so convenient to be able to just buy and download the movie/tv at it's highest quality in a few seconds. The closest I have found to that is the *-arr stack I am using with Jellyfin which is super automated and really great.

How about splitting the content and the platform?

Like you know... how your local store was allowed to sell you VHSs of the Terminator and you didn't have to pay subscription to Warner Bros store (which only existed in swamps of Florida) to get it? And how you could then give it to another person without restriction or tax to the said corporate lord?

Monopolization and integration of multiple markets into single corporate entities always hurts the consumers. Maybe it's time for US government to pull thumbs out of their bums and take out their cartel breaking hammers?

Yeah. There should only be a few distributors. They should be something like a common carrier. Why should AMC, et al. duplicate streaming infrastructure? Focus on content and let someone else deliver it.

Various internet service providers are delivering it.

Comcast is probably the only one making and delivering media.

That rare time and place where a Google Fiber subscriber was watching YouTube Red original programming.

When AT&T owned HBO.

That's a great point.

It's remarkable how there are still industries that don't know how to take advantage of the internet to give a great user experience, and whose greed only hurts their bottom line.

It's very simple: I want to watch any content from wherever, whenever, and however I like. Make it cheap and high quality, and I'll pay you for it. Screw this up, and I'll get it from somewhere that offers this experience instead.

I think it's a stable form of price discrimination.

Super price sensitive - subscribe to one service and switch service every month. $5-10/month.

Typical - subscribe to three services and cancel one every few months and swap another one in. $20/month.

Super price insensitive - subscribe to everything and pay as much as you used to with cable.

The ideal is for Apple TV, Fire TV or whatever to create a unified search and discovery mechanism.

The TV app on iOS and macOS already has a unified search and discovery mechanism. The only content seller missing is Netflix, because Netflix chooses not to participate.

Netflix started producing content for two main reasons. The first was that Disney and others decided to start their own streaming platforms and make their content exclusive. Second, it's an asset that Netflix can syndicate.

In countries where Disney+ doesn't exist you can watch it on Netflix.

When Netflix streaming was just starting they had a lot of great content from Starz, HBO, and their Anime selection was extensive. Gradually all that content was removed and locked behind different paywalls.

Media ownership laws would solve it. The US used to have them. We should bring them back, if only to re-establish a healthy news ecosystem.

One can have a service which buys up a bunch of subscriptions to these streaming services and then licenses to customers for an appropriate cost. Everyone doesn't have to watch everything at the same time. Still, they get access to all the content. Things can be queued like in the library or submitting sw jobs.

You couldn't do this with tv on cable since it was not on demand but if one can schedule properly, more customers can be supported with fewer licenses.

I know how to solve this!

We'll just bundle a bunch of them together, and offer a slight discount over the cost of paying for them all individually. Maybe offer the most niche ones as add-on packages.

We can even put in some ads in exchange for the convenience and...

Oh wait, what were we doing again?

Cable was bad because of forced ads, forced bundles, no on demand, and long term contracts. None of those are seen in the streaming industry. This "streaming is cable 2.0" meme doesn't make sense to me.

Cable was originally free no?

Lets see where we end up in 20 years

I don't think cable was ever free.

Broadcast tv was (and still is) free.

Cable was never free

These things are becoming a reality for streaming.

As the prices go up, and the content becomes broken up between more and more services, 2 things happen:

* The idea of a bundle that saves you money, adds convenience and leaves you less caught out when licenses change hands compared to 20+ individual subscriptions becomes more and more tempting

* The 6-month and 12-month plans for these services are much cheaper and become more appealing.

Back when it was only netflix at $7, there was no need for a bundle or a 12-month plan.

But when it's all these services at $15 each, a 12-month long bundle would save a lot of money in the long run.

Bundles may not exist yet, but they will. Mark my words.

What's wrong with bundles? The issue is forced bundles that requires you to buy content you don't want.

I'm getting most (all?) of what AMC has through Hulu and Netflix.

AMC is one of the more aggressive stations in not letting its content out to other streamers. You can't watch... oh I don't know, Interview with the Vampire anywhere else, other than having AMC on linear TV or having access to their associated video-on-demand. I remember having to cast around to find the (pretty good) John le Carre adaptation The Little Drummer Girl anywhere after having missed its initial broadcast: I ended up getting the free trial of Sundance Now, which is more or less AMC+'s predecessor... or something like that.

But: most of what people most want to watch is stuff that's on legacy deals, or that they're letting out older seasons of, or just don't control. Like, Better Call Saul is on Netflix, but not the current/final season. I feel like the era of them really jealously guarding their shows to try to make AMC+ work has coincided with a bunch of stuff people aren't that interested in seeing (and maybe the stuff people do want to see they don't fully control).

Lodge 49 is cool (but ultimately quite niche, I think), but they don't have an audience clamoring to stream Low Winter Sun or whatever.

What? Disney+ and Prime are much worse. You can't find a single show anywhere else. I would say AMC is one if the better in this regard considering both BB, MM, BCS and TWD can be watched on a plethora of other services.

