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Comment by _fat_santa | Hacker News Reader

The entire steaming sector has become unsustainable. On the one hand, for a service to be successful in the space they have to dump millions if not billions of dollars towards developing content. The problem is that with so many streaming platforms doing the same thing dilutes the value of that content and makes it unsustainable.

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There's also so much good existing content across all the streaming services that a typical adult with a job and responsibilities has enough to watch right now for the next several years, without watching anything "new".

When I had a mail-by-DVD Netflix account, I don't think my queue ever dropped below 20. I have a sizeable watchlist / saved list on every streaming service I have used, and it also never goes down to zero.

Same with all media to be honest. Literature, videogames, music. There's been an uncountable number of masterworks over the past decades and you could fill a whole lifetime with incredible content. We're drowning in slop and we don't need the floodgates fully open for another decade to find the occasional nugget.

I don't know if I'd say it dilutes the value of the content per-se. But more that when you add it all up, to see everything, you have to spend quiet a bit in stream services. By the time you pay for Hulu, Disney, Netflix, Paramount+, Peacock, Amazon's PrimeTV, and who knows how many other service. We ended up in a space where to have access to most content, its gotten almost just as expensive, if not more expensive, than having cable.

It's worse than a that! Nobody wants/needs to "see everything." They typically want to see 5-10 different shows or movies, but that content always seems to be spread across all of the services, so you have to buy each services just to access That One Show that's exclusively on that service. The overall product (streaming) is distinctly worse than Cable. If I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd almost believe that the companies work together on their content lists to make sure that the show a given person wants to watch is always on the service they aren't paying for yet.

Netflix is doing OK. Their stock price might be wildly inflated, but they have been able to show profits since 2003.

I think you are painting with a very broad brush. In general Wall St keeps very close tabs on every big streamer and is pushing them all to be profitable yesterday. There was a time when investors were happy to subsidize customer acquisition, but that time is over and I think you haven't updated your outlook. That said, there is still some room to run.

Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle's Netflix deals make that point more than anything I've seen. Rock got $20M each for 2 specials. I think Dave has made that (or more) for a bunch of specials.

How does it dilute the value of the content? Dilution occurs when you add more meh-level content to your pool of content. These studios are trying to produce very high-prestige content like Rings of Power (which flopped) or Game of Thrones / House of Dragons, which increases signal.

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