Look at GitHub as an example, they were acquired in 2018, and are just migrating to Azure now after 7 years.

Microsoft shipping integrations with GitHub in 20108.

This is definitely the case with several Salesforce acquisitions (early product integration, little, no, or much later infrastructure integration).

So… I predict some level of content integration within a few months.

But infra integration is likely years away.

think old navy, gap, banana republic.

the quality difference is important for the conglomerate same with netflix vs hbo, the corporate benefit is being able to save on costs around like amortizing the corporate side of things (accounting, marketing, real estate, research ect)

So no, I don't think this gets in the way of Ellison taking over the rest of TV news; if anything it seems like it smooths the path.

And that is it... I have prime + netflix + hulu and such, but I use "yandex.com" as it does not have ads - even if sometimes it takes a bit to load and rarely it gets stuck for a second, it is less time than the stupid ads.

Is that a financialised version of piggybacking?

Netflix got it's start shipping CDs, which was only possible due to the first-sale doctrine. The rights landscape hasn't adjusted for the new technologies. How could an new player disrupt a streaming world when everything is so locked down?

This is a very common narrative to this news. But coming into this news, I think the most common narrative against streaming was essentially "There is not enough consolidation." People were happy when Netflix was the streaming service, but then everyone pulled their content and have their own (Disney, Paramount, etc.)

For all the enormous Reach of Facebook adverts, Apple, Microsoft breadth of products, Tesla and SpaceX and Twitter, Amazon’s massive cloud dominance, the AI boom for nVidia…

Oracle?!

“On September 10, 2025, Ellison was briefly the wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$393 billion.

In June 2020, Ellison was reported to be the seventh-wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth of $66.8 billion”

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Ellison

  New co revenue >= Netflix + HBO revenue

Quite possibly (and quite unfortunately) to the Ellisons.

Obviously having one monopoly streaming service would be bad, but in the meantime having more of them is also not great for consumers since they each charge a flat fee so you have to pay more to see shows from different studios. The ideal would be something more akin to music streaming where you can more or less pick a provider these days, but video streaming doesn't seem to be moving there in any hurry.

With a subscription service 10 years ago, you just need to have enough must-see content:

- Original scripted TV series that become mainstream known and/or seen as prestige TV, like "The Crown," "Mindhunter," "Bridgerton," "Stranger Things" etc.

- "Crown Jewel" reruns with huge fanbases such as The Office, Friends, Seinfeld, Modern Family, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Arrested Development, etc.

- Unscripted TV series that become buzzy - like Love Is Blind, Tiger King, etc.

Having those categories all well-stocked ensures that only a fool would cancel their Netflix subscription as they'll be out of the loop when the new season of a 'zeitgeisty' show drops. You don't really need all your viewers to watch more hours to get more money every year, you can grow revenue with a combo of new viewers and price increases as long as users just watch regularly.

I think present-day Netflix sees incentives:

- to get as many people on the ad tier as possible so they can scale revenue with watch time

- to increase watch time which is a solved problem via psychological manipulation if you have good ML like they do

- more watch time without spending more money points pretty obviously to lowering cost per show as much as you can, which manifests as worse quality, more reality, more imported dubbed shows, etc. and drastically curtailing giving huge checks to the Matthew Weiners, David Benioffs, and Vince Gilligans of the world to bet on a massive superhit.

So they will want to focus heavily on the unscripted category plus whatever they can slap together cheaply, then autoplay and optimize their way to growth.

That said, I'm more uncomfortable with the continued consolidation of media ownership and more outsize influence of FAANG tech over media.

It's like having a restaurant that serves 300 million people. You can try to offer every type of food there is, but most people may not like most of them. Which is fine, as long as you have something they like.

It feels like a race to the bottom. Movie and TV content quality has taken a nose dive in the past decade.

Yes, there are exceptions, but it’s hard to find these days.

Maybe it’s because producing movies/TV is so much easier and cheaper that there is now so much low quality noise, that it makes finding the high quality signal so difficult.

But it seems like you used to be able to go to the theater and you’d have to decide between several great options.

Now, I almost never care to go because it’s only about 2-3 times a year that anything comes out worth seeing.

And I don't have to play the 'which service has this?' game.

- blu ray rentals were 99¢ / wk

- a vast trove of content

- no lock-in or monthly fees

sure, you actually have to make it to the store... but, 2007 never looked better.

now, Netflix was distributing by mail, and i think the promise was for them to stream all their content into homes. but, then it got messy.

but yeah, for 99¢ / movie, I'm happy to pay. i'll even occasionally pay to rent through AppleTV.

I subscribe to ad-free versions of services so I don't really run into ads a lot unless I'm trying to watch something live on TV.

lots of people have, and we've come now full circle. I wonder if it was inevitable.

So I think the biggest question is, what form of entertainment will eventually supplant streaming services? Whatever it is (or will be) will almost certainly be disregarded by most people.

HBO Go and HBO Now - simultaneously, for some reason

Then HBO Max

Then Max

Now back to HBO Max

How many committee meetings did it take to get this strategy?