AMC is basically trying to act like it's Disney+ or Netflix, or whatever you prefer, for its own content. Their issue is just that the stuff from them people actually want to see in big numbers is more or less that list you mentioned. They don't actually control Breaking Bad, Mad Men or Better Call Saul. The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead seem to be on legacy contracts that give all the "back" seasons to Netflix and Hulu, respectively.

They haven't had anything new that people actually care about enough to notice its exclusivity. The newer Walking Dead spinoffs would be about it, I guess.

The article mentions that AMC does not actually own the rights to several of their most well-known shows (Mad Men is owned by Lionsgate and Breaking Bad is owned by Sony).

Who pays Amazon for Prime and then only uses it for video?

Prime-affiliated services (Prime Video, Amazon Music, etc.) exist to make Prime more sticky and keep you in the ecosystem.

Walmart is doing something similar with, IIRC, Paramount+.

Anyone who wants to watch Prime Video content and doesn't use other Amazon services. You can't pay for Prime Video separately.

> You can't pay for Prime Video separately.

I'm not sure that I would be willing to pay for it separately. It has some good shows but not an astounding amount.

The interface is hot garbage that tries to upsell additional pay-for content and streaming services like Starz. Unless you know what you're looking for and go in with surgical precision, you get bogged down in a morass of upcharges.

They also started intermixing free-with-ads content and making it difficult to distinguish. My kid has started a couple movies only to get lambasted with ads every 15 mins and becoming thoroughly upset.

They recently made Amazon Music worse (you can't skip songs in playlists / radios), to force you into upgrading to Music Unlimited.

I also haven't watched a show on Amazon Video in years (Man in the High Castle was the last one).

Yet they continue increasing the cost of Prime citing those other "benefits". I wish they'd offer an a-la-carte Prime, we only make use of the free shipping one.

The Amazon Music changes drives me mad. What?! I can’t skip songs in my own playlist. Time to breakdown and pay for Apple Music

Idk why anyone would pay for prime anymore. They have 1 mediocre but popular show (The Boys) and pretty much nothing else relevant. There’s a decent old movie selection, but most are rentable a la cart for $3.

And the shipping is never 2 days. I’m not even convinced it’s faster than non-prime shipping.

And certainly no one is doing it for the music service.

I'm frankly annoyed that so many people call this a problem. Sure, I understand the surface level inconvenience of this fragmentation, but I think we're getting a little spoiled here.

Dial back all these streaming services and you'd have less content back then. And virtually no say in what to watch when, plus shitty ads. To watch anything specific, you'd have to go to the movies or go for a rental.

Now you have a huge amount of freedom of choice, with no ads, much more convenience, at fairly reasonable prices. The exceptions you mentioned are just that, exceptions. So that's my first point, we seem to be perpetually unhappy, no matter how rich an offering is.

Second, I consider this semi-fragmented landscape a solution, it's healthy. Services are fiercely competing with each other for your eye balls. That means they're in a race to produce good content and it suppresses prices. This is actually happening. When Netflix dominated, they had advanced plans for major price hikes. The arrival of Disney+ stopped this in its tracks. Do you really want this industry to be consolidated into 1-2 players? With a price monopoly? With producers being squeezed, creatively constrained? Just so you have to press one less button?

Third, the idea that you could combine the production value of hundreds of billions of $ worth of material into a single affordable streaming service for the masses is a delusion. The math simply doesn't add up.

Fourth, most people just vegetate after work for an hour or two. They need something watchable. They don't need 17 subscriptions, it's not a common need.

I also do not understand why people complain about having the choice to not pay for things they do not want to watch.

I can turn on the TV, press the microphone button, say the name of the media I want to watch, and usually a screen pops up letting me know if I have already paid for it, and if not, how much it will cost. And a couple buttons later, I can be watching it, or doing something else with my time.

Much more convenient than watching media in the 1990s and 2000s.

I think what everyone wanted and briefly had, was a few streaming services for basically all content, without ads.

Before the more recent Cambrian explosion, it was just Netflix, HBO (via HBO Now), Hulu, and Showtime. Yes, there are some smaller players too, but these were the big ones.

Everything else was licensed out (typically to Netflix) and in some instances was perhaps only available on cable. People got alot of content for sub 60 USD, for the most part.

Then everyone started clawing back their catalogues for their own streaming services. I think the 2017-2019 period was the "golden age" of Netflix streaming in terms of sheer good content availability, and people really liked it.

At least Apple TV+ is original content and not re-selling the rights that used to be on a different platform. They're a genuinely new entrant into the space.

Netflix had a good run. Massive investments in content, no competition, maximizing the network effect by tolerating the sharing of accounts, real "growth hacking". But we all know what happens next in such trajectories: the squeeze. They were about the cash in on their market dominance.

Competition stopped that. You should be happy about it. I know I am. Let the explosion happen, let them compete for our money. The minor inconvenience of occasionally jumping in and out of a secondary service is worth it.

We need to forcibly (as in, by force of law) separate streaming services and content production.

Until pretty recently, we didn't let film studios own movie theaters, for similar reasons.

Exactly. I think the unrealistic expectation regarding media accessibility comes from many places but one I want to explicitly mention: torrents.

