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Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

Why is this a negative for consumers? Doesn't everyone complain how they have to subscribe to 5 different streaming services, and plenty of people have to pay for a service just to enjoy one or two series?

I don't think consolidation is necessarily bad. It makes sense from a cost perspective too. I guess they could just license out the content, but this will probably grow the catalog a lot.

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The production side is the problem. Netflix churns out shovelware crap designed to be on in the background. Every once in a while they get lucky or stick their neck out to acquire something good, but the batting average is very low. HBO on the other hand has the highest batting average, and the brand actually still stands for quality.

Of course Netflix is saying all the right things now to keep anti-trust off their backs, but at some which culture do you think is going to win out?

"Something good" is subjective and your opinion. They make a lot of shows to appeal to all kinds of different audiences. I'm not sure why you'd conclude they would 'drag down' the quality.

I think your comment is proving the point. Trying to make shows appeal to all kinds of services is not exactly an approach to making high quality shows. Masses tend to converge to mediocrity. If you consider it an art form then it really needs to come from the production side and not the consumption.

Right but the production strands are all still their own thing. It's not like there's one big "Netflix Originals" meat grinder all the shows will get lumped into. The existence of reality shows on Netflix for example doesn't mean that they're going to be incapable of producing prestige dramas.

But I guess the budget allocation, return on investment, time to develop a series etc have to come from the higher ups

This year Netflix and HBO both tied for most Emmy awards, at 30 each. Netflix is usually in the top few slots for both nominations and wins.

Consolidation means that incumbents rely on fickle intrinsic motivation rather than competitive pressure to keep quality high and prices low. All too often, monopolies or oligopies become complacent and merely "extract rents".

The problem doesn't appear immediately; it appears over time where the market has been consolidated into only a couple companies and then they can raise prices as much as they want because there is no alternative. This is what cable was like for a long time. Part of subscription fatigue is the constantly raising prices of these services that used to be very cheap. Netflix having WB content isn't a bad thing, the problem is ownership because it will not be available elsewhere.

Number goes up, content goes down.

It’s negative because under current market regulation and enforcement, big company buys small company and enshittifies every product.

What people want (presumably) is a market where you pay once and you access everything and the money get divided based on creators, distribution or whatever.

Under current market conditions, that will happen only in the limit where a single company owns everything.

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