It's frankly amazing WB Studio and HBO quality has survived this insanity.

Time-Warner and its incarnations is whatever the opposite of synergy is (the parts are worse because of the whole)

The reality is, most cable channels had ads from day one. Less ads than most broadcast stations (which made up most of the channels you had on cable at the start anyways) but still a lot of the first cable-only channels had ads from the start. WTBS had ads on cable in 1976. MSG/USA had ads on cable starting in 1977. CNN had ads on day one in 1980. MTV had ads on day one in 1981.

Unfortunately for them around the time of Netflix's ascent they were embroiled with all kinds of financial issues but still the mind boggles

I think what history shows us is that the modern monopolies managed to destroy antitrust to the point where nobody will ever do to them what they did to others.

In fact the very reason for this purchase is that they desperately need help on the creative side.

Netflix is what it is today because all the studios trying to compete with their tech was an even bigger disaster than Netflix competing on content.

Hollywood was premised on economies of scale. Concentrate a lot of talent in one place and then put infrastructure in place for block buster productions to happen (studios, tech, money).

That's being disrupted by several things:

- LA and the US are no longer cheap places to be. A lot of blockbuster content is filmed outside the US at this point. Canada, Europe, and elsewhere. LA and Hollywood are still important but mainly because that's where the money is. It's not necessarily where the money is being spent.

- Independent content producers self publishing content on platforms like Youtube and growing audiences rivaling those of popular TV shows.

- AI is starting to drive down the cost of special effects, digital processing, etc. And it's probably also going to erode the value of needing actors at all for especially a lot of the less glamorous roles (think all the extras in big movie productions). This is a sensitive topic in particularly Hollywood. But not enough to delay the inevitable by very long.

All this is driving down the cost of creating decent quality things that people still want to pay for. That's a critical distinction. There's a lot of ad sponsored stuff that people don't really pay for as well. To make money, you need quality. AI is working its way up the chain here, with increasingly better stuff. But most of it is still pretty low value.

But things like soap operas, third rate series that Netflix bulk purchases from places like South Korea, etc. are all fair game for AI.

Netflix adding the WB back catalog is a great move for them. Their own back catalog isn't strong enough to keep people and expanding with newly created production it is a very slow and expensive process. And they've had some flops and cost control issues. There just isn't enough there to keep me permanently. I tend to sign up for just a few months and then cancel. I'm probably going to cancel soon again. HBO did not actually offer their streaming services in Germany until recently. And I was considering trying that for a while. Now I might not have to.

Sounds like they're still creating popular content.

This has been the narrative about the state of streaming services for years now. People upset that content is too fragmented across services. Now we get some significant consolidation and people are upset. They just ignore that angle and find a different one to gripe about.

I think this is great.

I killed my Netflix sub over a year ago and I never even think about it. It's all dull, empty-calorie background TV.

The sad part is how the iconic HBO brand, already beaten by WBD into a pulp, is just going to merge with this average-ness and fade. End of an era, indeed.

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F1...

That's valuable in a world where copyright has everything made in most people's lifetime locked up for another century.

They've been raising prices relentlessly, banning casting, criminalizing account sharing (which THEY started by introducing profiles)… They're just as selfish and consumer-hostile as most other big companies.

Whenever one of my friends says they're thinking about getting into daytrading, all I can think is good luck beating the funds... they either can predict the future or just write it themselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson%E2%80%93Patman_Act

It may take you the next decade to complete. There are some real oddballs in there that lean toward "art film" (but what do you expect from Andy Warhol). A lot of "foreign" films (foreign for this U.S. viewer). In short a lot of surprises.

Definitely feel like a student of film now (for whatever that's worth).

[1] https://1001films.fandom.com/wiki/The_List

The funny thing is, between a NAS & a monthly VPN subscription & usenet subscriptions I probably could have paid for all those streaming services for a few years :D

The business side of Hollywood has been imploding for the past few years. It just costs too much to film there vs other places. Tariffs will not change that. The tax incentives are gone and the must have on set is too high.

Not sure how netflix is going to digest that pill they just swallowed. 83 billion is a lot. Is is about 3x their total gross per year. I do not think they can raise prices too much with out shedding subscribers. WB has already taken out AOL, ATT (recovering), and Discovery. Netflix could be next.

The deal also spins out the linear TV into a different company. Can that company survive? Its going to be tough going. Havent looked but I would bet a good portion of the debt they took on to do the divestiture from AT&T is being pumped into that company.

Then there is Disney, Comcast (Peacock), Paramount, STARZ (standalone company), and AMC

This is the issue with content production being owned by the distributors too. It's too profitable to own the vertical because each piece of content is an effective monopoly, because to participate in culture requires watching it (piracy notwithstanding). Therefore, the "fix" is to regulate this monopoly - by making sure that monopoly cannot exist without cost. One "simple" way is, imho, to make content production and ownership of distribution strictly prohibited in the same entity, and to also enforce mechanical licensing of content (such that you cannot have content exclusives in the distribution platforms).