I'm from the Netherlands where for about 20 years, it wasn't even illegal (today it is). We'd pay a "media tax" on empty discs (like 0.10$) and this would clear you to make "home copies". Of anything, without paying for the original.

Anyway, this legal anomaly has created a culture where media that costs a shit ton to produce (movies, series) is valued at: nothing. zero. Not by some dark tech-savvy internet lord, it's valued at zero by society as whole. People are even proud to showcase the many ways in which they dodge paying for content.

Now people project this learned behavior (have it all for near-zero costs) on the entire streaming market.

I struggle in valuing anything that can be infinitely copied and resold at more than zero.

I’m not saying content producers shouldn’t be paid, but art should be for everybody.

The work of many people on this forum can be infinitely copied and resold. Are they being paid inordinate amounts? If so, how much should they be getting paid?

>but art should be for everybody

A shorter copyright term accomplishes this, while also leaving intact the incentive system to create content that can be infinitely copied and resold.

IP laws are messed up, but I just don’t see any reasonable argument for abolishing copyright altogether.

Is your theory that the great artists will still produce even if they make no money and people can redistribute their work for free at will?

> I also do not understand why people complain about having the choice to not pay for things they do not want to watch.

Are you a sports fan? Because sports fans don't have the choice to not pay for things they do not want to watch. If you want a sports package, you usually have to buy it as an add-on to the base package, even if there's not a single show you want to watch on the base package.

Not enough to want to jump through the hoops that sports organizations require today.

I would be willing to watch if it involved going to the official website or app and pressing a few buttons to pay. I am not interested in learning about blackout regions and various packages or contracts with stipulations.

Yeah, if watching sports involves so much expense and hassle, it's time to realize that it's just not that important, and find something else for entertainment. There are many alternatives.

> I also do not understand why people complain about having the choice to not pay for things they do not want to watch.

This description works if you skip straight from the age of cable packages to the current day. That's missing a lot though. From the point of view of someone who hasn't made a quantum leap forward, publisher specific streaming services drove adoption by taking things away from viewers.

If I used to be able to watch something on Netflix, but now I can't because $company pulled all their content to their own streaming service, there's no world in which that's a win for me.

100 companies producing tons of filler content to try to make their own $10/mo service valuable isn't a good trade off for "you need a new paid app to watch the thing you used to watch in this app you already have."

The Netflix you want was never sustainable. Shows were heavily subsidized by cable before. Once people started moving to streaming, prices followed. Look at how Netflix continues to raise prices even with less content they have to pay for from others. Because now they're actually paying for production of content, and that costs more than a $8/mo subscription can afford.

The problem for me is discoverability, and also international availability. It would be different if (say) the first 2-3 episodes of every show were available for free on a central platform with adequate categorization and user ratings. Then I’d have no problem with “okay, to continue watching this, I need to subscribe to service X”.

But streaming services want to build a brand, and want consumers to like and become loyal to the brand, so they don’t want you to be discovering shows from other services. This has the effect that cross-service discoverability is actively being designed against. The issue for the consumer is that there’s no strong correlation between brands/services and the particular shows a given person likes.

Just as nobody wanted an expensive cable package with a hundred channels nobody will want a dozen streaming subscriptions.

Funny thing: in the Netherlands breaking bad was a Netflix show. Took me years to find out it was on something called AMC.

Netflix, Disney and maybe HBO. Nobody else is going to make it here.

Amazon prime might, they get a big discoverability bonus from the fact that so many people have Aamzon Prime for other reasons already.

I've seen that very thing in Prime Video. There was a show where the first episode was free, but after that had to subscribe to (I think) Paramount+, which you could do via Amazon.

Prime did it with Moonhaven. First is free then you need an AMC+ subscription.

> I'm frankly annoyed that so many people call this a problem. Sure, I understand the surface level inconvenience of this fragmentation, but I think we're getting a little spoiled here.

The problem as I see it is done of the companies are selling the product that the consumers want. With individual companies all trying to maximize the revenue generated by what they control, the industry as a whole has become hostile.

It seems it will stay hostile until the big players get squished by the gigantic players, or consumer protection groups get stuck in and things get regulated. For a while it looked like consumers would get what they wanted, which is a monopoly provider of all content at an affordable price, from Netflix or Amazon or both. But now we have this mess of content producers and legacy platforms all fighting for the same slice of pie.

I think you and the GP have summed up the problem. People who were paying for a bundle of those channels via cable, have maybe 1-2 monthly streaming services and then dip into another for a single month. Meanwhile production costs for prestige TV are going up. Spending more money to please fewer customers is rarely a good business model when marginal costs are near zero.

> Do you really want this industry to be consolidated into 1-2 players?

There has to be some happy medium between the two extremes. Sure, the pre-streaming era sucked but I don't think having multiple subscriptions with maybe 2 good shows per channel is utopia either.

At the very least, it highlights the problem for the broadcast companies and demonstrates why AMC / AMC+ is struggling.

People don't need 17 streaming subscriptions. There are only so many households to sell to.