Movie theatres have similar restrictions with film studios in the past - to prevent this very monopoly. It's high time we brought it back.

doesn't this move reduce the number of streaming services by one? we'll see how the details turn out, but if I was paying for netflix and hbo max, now I only need to pay for netflix

But the other platforms - Disney+ (2019), Apple TV (2016/2019), HBO Max (2020), Peacock (2020), Paramount+/CBS All Access (2021 / 2014) - are all later.

There's no modeling, it's a punishment or incentive. The intention is to inflict financial pain.

This is performative marketing for the regulators to allow the merger. No one (including the regulators) believes this, and it won't come to pass. ("More choice" won't, I mean, the merger will and a lot of regulators and politicians involved will end up with new cars, boats, and kids' college tuitions paid.)

Personally I just hope Netflix takes interest in the UCI mountain bike racing and does a better job with it.

Besides, they still have plans to spin off the cable networks, so this would mostly concern the streaming assets, movie studio, and the IP.

music does this far better, there's multiple different platforms that all have the vast majority of music people care about, you can easily opt to rent with streaming or purchase outright and download without DRM. spotify would probably love to have tons of exclusive content, and they're trying this with podcasts etc, but the music industry hasn't been able to enshittify as much as the movie industry, yet.

Netflix refuses to play game, because they want to keep their data to themselves. Apple would LOVE Netflix to integrate into the app.

this is not how markets usually work.

This is an absolutely wild (and incorrect) thing to assume. The problem of content lock-in is anti-competitive and it would be better solved without mergers

That was also before they started aggressively pushing their own content. For a while, it looked like Netflix was going to be the place you go to stream any movie that ever existed (which was pretty much what they were with mail-in DVDs before the streaming service came along). Now it seems like they don't really want to be in that business either.

Content producers must not be vertically integrated with content distributors.

In contrast, of the list of companies you highlighted,

- Apple makes hardware, which is lower margin

- Microsoft is under stiff competition (they are selling a product, an operating system, that is a commodity competing with free) and unlike Oracle is struggling to define why they should be the best choice (ads in the OS?!).

- Meta doesn't actually have a monetization strategy beyond ads that is revenue-positive, and the reliability of ads turns out to be dicey (Google built their nest-egg on ads earlier than Facebook, and even Google has been thrashing about to find tent-poles besides ads; they see the risk). In spite of that, Zuck is currently above Ellison in the Fortune 2025 rankings.

- AI is ghost money (behind the scenes, a lot of companies paying themselves essentially)

- SpaceX is in a tiny market ultimately (each launch costs a fortune; a handful of customers want to put things in space)

- Tesla suffers strong competition. In spite of the above, Musk is currently the top of the Forbes ranking.

- Amazon is... Actually wildly successful and Bezos is #3 on the Forbes ranking. I think the only reason Bezos might not be higher is he spends his money.

No, it's often the quiet ones nobody talks about that are the real leaders. Lions don't have to roar to be noticed.

Even after the recent drop, Oracle is trading for ~33 times last four quarters operating income. With their meh growth rate, fair value is closer to half that. Except we're in an AI bubble. Oracle is riding the tail of the AI bubble just as they popped to the moon toward the end of the dotcom bubble. Oracle will contract afterward accordingly. The stock probably won't see this era's highs again for another 20 years, if ever.

Maybe it's better now, but looking at the PS3-era PSN, that expertise had negative value.

That's how I imagined WBD. David Zaslav gets to transition from the leader of a reality show slophouse to one of the biggest power players in Hollywood, and all be has to do is let the slophouse sink and declare himself captain of the next ship.

Basically, being acquired is a pain in the assets and you want it to be worth your while to pursue it, even if it falls through, otherwise the board is looking at getting replaced.

I am not, and WB was available via local options here (Southern European country).

For me who isn't a Netflix customer (the group which is larger than the group of people who have Netflix, obviously), the choice gets less.

And obviously anti-trust regulation doesn't care about the amount of choices for Netflix customers specifically, it cares about amount of choices for consumers at large, which will decrease with this change.

https://press.wbd.com/us/media-release/hbo-max/hbo-max-nears...

Netflix can provide its own content everywhere around the globe because they are the sole owner of it. The distribution rights to WB properties outside of the US will belong to completely different legal entities (even if those entities have WB in them).

That will exactly follow Netflix's price hikes.

As in "value for money", they silenced the latter part :D

Now they don't have to go negotiate for every WB content item. As it stands, subscribers might or might not get WB things, same as all the other IP holders that are playing hard to get. Otherwise, they might have to contract some seasons of a show from one holder and some from another, and maybe not at all sometimes.

The "east" has more work to do to capture that magic that the western imperial order (Hollywood) has wrought upon the world.

I will continue to watch and observe how things play out.

Or something like that?

The reason is pretty obvious. Netflix would rather have users open their app directly so there’s opportunity to shove things in their faces, collect data from their browsing, and ideally become positioned as the user’s “main” streaming app. The user having a hub app and treating Netflix as one of several services directly opposes their aims.

The situation shares a lot of similarities with Spotify, which also refuses to take advantage of native APIs for the same reasons. Though in their case, there’s an added layer of irony with how they make all a big ruckus about how Apple needs to open their platforms up only for them to pretend APIs don’t exist after Apple adds them. As an example Apple had to hardcode a hack into HomePods to enable Spotify to work with them; where most services (Pandora, Tidal, etc) hook the official HomePod streaming APIs which pull directly from the service to the device, for Spotify Apple has to automatically AirPlay Spotify playing on the user’s phone to the HomePod. It’s ridiculous.

Thanks for the elucidation.

If that's the case, then we'll probably lose another app or two.

:'(

Make it like music streaming, where all services have the same catalog so you can choose on price, features, etc.

One of several around the world. Albuquerque, Fort Monmouth (New Jersey), Shepperton (UK), etc.

On the other hand Netflix will make its subscribers fund everything without reducing their income, and will not give these subscribers at least half of that content, because, why not?

This is wild fantasy.

the global power centers of TV distribution, monetization, and intellectual property ownership remain overwhelmingly American.

2) there are a billion different ways to entertain yourself, including spending time on HN. It matters very little to real life that there are 5 different places to stream expensive media compared to 6. If they get too expensive, you can watch youtube or tiktok or come back to HN or whatever else.

This was probably always true, with some randomly amazing years every now and again, like 1972 (The Godfather, Cabaret, Deliverance, What's Up Doc?,...).

IMDB listing shows 470 films released US in 1972. Google says there are ~3,900 IMDB entries for 1972 (why the 4X discrepancy?). The hit ratio was veeeery small even in killer years.

still different than media people PAY for. for example substack sells empty opinions that agree with you. it is totally wrong to say that slop sells. it is merely the highest engagement for an audience that DOESN'T pay.

you could say, "engagement is the wrong metric," but if that were really true, tech jobs would contract like 50%. the alternative becomes, "would you like fries with that?"

There was something quite nice and nostalgic about it.

Social discourse is also heavily weighted

Why are there alternating cycles of innovation and enshittification? I think it’s because investors are always trying to pull forward profit, but because they only have a 10 year horizon on investment strategy they tend to create cycles that are around that same period. If there was less investment, the innovation would be slower but the reactionary enshittification would be lessened too.

They're pretty close with the headcount though

Unfortunately, I think the best competition to streaming already exists. And it's already owned by a concentrated player.

For example, if indie AI generated content is the next big thing, it probably shows up on YouTube.

Sony Rootkit, Sony BetaMax, Sony MiniDisc, Sony ATRAC, Sony Memory Stick [Select / PRO / Duo / PRO Duo / PRO-HG Duo / M2 / XC / PRO-HG Duo HX / WTF], Sony UMD, Sony Elcaset, Sony SDDS, Sony VAIO, Sony Walkman, Sony Discman, [...]

At least they had some lasting success with their Umatic video tape cartridge, and with the CD that they co-developed with Philips. Their Trinitron tubes were unique and generally quite good -- and they lasted as long in the market as any other CRT did, I suppose. And their various iterations of PlayStation console have all been popular despite being Sony products.

My 65" Bravia is one of the best TV's in its class and runs Google TV (IMO a major leg up over the junky Tizen/WebOS offerings from competitors).

They make some of the best noise cancelling headphones money can buy. They have the PS5 and own a bunch of game studios to provide exclusive content for it.

They're doing just fine!

Not recurring revenue but they have their thing set up

It also helped that the largest player in the music content library game (Sony) was not really as adept at software as Comcast, Disney, and NBCU were.

No, not even close. According to Nielsen from this year, Netflix has only 7.5% of total TV hours and "Warner Bros + Discovery" clocks in at 1.5% ("HBO" as an independent entity is not tracked), for a total of 9%. A whopping 16% to go before crossing that 25% threshold.

https://www.nielsen.com/news-center/2025/streaming-reaches-h...

Netflix started streaming on January 16, 2007.

No reawwy this time we double-dog super promise

Here is some history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2J0pRJSToU

  The Americans (6 seasons, 75 episodes)
  Battlestar Galactica (4 seasons, 88 episodes)
  Borgen (3 seasons, 30 episodes)
  Burn Notice (7 seasons, 111 episodes)
  The Shield (7 seasons, 88 episodes)
  Slow Horses (5 seasons, 30 episodes)
  WestWorld (4 seasons, 36 episodes)
  The Wire (5 seasons, 60 episodes)

This slightly outdated guide helps you set it up pretty easily - instead of Zurg+ Black hole, use Decypharr

https://savvyguides.wiki/sailarrsguide/

Real-debrid == imagine a huge cloud storage service. You have 1000 people trying to download Burgonia.4k.mkv. it downloads the torrent once to the shared server, then gives each user their own access to it via a WebDAV mount.