How many of those households are going to pay for a subscription so they can stream Interview with the Vampire if that's the only show they're interested in on the service? Maybe if they're a die hard fan, but they won't attract casual viewers.

Since there are fewer ads on streaming services - I won't say "no ads", because already, many of the services are including them, or at the very least, including disruptive trailers for their own shows - how do those households know that Interview with the Vampire exists as a show? On the cable TV model, AMC would run a commercial advertising the show during the airing of another show with a similar audience, drawing interest and viewers. Now it's not so simple to cross pollinate. (Anecdotally, I have a friend who is obsessed with Anne Rice and had no idea this show existed.)

You say combining the production value into a single affordable streaming service is mass delusion, I say that's the only reason it worked in the first place. The popular shows buoyed up the fringe.

> Want to watch the old Newhart show?

You mean the Bob Newhart Show? If so you can find it on Hulu.

No, his second big show, “Newhart”.

Plus I don’t know if it’s the case with Bob Newhart, but some old shows on Hulu (like Taxi) are missing tons of episodes.

As a Packers fan living in California, the NFL thing particularly bothers me. It is impossible for me to legally stream all the games. The only option to watch every Sunday game is NFL Sunday Ticket, which has a streaming option but it's not available for my address—They force you to buy DirecTV satellite if it's available in your area.

Contrast that with the NBA, where for a surprisingly reasonable $15 a month I can stream every game on YouTube TV.

Apparently DirecTV's exclusive NFL contract is expiring, so I'm hoping next season will come with new streaming options.

Also an NFL fan in a different market than my team. This year I ended up paying for Sunday Ticket, Peacock, Paramount+, and Fubo to actually watch my games. Each week there was some wrinkle that made a game unavailable on ST.

Next year, screw it, I’m just not watching the games. Maybe I’ll hit a bar for one or two. It’s not even the money, which is annoying, it’s the hunting for each game and what service to watch it on. That was really aggravating.

>Apparently DirecTV's exclusive NFL contract is expiring, so I'm hoping next season will come with new streaming options.

Prepare to be impressed by the rumored prices of the live stream package.

As an aside, especially on the west coast, if you are willing to be patient and wait a few hours after the game's over, I can strongly recommend NFL+ for replays.

Apple apparently wasn't going to add an extra charge to Appletv+...

NBA is way better than the NFL but the NBA League Pass is not perfect. However I've found YouTube TV's basic package at $65 a month (basically just cable) plus the league pass at $15 gets you basically everything you want.

NFL is impossible, I'll catch the game on "regular TV" but otherwise it's pirate or nothing.

I was fine watching my out-of-market team in the evenings on whatever the non-live option was called (it had like 6 names while I was doing it). Prices kept going up though; when it hit $100 per season, I stopped renewing. I'm a baseball fan before I'm a football fan, so had to set my priorities.

Except the NBA league pass excludes your home team at the behest of cable providers. So for me, who doesn’t have youtubeTV, there’s no reasonable way to watch the NBA.

Which is I suppose OK since I just go to sports bars, but they’re losing $15/month from me.

AMC's streaming troubles don't seem related to the greater TV industry, so much as AMC-specifically is fumbling a bunch.

Streaming seems to be working great, if you invest in decent originals that subscribers like, regularly, with realistic-but-modest budgets, and sell that at a cheap predictable subscription. (It's working out great for Paramount+, it was working pretty well for HBO before Discovery decided to kill off all of Warner Brothers)

But like, AMC doesn't seem to be doing much of that. If you love the "Walking Dead Universe", yeah, AMC's gotcha covered. For anyone else, there just isn't much here.

The last time I heard of an interesting AMC show I personally wanted to watch, was "Dispatches from Elsewhere" back in 2020 (and at that time, you weren't even allowed to pay them money to watch it, you had to buy a whole cable package)

---

Streaming isn't struggling, it's just competitive. You can't expect to execute poorly, fumble your way through and still magically make a lot of money.

Plus by far it’s two most desirable properties are locked into Netflix (Breaking Bad and Bwttwr Call Saul)

That's hilarious -- I didn't even realize Breaking Bad / Better Call Saul were AMC shows, since AMC+ isn't advertising them on their own streaming site (presumably because they sold the streaming rights away?)

But yeah, exhibit A in "don't execute poorly" -- maybe don't give away your most popular show to your biggest streaming competitor.

AMC didn’t own the shows. They were both Lionsgate and Sony Pictures respectively. They overcorrected with TWD and haven’t marketed a single show since effectively.

Yeah here in my country Breaking Bad was always a Netflix show.

Which also explains why Netflix still has the international market. They have years of mind share.

Yeah. I'll pay a la carte for a show I want to watch--but I suspect not enough. And all-you-can eat subscription streaming has become so established that I'm pretty sure a lot of people don't even consider an a la carte rental or purchase as something to even consider; it's pirate or just watch something on the streaming services they have.

AMC seems to be cursed be cursed by the success of TWD and related shows. Simply, becasue they became lazy and rested on that success, at least that is my impression. That TWD ran into similar problems like GoT didn't help neither.