WebDAV == trick you server into thinking a cloud server is a local folder. You use RClone to mount this and it's accessible from your local drive so you can stream all your stuff directly.

What this means: you add a show in Sonarr or a movie in Radarr. Prowlarr searches Torrentio or Zilean for torrents. The best match is chosen. It sends to Decypharr (or black hole) to say "download this torrent to my real debrid box". It finds the cached version of the file, which is instantly available in your drive. It's symlinked so Plex can pick up the file.

Basically the lead time from requesting a movie/series to watching it on your tv is about 10 seconds, with no storage overhead required.

I wonder if any of them track torrent metrics for this reason.

I feel like some of those very diversified company tend to be the one who struggle to evolve and adapt because some part of their business are worried about being cannibalized by the new business opportunity (like how streaming “killed” physical media). I.e, if you are the director of the “DVD player division” you have an active interest in killing any potential streaming division. Reality is of course more complex than this, but this is the kind of story we sometimes hear off when "too big to fail" companies end up missing a major shift.

They still do all those things? And they're still successful in most of them? They haven't "failed" or "dropped the ball" based on any metric I can think of. I'm not sure what you're referring to here to be honest.

Companies didn't, leadership did. For a big, fat check. And they're happily retired now, sitting in their expensive villas with millions on their balance.

They couldn't care less about your happy childhood memories that the content produced by their predecessors engraved in your mind.

The answer to that one is simple: they were bad at software.

Apple and then Android killed the market for all those hardware devices and physical media.

and neither do consumers. video over the internet is the future that Netflix saw 20 years ago, when others didn't, except YouTube.

HBO was always one channel in a home. They produced a limited amount of high-quality content. You watch it a few times a week and network TV reality shows or whatever other trash the rest of the week.

Netflix wanted/wants to be the only channel in cord-cutting and cord-never homes. When that's your goal you have to produce mostly crap and some good stuff.

But watching specific stuff you want is hell. The cognitive load of searching a bunch of services, or finding a site that tells you where to watch, then it’s not in that same service in your country, you might have to pay extra, or sign up for another streaming service or… Holy cow, it’s a terrible experience.

I’m not saying I have a better idea, or that it couldn’t be worse. But it’s terrible.

If you as a hypothetical video content creator want to get your content distributed to a wide audience, you have five companies to go to, you can publish it to any of the video on demand services, try to monetize it through ads on YouTube, etc.

We aren’t in the 30s anymore where the only way you could see content was by going to the movie theater.

Before HBO Max was a thing, they were already selling distribution rights of content to Netflix. No one said that was a monopoly.

It’s not like Apple and Google where the majority of people either have an Android or iOS based phone.

YouTube I believe has more viewing hours than Netflix.

You do know that David Ellison (Larry Ellison's son), through his Skydance Media, acquired Paramount Global (including its parent, National Amusements) in a merger completed in August 2025.

He also wanted Warner Brothers. I'm super glad that nepo baby isn't getting what he wants. He is using his daddy to talk to Trump to try stop it though: https://nypost.com/2025/12/04/media/paramount-skydances-davi...

DVDs at least keep working.

After all, there is more "content" now.

https://www.pinkbike.com/news/netflix-in-exclusive-talks-for...

(yes Pinkbike is my source)

One serious strand of America's whip of many thongs is the inability or refusal to acknowledge the rise in power and influence elsewhere.

As Gandalf - the last remaining talkshow host - gets pulled off the bridge into the abyss, he looks up to see a motley brigade of multi-cultural hobbits dashing for the surface with their wits and wallets thankfully intact.

Please excuse my excruciating reimagining of your wild fantasy metaphor.

East of Madrid is booming, West is in decline.

More accurately the line should be in Lagos but many are more familiar with EU film production centres.

Apple should not be allowed to become a streaming front for all other companies.

Also,

> Why would Netflix let Apple list all their content in an Apple branded interface as if it were their own

That's not how it works. It literally says "Open in Netflix" or whatever app. All it does is make it easy to search for stuff, add it to your watchlist, and start playing it.

What Netflix doesn't like is that it makes it easier for its customers to watch non Netflix content...which is obviously anti customer.

Can you name another scenario where consolidation helped the consumer? Where a sweet spot involved more consolidation?

Did Breyer’s ice cream get better when it was purchased by Unilever?

Did your local grocery store chain get better after it was acquired by Kroger or Albertsons?

Did the smartphone market get better when Microsoft acquired Nokia and HP acquired Palm?

What about Hashicorp? Sun Microsystems? Dark Sky? Red Hat? Slack? Nest? Any of these product markets get better post-consolidation?

I struggle to think of a single example of a product category that got better with industry consolidation.

Funny thing though. When I cancelled my subscription, they offered me 50% off for a month or something like that.

Only in the US. Everywhere else Hulu has always been integrated into Disney+).

In the medium term you'll get a D+/Hulu-esque split with maybe a discounted bundle of Netflix and HBO Max together - the evidence is pretty strong that bundles reduce churn.