Could not agree more, AMC+ is an absolute trash fire mess of an app. It is decidedly not competitive in every way. I bought all of better call Saul through Amazon video in order to avoid interacting with the AMC+ app.

Streaming is extremely competitive, and may really only work best for a certain group according to the former CEO of Hulu:

"I believe there will be multiple business casualties in the paid streaming wars and a few (3) business victors. The companies that get to the other side of the river will earn 300 million global subscribers at an average of $15 of revenue per month between advertising + sub fees. The 3 companies that get to scale are each likely to generate $10B/yr in cash flow from their streaming services, far greater than what most entertainment companies have ever generated per year. For these precious few, the considerable streaming investment will be well worth it"

https://twitter.com/jasonkilar/status/1600053919907880961

The article is pretty light on AMC's mis-steps. Just as an example, The Walking Dead:

First they let go of Frank Darabont who probably could have used a chill pill and a secretary between him and Outlook, not firing. Then they started wild deviations from a much-beloved series (I even bought my mother the huge printed tomes, she loved the show), and more and more decisions to milk it and send it off the rails at the same time. Show should have ended some time back, and spinoffs why?

They really hamstrung Shudder. About their only smart move with Shudder is having Joe Bob Briggs on. Shudder's horror catalog is only about two or three times the size of what you can get on Netflix. I haven't done a really heavy analysis of overlaps, but Tubi has a shocking amount of stuff Shudder has on. But sure, let's fire a lot of good people at Shudder instead of working on picking up some good stuff to watch.

Three months, ten million dollar severance. Nice work if you can get it, I suppose, but budget-wise ...

They absolutely need to have one overarching team working on all of their apps, because various apps they own fumble differently on different devices. That's a lot of duplicated effort when it could be shared.

Then there's Interview with the Vampire. Everything I have read suggests that it has a bad case of "I Need to Put My Stamp on This" from one or more creatives, starting with the cast. Claudia has been aged-up, again, which more than a little negates the whole purpose behind the character, and Daniel ... I don't even know what to say. I like Bogosian but he isn't the guy for the part by a few decades.

AMC needs to get tight and smart.

I wonder how much the end of syndicated reruns has hit revenues all across the TV industry.

If you were a network TV affiliate, you had your Simpson’s hour, your Friends hour, your…ugh I guess King of Queen’s hour…you had all this good content (for some value of good) that was seemingly syndicated at reasonable rates, and then you could lard up with ads. And then not just for conventional TV—how much of Netflix was Office back catalog?

But now, the reruns live in their corporate streaming silos. If you are a streaming service, you have to have your own content, and if you’re what remains of a conventional TV channel, you’re seemingly coasting on cheap-as-hell talk shows.

Of course, syndication also provided cheap airtime on TV channels for all the people who turned on the TV as background or who wanted to mindlessly channel surf. There's no reason to assume that will always be a common behavior and, even if it is, it seems more common on YouTube etc. than streaming television.

One also wonders about the value of the film back catalogs some services are acquiring. My sense is certainly that a lot of movie watching at home has shifted to TV and other things.

Nobody cares about the network—they only care about the shows. If Breaking Bad were airing today as an AMC+ exclusive, they would have no problem with subscribers.

This is exactly it, but executives keep thinking they can make streaming into cable, because cable worked for them:

"But that is not enough to solve a bigger problem: The money that the company makes from its streaming business, including AMC+, is not making up for the loss of revenue from its traditional cable channels, as people abandon their cable subscriptions and advertisers pull back on spending."

Naturally, the solution is to spread IP even thinner, license more Walking Dead merchandise, new spinoffs, games and whatnot and, clearly, not trying to create a digital library with other IP holders so that customers can have access to everything they want. Gate keeping is that important.

<< Nobody cares about the network—they only care about the shows.

I will add one more thing here, because some executives seem to miss this point. I did enjoy Breaking Bad and their other shows, but I can easily live without them. It is not a necessity. I might care about their shows, but there is a limit to the amount of hoops I will jump through. The cable days are over. I am not going back to ad infested and ad interruptions ( my wife might ). I am an adult.. and I do have other entertainment choices ( and failing that, numerous obligations my entertainment choices prevent me from completing ).

If you ask the average person under 50 what network produced a list of hit shows from the last decade, you’d get some correct HBO answers and a whole lot of blank stares.

In the heyday of the Pirate Bay that was where you got shows. Today I’m a Google search away from illicit streams. This is how it should be when the alternative is 500 subscriptions, to put a twist on the famous 500 channels quote describing the attractive future of cable tv.

I'd say you're probably greatly overestimating how many people torrent or even pirate in general (in the US anyway). I'm well under your age-50 cutoff and I'd probably name you most of the networks (while freely admitting I'm somewhat of an outlier there, and also a previous but really not current user of certain illicit services).

Stuff going to one of the "big" legal streamers like Netflix is a huge deal for it having broader uptake. HBO is about the only big exclusion from that where they're still able to drive media coverage and social media conversation while having stuff locked to themselves (I've seen so much White Lotus stuff out there lately, as an example).

The retail VPN market is almost $50 billion. I think the true outliers are VPN customers who use it for purposes other than streaming and sharing.

BB never had stellar ratings btw.

The last season did

It doesn't help that AMC+ provides possibly the worst user experience of any of the major streaming apps I've used. Constant crashes, failure to resume where I left off, and just straight up "not working" is a total killer when there are a dozen other apps I could be using to watch other (admittedly non-AMC) content.

Feels like they were banking on exclusivity of AMC content and put not enough effort into the technical and UX aspects of their service.

They also removed episodes mid season of Better Call Saul, forcing you to subscribe for multiple months.

Oh; I've been meaning to subscribe to whatever service had Better Call Saul to binge watch it (now that I'm getting bored with HBO Max, and they cancelled / concluded most of the recent shows I watch).

Thanks for the heads up.

(I can't see the Discovery acquisition going well. The whole premise is that they'll cut 3 billion dollars from the production pipelines of the networks that were involved, but will somehow maintain / grow their revenues. I don't see the difference between this and attempting to improve GM's margins by firing all their factory workers and focusing on collection interest payments from existing car loans.)

I would assume the whole season is on it now, but as it was airing they removed the episodes. Personally, I just bought it on Amazon for $20 or however much it cost.

It’s not a mystery. Attention is moving on from TV to phones. I personally spend more minutes on Instagram Reels than watching actual TV content. Most of TV shows are boring and filled with uneventful minutes. I’m in my mid 30s. Probably much worse for younger folks.

I spend alot of time on youtube and tiktok throughout the day and I'm in my early 40s. Its not til after 8 or 9pm that I will flip to streaming. Contrast that with my youth, where TV was playing constantly.

I'm in my early 50s, and I honestly spend about 60% of my video-watching on YouTube, 15% on IG and TikTok, and 25% spread among Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, Apple TV+, Prime, etc. I really should start being a serial canceller.

Viewing habits can switch. I don't watch YouTube a lot and don't even have a TikTok account. But a fair bit of my fairly light video watching (maybe 8 hours a week or so) has switched from movies to streaming TV.

8 hours a week doesn’t even seem that light. We certainly have weeks (well, I. My wife loves YouTube) with fewer hours watched.

That's assuming I'm at home and aren't going somewhere on evenings or weekends. That's probably more like a max than average.

There is truth to this, but if it was fully true than Quibi would've taken off.

I will admit that this is news to me, but I don't have that many friends with Instagram ( and I suppose that means my social circle is pretty narrow ). Aren't those so short you basically just make an animated gif equivalent?

Is it just the question of advertisers going where eyeballs are?

This is ridiculous. The correct way to handle this is to put the boring TV show on, play Pokemon on your Switch, have your phone there for chat and looking up stuff about your game and doomscrolling-breaks, and only pay full attention to the TV at most 5% of the time.

ya mean to say TV is going the way of music? that is t say, it's becoming an adjunct source of perceptible data to fill in those small potential gaps where we might unwillingly brush up against the desert of the real?

Oh, it's been that since at least the 80s. It's just that now the other things we do during it are also on screens.

A lot of people have always liked to turn the TV on as background. If anything I would think that would be less common today if you don't have live TV. Personally, it drives me crazy. Back when I would sometimes have a shared hotel room on a group trip, something that would drive me crazy was the person who, first thing upon entering the room, would be to head straight for the TV and turn in on.

I've been slowly making my way through the Walking Dead season 10 on Netflix.

I legitimately will skip probably 60-70% of the episodes. They'll seriously skip from one scene of super-slow angsty bullshit to another scene with other characters involved in super-slow angsty bullshit.

I watch just enough to get the point and then skip the next 5-10 minutes until the next scene shows up, at which point I'll watch just enough to get the point ... ad nauseum.

----

It doesn't have to be like this, but JFC I'm not interested in someone spending 10 minutes expressing what a normal human being would express in 1 because the producer thinks slowing their speech patterns down to .0001x is somehow more dramatic.

I cannot wait for this trend to pass because it's absolutely not just the walking dead.

Right, they now stretch story arcs over a whole season that used to be an episode or two two decades ago.

Netflix could afford to stock-acquire a few of these legacy companies as they decline. It'd help solve their content problem, and shore them up in their fight against Disney and HBO.

I’m thinking of keeping my subscriptions for my family but personally trying to do a whole year of no films and tv, just books. Wouldn’t be able to escape YouTube because I need it to learn things, but I’m interested to see:

- If I can achieve more with the extra time

- If my memory and concentration improves from less screen time

Okay. Thanks for keeping us informed of your plans.

Very few are going to subscribe to a bunch of niche streaming services like AMC, FX, etc.--even as a fairly cheap Amazon Prime add-on as some of the other smaller services offer. Even most of us who have dropped live TV entirely pick and choose which streaming services we get over time. I know at the moment Netflix is starting to look of questionable value for me.

As a broader principle, just because something (e.g. video entertainment) continues on in a different form doesn't mean there's as much money in it as there was.

>I know at the moment Netflix is starting to look of questionable value for me.

There’s so much bland shit on Netflix but then every time I think I’ve had enough of it and I’m on the verge of unsubscribing they go and release something like Wednesday that smashes it out of the park.