If they ever do go to one library, it'll be because Netflix feel they are able to push prices to the same level as both services combined.

Netflix is a different creature because of streaming and time shifting.

They don't care about people watching a pilot episode or people binge watching last 3 seasons when a show takes off.

The quality metric therefore is all over the place, it is a mildly moderated popularity contest.

If people watch "Love is Blind", you'll get more of those.

On the other hand, this means they can take a slightly bigger risk than a TV network with ADs, because you're likely to switch to a different Netflix show that you like and continue to pay for it, than switch to a different channel which pays a different TV network.

As long as something sticks the revenue numbers stay, the ROI can be shaky.

Black Mirror Bandersnatch for example was impossible to do on TV, but Netflix could do it.

Also if GoT was Netflix, they'd have cancelled it on Season 6 & we'd be lamenting the loss of what wonders it'd have gotten to by Season 9.

The only shortcoming now really is if you want to view with several people and socialize after, it may be difficult for someone to accommodate a large party with good viewing in their home without a theater setup. And of course audio, audio is where theaters can still stand out. It’s a pain in the ass for most homes to setup a good sound system, you really often do want a dedicated theater area which most aren’t going to have. A soundbar helps. You can Jerry rig some surround speakers into any space but it’s often a pain. So that’s really the last barrier: cheap low latency sound that can beat a theater.

For me comfort trumps the slightly degraded sound. Plus some baby crying or random person chatting during the movie can break that as well.

This is very anecdatal, certainly, but I've spoken/overheard a few neighborhood hospitality business owners that had to forclose or cut down due to the constant decline of people leaving the house to just meet in a bar or coffee shop. Only sport nights keeps them going, because sports online remain expensive in most places.

Maybe just my observation or my neck of the woods, but seems to fit the general sentiment of a reduced social environment on the streets in certain parts of the world.

If all of them "stand out" then none of them do.

Did you see the show Dark?

* More precisely it's Scottish/American

For example, The Shawshank Redemption has very high rating on IMDB, but also many people have never seen it and are not interested in watching it.

Vertical integration was the key problem back then. Major studios owned major cinema chains. They made it hard for independent cinemas to show the films people wanted, and they made it very hard for independent filmmakers to get their films shown anywhere. It was highly anti-competitive.

I wouldn't expect the U.S. government to step in this time around though. It's very clear that competition and benefiting consumers are no longer priorities.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....

This sounds fine in theory, but how would it work if the content were continuously changing? For example, the final straw that made my cut the cord of cable-tv was getting locked into a 3yr plan for cable TV only to get the Disney channel for the kids -- only to learn that Verizon/Disney had a fight and I lost the channel. https://deadline.com/2018/12/disney-warns-verizon-fios-custo...

Now, i'm still locked into the 3yr plan with Verizon but dont have the content I wanted. I know people complain about paying $10 or $15 for a streaming service, but imagine paying $100 for cable TV and being locked into a 3yr contract. I'd much, much rather have a la carte services I can pick and choose and cancel as desired.

However, if you're talking about the Amazon Prime TV model, then I'd totally agree with you. I think that is the ideal model -- Prime is a nominal cost (for now) and you can add/remove channels as you wish.

But I guess with the first one having ended pre-Oracle, he's had a pretty solid pre-nup ever since.

Which is kinda irrelevant. Him selling Oracle shares does not fundamentally change the world in any way. Sure you can say "he should sell shares and do charity", but you could make the same argument that whoever would be buying those shares could be doing charity instead.

Billionaire Drools That “Citizens Will Be on Their Best Behavior” Under Constant AI Surveillance

https://futurism.com/the-byte/billionaire-constant-ai-survei...

Is the kind of mindset behind this guy.

> It's been great for them so far, but if there's an AI winter, Oracle will be the first to freeze.

Kudos

"Ellison was married to Barbara Boothe from 1983 to 1986.[92] Boothe was a former receptionist at Oracle (RSI at the time).[93] They had two children, David and Megan, who were (as of 2024) film producers at Skydance Media and Annapurna Pictures, respectively"

So he bought studios so his kids could make movies

P.S. punished for what, honest self-deprecation? By "it" I meant my expectation, not the headline ... is that really not clear?

They didn't have the luxury of first sale to protect their market, though. Which is a very sharp contrast to how they ran the DVD side of things.

So, it isn't that they were wasting money on licensing. Licensing kept getting more and more expensive. Not fully for nefarious reasons, but that doesn't change that it was so.

After Game of Thrones, I think the average consumer is less likely to dive in feet first without knowing the show runners have a clear plan.

It's also a lot less prone to failures than debrid services, especially with old content.

https://github.com/Radarr/Radarr

https://github.com/Sonarr/Sonarr

Having Discovery's awful content push out quality HBO content was already a major blow.

Yes, the price of one subscription. I think some cable packages in the US are $200 per month?

I think we can expect HBO streaming to continue as a premium subscription for movies and high-production-value shows. That would let everything else to land on Netflix with no conflict.