Wednesday's the best thing I've seen on Netflix for a while. But, yeah, they have just enough good exclusive content to keep around for now. I'm sort of in the same boat with HBO Max.

Streaming is in an interesting place because a lot of the big hits (at least from my POV) are now such lavish productions that like movies, their sequels do not necessarily arrive year after year. So The White Lotus, House of the Dragon, and Andor (of Disney+) are being filmed in 2023, and will not be returning until 2024.

It's an interesting scheduling situation- so they're going to have to put out new content to fill the void in the meantime for the fans of such shows who have nothing to look forward to for an entire year, to keep them from unsubscribing.

I agree that the production value for TV shows is insanely good now, it must cost them a small fortune. I don’t know how they are keeping the budgets lower than their movie equivalents or perhaps maybe I don’t know how movies justify their budgets given the quality of modern day tv series.

They aren't necessarily. Rings of Power season one had a budget of almost $500 million. That's almost 3x what Top Gun: Maverick cost and twice what Black Panther: Wakanda Forever cost. (Yes, it's more hours of content but it's still in the neighborhood of blockbuster movie budgets.)

FX is basically a prestige brand on Hulu now iirc, but your overall point is right.

There's only room for so many streaming services. Sample size of one, but I literally don't know anything that's on Shudder, and AMC+ I can name The Walking Dead, which I gave up on after the first season; and apparently the Ann Rice-iverse? I've read a few of her books, and saw Interview with a Vampire 30(?) years ago? That's not compelling.

> The number of adult scripted series ordered by TV networks and streaming companies fell this quarter, compared with the same period a year ago — a reflection of the new financial reality.

What is happening in peoples heads?

Did people really think that the boom in online content would last after people were allowed to leaved their houses to socialize again?

AMC alone doesn't say much about the greater TV industry since people have loyalty to specific shows and not the channel. Breaking Bad didn't become popular while airing, it became popular because it released on Netflix. Cable channels have outlived their purpose. Emulating cable channels by partitioning shows into streaming services is pushing people back to piracy.

The traditional TV industry is continuing to fail to adapt to the different way in which people watch content. Youtube demonstrates really well how people are no longer loyal to a network, they are loyal to a creator or topic. There have been certain groups of channels that sort of remind me of an old school TV channel, like MatPat and his youtube channels Game Theorists, Film Theorists, and Food Theorists could have been a TV channel in combination with some other video game or theory crafting channels but people don't search by a bigger topic. People find content based on recommendations, either algorithmic or popular things watched by friends. Netflix Originals and Amazon Originals seem better, but I can't understand the metrics Netflix uses when deciding what to cancel.

As someone who has shifted to online media as the main form of content I watch, I can't tell you what makes a cartoon network show a cartoon network show. I know because of the logos between shows and during ads, but I struggle to find a strong underlying identity.

The easier access to international media has also caused an oversaturation of available good media. I no longer need to worry about what part of the world a show is made in, if it's popular enough, you'll be able to find it sailing the seas. HBO Max, the supposed online equivalent to the cable channel HBO will drop Westworld from its online catalog. Some fantastic Disney+ Marvel shows, like the critically acclaimed Loki, have no announced plans of getting a physical release and Loki released back in Jun 2021. When a TV show enthusiast sees those two pieces of news back to back, a normal conclusion is that the only "sure" way to own shows is piracy.

YouTube is the network. Most YouTube creators probably wouldn’t survive if they set up a web site and posted videos on it.

Being on YouTube is the same as being on Television, seeing it as a network is part of the problem. New media doesn't fit into old frameworks. Many YouTube creators have set up successful crowdfunded channels. Certain topics are always demonetized and can't run ads, and creators just use YouTube to help distribute content. Patreon rolled out its own platform after Vimeo became too expensive to host on. Twitch, arguably, is a meaningful competitor to YouTube but exclusively focuses on live streaming.

Over the last couple of years, YouTube managed to get top Twitch creators to switch with contracts of above 1 million dollars. Some leaked ad spots, like watching a trailer on stream or playing a game for 30-60 minutes, were between 2k and 10k USD for a streamer with around 8,000 average viewers per stream. There was a leak recently of how much top streamers on twitch made, and there were multiple 500K+ salaries. But the platform unfortunately follows the 1% of creators earn 90%+ of all income rule of thumb.

I actually was interested recently in getting AMC+; mostly because I wanted to watch older movies with my children.

Unfortunately, most of that isn't available on AMC+, so what's the point?

I'd pay good money for access to movies pre-2000, plus a decent series or two that are exclusive, which IMO should be cheaper to obtain.

For older movies, you might consider getting a Netflix DVD subscription though they've let their back catalog deteriorate. (Your library is probably also a good source.) You can also just digitally rent a la carte on Amazon or Apple. By and large, the streaming services have never been great for finding a specific film.

Seconding the library! Libraries are so great. And if they don't have something you want, odds are they will get it if you ask them!

    AMC+, which costs $8.99 a month for a subscription, does not run ads.