Move show X, Y, and Z from Netflix to HBO Max because those profiles are likely to add the second subscription.

---

Piracy seems like the only thing that keeps prices/practices in check.

Assuming all WB and Netflix customers move to the super platform, that's a loss for Netflix (assuming the super platform doesn't significantly reduce their costs).

And the $35 might be more than some set of current Netflix subscribers want to pay, so they drop the service, so an even bigger potential loss.

Certainly, I have no desire to subsidize sports fans via a higher Netflix super package.

WB pitched that to make it easier for them to be acquired by shunting all the debt to the channels entity - but it was unlikely the debt owners were ever going to go for that as presented, there would have been quite a significant chance of the channels group going under and them losing all the money.

But ultimately it turned out that enough entities were willing to bid now, before that split, that there was no point continuing to work out how to do it. Netflix will, presuming this deal completes, be the owner of CNN/TNT/Discovery at al.

Now, I am very sure they will look to sell several parts of those off - there is absolutely no way Netflix leadership wants to continue to own TNT - but that will have to come later.

This is so silly. It's like saying "Sweet manufacturers all had the chance to sell the same sweets, and they blew it. So I just nick most sweets." Just say "I don't like paying for things and can get away with this, and my ethics only work in public or when I'm forced to obey them." And then we're done.

I think like all media consolidation this will send a lot of people back to the seven seas..

But they have the data and I don't. I assume there's enough stickiness and inertia that most people are not canceling and restarting services all the time. I know I don't. I just decide I don't care enough about most content (and don't really watch much video or binge watch anyway).

note: I hate ads so I'm not trying to manifest this, but can you explain why you're so sure of this?

To me, it seems like they "should" (for greed reasons, I mean, not for my happiness) hike the prices of subscriptions aggressively while keeping the ad-tier attractively-priced, moving as many people as possible over. This increases ad revenue and allows more YoY growth if their ML can manipulate you into more watch hours in 2027 than you do in 2026.

Sure, some people like me will probably drop Netflix before they'll pay $35 a month or endure ads. But the current delta is only $10. I suspect they can make $10 a head in ad revenue in a year -- and if they can make $15, they would break even if they lost 3 ad-free subscribers but gained 2 back onto the ad tier. Anything better than those numbers would be a net gain.

The issue IMO is so few movies are worth any extra effort to see. Steam a new marvel movie and you can pause half way through when you’re a little bored and do something else.

For me, the price is killing it (80% of the reason) and bad movies (20%)... two tickets, drinks, popcorn/nachos/candy/something, and we're in the 50eur+ range. Then add the messy audiences, ads, trailer#1, more ads, trailer #2, another ad for some reason, and it's been 20 mintues of technially all ads for something that i paid money for. Then the movie is a total disappoint. I'm not into superheroes nor into pedro pascal, so most of the movies are out before i even buy the ticket and the rest are somehow... just 'bad'. Watching a bad movie at home is ok... you fall asleep, press stop, it doesn't matter... whatching a bad movie at an artsy film festival is also ok.. it was low budget, the ticket was 4 euros, no popcorn, had beer before you enter, so you can fall asleep in the cinema and hope not to snore. But 50 euros and all the ads for a bad movie is just too much.

This is a misconception on a similar level to thinking the monster's name is Frankenstein: "As depicted by Shelley, the creature is a sensitive, emotional person whose only aim is to share his life with another sentient being like himself."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein%27s_monster#Perso...

Have you read the book? She emphasises how pretty all the body parts that Victor picked were.

Uh, the "monster" is definitely the most sympathetic character in the original novel.

Ever year there are a few good shows and movies and a lot of mid-to-bad shows and movies.

This is not a Netflix thing, nor is it new.

All these studios fought the good fight against big tech over many years but the writing was on the wall.

Hopefully a future Progressive presidency reviews all these mergers and breaks up big tech big time.

Now these are all solved problems, so there is no benefit in trying to compete on making a better platform / service. The only thing left is competing on content.

> I want several companies that are able to license whatever content they want. And ideally the customer can choose between a subscription that includes everything, and paying for content a la carte, or maybe subscriptions that focus on specific kinds of content

This seems like splitting hairs, it's almost exactly what we do have. You can still buy and rent individual shows & movies from Apple and Amazon and other providers. Or you can subscribe to services. The only difference is there is no one big "subscription that includes everything", you need 10 different $15 subscriptions to get everything. Again, kind of splitting hairs though. The one big subscription would probably be the same price as everything combined anyway.

Exactly the correct solution.

We did something similar with movie theaters and film studios for decades, up until a couple years ago. Same sort of problem, same solution should work.

Then they all copied Netflix, because the stockmarket was rewarding it, and had to start dealing with billing, customer retention, technology platforms, advertising platforms. And they all lost a ton of money a doing it.

Netflix went public in 2002. It was +8 years later that the streaming-only service was launched in 2010. The digital streaming wasn't "subsidized by VC".

Netflix had more content from everybody back then because the other studios licensed their content for cheap prices to Netflix. But those studios then realized that Netflix was growing rapidly on the backs of their content. Once those multi-year contracts expired, studios like Disney didn't renew with Netflix and instead, started their own platform (e.g. Disney+).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc

Even a cursory google search will give a rather long list:

- Giving Pledge: Ellison signed the Giving Pledge, committing to donate the majority of his wealth to philanthropy. Recently, he announced plans to donate 95% of his $373 billion fortune, focusing on science, healthcare, climate change, and AI research.

- Ellison Medical Foundation: Invested nearly $1 billion in biomedical research on aging and disease prevention before closing in 2013

- Lawrence Ellison Foundation: Supports research on aging, health, education, sustainable agriculture, and wildlife conservation.

- Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine (USC): Established with a $200 million donation to advance cancer research and personalized therapies

- Ellison Institute of Technology (Oxford): A for-profit philanthropic initiative tackling global challenges like healthcare, food insecurity, climate change, and AI. A new campus worth $1.3 billion is planned for 2027

- Significant funding for Oxford University through EIT partnerships, including scholarships and research programs.

- Lion Country Safari Acquisition: Purchased the 254-acre wildlife sanctuary in Florida for $30 million through his foundation, ensuring continued conservation efforts.

- Larry Ellison Conservation Center: Opened in California to rehabilitate and breed endangered species

I'm not a huge fan of his or how Oracle has conducted business, but his giving represents billions to charity, not exactly fitting for the "dung beetle" label people are so quick to apply to him.

one can hope

Microsoft's Annual revenue from Azure is $75 billion. Office Server is $40 billion. Office Consumer is $6 billion. LinkedIn is $15Bn. Dynamics is $5Bn. Gaming/XBox is $15Bn. Search/Advertising is $14Bn. Devices at $5Bn. Intelligent Cloud at $87Bn. Windows $21Bn. They are a HUGE company with a lot of multi-billion dollar product streams and a lot of business lockin around basically any company on the planet which isn't a new web app startup.

Oracle sell an RDBMS. Competing with SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL and the last 15 years of NoSQL. Oracle is what Amazon Retail made a multi-year move away from ending in 2019, and were very happy about it, popping champagne in their announcement video[1]. Oracle license Java which has seen a mass migration to free OpenJDK and Amazon Corretto and all the other free forks. Oracle make a cloud service that you wouldn't touch unless you had a team of Fortune 100 lawyers pressing enter for you because you know Oracle saleslawyersharks are watching on the other side.

Why does anyone other than the government give them money? What for? Okay yes they're "the best" at something or other for a Fortune 100 with serious needs, nothing else comes close, ... but 4-5x their valuation in the last 5 years??

> "Tesla suffers strong competition. In spite of the above, Musk is currently the top of the Forbes ranking. Amazon is... Actually wildly successful"

Yeah, Tesla is hype-valued and Amazon does a lot of things in a lot of big markets, of course they're valuable. Oracle does some obscure boring IBM style thing that is never hyped and there is never any positive sentiment about it on the tech internet.

[1] https://www.supportrevolution.com/resources/why-amazon-left-...

If a show does somehow get more than one season they can also be painfully slow. Stranger things took a 9 years to drop just 5 seasons. The Witcher was 6 years for just 4 seasons.

Renegotiating the contracts would require lengthy and expensive processes of discovering the proper parties to actually negotiate with in the first place.

Although the contracts that were already executed can be relied upon, it truly is a can of worms to open, because it's not "Renegotiate with Studio X", it's "Renegotiate with the parent company of the defunct parent company of the company who merged with Y and created a new subsidiary Z" and so on and so forth, and then you have to relicense music, and, if need be, translations.

Then repeat that for each different region you need to relicense in because the licenses can be different for different regions.

The cost of negotiation would be greater than the losses to piracy tbh.

"We were halfway through shooting season 1, coming through Covid, and the monumental size of the show, the effort, and everything else was just dawning on us. We realized that I didn't have enough calories to do it, and Diego's face couldn't take the timing, because it just takes too long to make it."

https://www.gamesradar.com/entertainment/star-wars-tv-shows/...

"By that point, the work that was required to make the show, at its minimum, was just dazzlingly blinding to look at. And Diego was like ‘Oh my god, we told them we’d do five years.’ Nobody, if we were gonna do it like this, you couldn’t physically do it. It was just impossible."

https://screenrant.com/andor-tony-gilroy-original-five-seaso...

FWIW, and I'm not sure if this is against terms here, but I use newsgeek for the former and giganews for the latter. Both are paid services but reasonably priced imo. When I can find something on Usenet, it typically downloads with speeds > 10MBps vs. torrenting which can exceed that but is usually much slower.

You can use whatever client you want. I have the *arr stack mentioned elsewhere in this thread as well and SABnzbd is the recommended option there.

Which is a perfectly sensible reason for a business decision.

> "Well they don't because of 'licensing issues' with the source code." as if they were being stopped by a law of physics.

So laws should just be ignored? Issues created by human social constructs are very real.