How many of these are there going to be? I don’t want a $200 cable bill but I also don’t want dozens of subscriptions. I’ll subscribe to a few streaming services (eg Disney+ which my daughter watches) but outside of that I just don’t care. I also don’t have the time for stuff on the fringe.

> How many of these are there going to be?

They're really killing their golden goose by trying to launch all these streaming services rather than agreeing to some sort of profit-sharing agreement with Netflix like they were doing when it first came out. These movies have no value to anybody if nobody's paying to watch them and if every studio hides them behind yet another $10/month streaming service that nobody is signing up for, they're going to go bankrupt. Streaming is how we consume entertainment now, and that's not changing - but every movie studio launching their own streaming service would be like every movie studio lanuching their own video rental company in the 90's.

I don’t know what the future here holds, but I agree completely and this is why I think it was a poor choice long-term for Netflix to become a production company. Their model was wholesaling content, first via mail and later over the Internet. Now that Netflix produces content, other studios wishing to stream content on Netflix are also in competition with Netflix content on Netflix’s own platform. The advantage of a neutral arbiter -over the debate of what to watch - is gone.

AMC’s flagship show (Better Call Saul) isn’t currently available on their streaming service.

Personally, I’m happy to sign up for a streaming service to get access to a single show (I do often cancel once I’m done, so I’m not signed up to everything all the time).

There’s only one show I’ve pirated recently: Better Call Saul. If it were on AMC+, I’d be a subscriber.

Better Call Saul is available on ~15 different services including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, and AppleTV+. It would never have occurred to me that I should watch it on a separate AMC service.

The last season isn't on Netflix or any of the other services you listed though. Personally, I suspect that's because that last season was GoT season 8-tier terrible and they're trying to get as many new fans to watch the older seasons before the masses recognize that the show is dead.

That's interesting. It is on Amazon though.

> that last season was GoT season 8-tier terrible

Uh, were we watching the same show? I thought it was an amazing finish to 11 seasons of Albuquerque and meth-based fun, and so did critics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Call_Saul_(season_6)#Re...

> before the masses recognize that the show is dead.

I mean, that was the final season, so I think most people are aware that the show won't be continuing...

> before the masses recognize that the show is dead.

It was widely publicized that the most recent season of Better Call Saul was the end of the series.

I also disagree it was anywhere near as bad as GoT ending, or bad at all.

Why didn't you like it? I thought it was pretty universally loved. This is the first I've heard someone express disappointment.

It would not have occurred to me to watch Better Call Saul via a middleman when the technology to obviate them has been widespread for more than a decade.

I don’t remember when, but at some point I tried to watch the then-most recent season and it didn’t seem to be available anywhere legally.

Now, there are some places you can watch it, but AMC isn’t one of them.

I also checked another flagship AMC show, The Walking Dead. Not as critically acclaimed, but huge ratings. You can watch only season 11 on the AMC+ service.

Netflix has the old seasons of The Walking Dead and Better Call Saul. I’d hope AMC is getting paid handsomely by Netflix for the rights, and that may be the right move financially. But selling the crown jewels seems incompatible with a successful AMC+. I recall reading that Netflix found that the first two seasons of a good show help subscriber numbers, then the benefit of additional seasons drops off (and costs increase) such that 3+ seasons only pencil out for the most popular shows. From that perspective, the AMC+ offering of limited runs of recent episodes from their most binge-worthy shows is a doomed strategy.

They've screwed up and spread to thin, such a pain as a user.

Prime Video used to be better but now their're siloing super hard too.

They have had some good shows, but I can buy entire seasons on Amazon Prime. I suppose they could shut that channel off or delay it, but that would not make me subscribe to AMC+. Rather, I'd just do without, or wait until the end of the season.

Is this an AMC problem, or just that every player now wants a streaming service and people accustomed to bundled TV options (and I count Netflix as that for argument) are now exhausted at the prospect of endless streaming services to subscribe to.

Everyone here is talking content, and I don't think that's the issue. We are awash in a glut of unlimited great content available to stream now.

The problem is ads. The advertisement model is stuck in the 20th century idea of "heres a block of obnoxious crap for you to mute for the next five minutes". And the monetization drags because of it. Great ads can be great. A differentiating feature for your platform. An integral part of your brand and identity. But instead it's just nonsequitor, non-contextual garbage.

AMC's output is low, and most if not all their good stuff is available somewhere else. I just learnt they have a streaming service. I wonder if they could make more money by signing some exclusivity deal with a major competitor.

Imv, the only profitable option for dedicated streamers/content companies (Eg those whose only source of income is their streaming/media content) will be to ditch monthly subs and implement a pay per show, even perhaps a rent-the-episode approach (perhaps 99 cents?). This would probably drive up piracy even more but I don’t see what other option streamers such as AMC have..

Another issue though is that AMC should never have tried to handle the infra/app component of the streaming themselves. They should have stuck with just an agreement with Amazon or Hulu (much like FX has) for the infra/tech side, and then they can stick their focus purely on content.

iTunes formerly allowed TV shows to be rented per-episode. Would be interesting to find out why they stopped doing so.

If on iOS the reader mode gets past the paywall at least for me.

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