The Business of Hollywood & Streaming

[ChickenSandwich 9768]

With streaming platforms pulling content to avoid residuals, will those fade away in future contracts?

[Surly Bevo 24604]

To your point about not being about price anymore, I have FuboTV, YouTubeTV, Disney+, Hulu, Prime Video, HBOmax, Netflix & AppleTV which, in sum, costs me more than I ever paid when it was just a DirecTV + premium channels bill ($100-200/month).

It’s almost as if the pooling principle works or something.

[henrygandorf 28883]

1 hour ago, ChickenSandwich said:

With streaming platforms pulling content to avoid residuals, will those fade away in future contracts?

no, and it will backfire. 

[HamsterHookah 112]

6 hours ago, henrygandorf said:

no, and it will backfire. 

Backfire how? Legal liability or customers and market?

[HamsterHookah 112]

9 hours ago, Captain Ron said:

Interesting prediction from Scott Galloway on the strike. I don't agree with him much on this. I think there is a very big difference between coal miners and writers. He's had some other opinions on this, but they are of a similar vein. 

 

 

Scott Galloway, like Jim Cramer, is someone who generally is wrong to such a degree that you can expect the opposite of what they are saying to come to reality. Ijs 

[henrygandorf 28883]

4 hours ago, HamsterHookah said:

Backfire how? Legal liability or customers and market?

writers will always get residuals like everyone else, it's just that the structure has changed, which is allowing them less.  streaming platforms shelving content will screw them even more.  it's smarter for the studios to be like, "hey, we're keeping the residuals in, but they just don't pay like they used to", than it is to take them completely out of the negotiation.  if they did that, they would be forced to replace them with something a lot harder to digest.

the amptp is better off just blaming the changing landscape for the lower residuals than getting rid of them altogether.  the writers would have a fucking stroke and the actors would be next.  that's how they live.

[Chopper 16666]

17 hours ago, Captain Ron said:

Interesting prediction from Scott Galloway on the strike. I don't agree with him much on this. I think there is a very big difference between coal miners and writers. He's had some other opinions on this, but they are of a similar vein. 

 

 

 

8 hours ago, HamsterHookah said:

Scott Galloway, like Jim Cramer, is someone who generally is wrong to such a degree that you can expect the opposite of what they are saying to come to reality. Ijs 

I have no idea who that dude is though I've tried listening to the podcast a couple times due to Kara Swisher. He has the personality of a floating turd and his world must be very small because he lacks insight on pretty much everything they discuss.

[Chopper 16666]

Things are going smoothly for Zaslav. Not content with accelerating CNN's and HBO's descents into obscurity, he decided to piss off the Directors Guild and the Writers Guild in the middle of a strike.

...

 

Zaslav looked around, saw he had no allies on this one, and tucked tail.

Edited May 24, 2023 by Chopper

[ChickenSandwich 9768]

Does anyone besides Hollywood actually pay attention to the credits?

I assume IMBD/google is the preferred resource for the viewer

[elfenix 34123]

i wonder if the excellent upper level elective The Politics of Hollywood* is still given in the government department at UT?  the writers' strikes would be interesting fodder

*it's not really a left v right, red v blue type thing, more about artists v. money, and especially when the artists are also the money.  also a discussion of why there's so much back-patting (it's to reaffirm that they really are famous)

 

7 minutes ago, ChickenSandwich said:

Does anyone besides Hollywood actually pay attention to the credits?

I assume IMBD/google is the preferred resource for the viewer

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4962]

48 minutes ago, ChickenSandwich said:

Does anyone besides Hollywood actually pay attention to the credits?

I assume IMBD/google is the preferred resource for the viewer

Probably not, but are somewhat likely to look at the description of the show in the app to see who made it, who's in it, and what it is about. If you just randomly include the drivers who were the creative vision behind the show/movie who made it happen along with a bunch of random other folks, then it kind of hides their importance.

[Hozz 1012]

It would save me like $500 if I only subbed to YouTubeTV from September to January.  Wife has to have Bravo and the like though so its not really an option.

[Captain Ron 12722]

On 5/24/2023 at 8:10 AM, HamsterHookah said:

Scott Galloway, like Jim Cramer, is someone who generally is wrong to such a degree that you can expect the opposite of what they are saying to come to reality. Ijs 

 

17 hours ago, Chopper said:

 

I have no idea who that dude is though I've tried listening to the podcast a couple times due to Kara Swisher. He has the personality of a floating turd and his world must be very small because he lacks insight on pretty much everything they discuss.

I'll say this about Galloway - he usually knows his stuff and has a pretty good hit rate on his predictions. But in this case, he is reading the tea leaves wrong and way out there. While I kind of see similarities with the UK miners and the writers (namely the stockpile thing). I think there are a lot more things different between the two, with my biggest ones being:

• Blue collar vs white collar union workers here
  Who can take the brunt of a strike and the UK miners could not while the writer ideally could be in a better place. I am not saying that there are writers that aren't hurting, but not the way that the miners were. There were miners that were hurting for years from the measures they had to take to keep going (I'm reminded of the UK film Brassed Off)
• The industry
  A private enterprise that makes a ton of money vs the coal industry. There is a lot bigger pie in play here.
• The UK strike was struck down as illegal
  This is likely the biggest one. The fact that the strike was ruled illegal had huge implications of the power of the union. That big screwup cost them badly.

In the end, I think this fight had a lot more going for the writers than he is giving them credit for.

 

I will also say that socially I don't agree with Galloway much, but his business sense is pretty good (this instance not withstanding). And his view on things brings something to the show that is a good counter balance to Swisher. I just wish he wasn't such a 12-year old boy sometimes.

[kevwun 15336]

24 minutes ago, Hozz said:

It would save me like $500 if I only subbed to YouTubeTV from September to January.  Wife has to have Bravo and the like though so its not really an option.

Bravo is on YoutubeTV.

[Chopper 16666]

42 minutes ago, Hozz said:

It would save me like $500 if I only subbed to YouTubeTV from September to January.  Wife has to have Bravo and the like though so its not really an option.

Does a sub to Peacock get you what your wife wants out of Bravo?

[Chopper 16666]

My heart weeps for what this may mean for Zas' tenure at WB.

 

[Scary Stranger 1711]

Ratings have dropped because viewers are mad he was on or because he made fun of CNN during the broadcast?

Edited May 26, 2023 by Scary Stranger

[HamsterHookah 112]

13 minutes ago, longhornmatt said:

He always makes fun of CNN.  CNN and their reporters were the biggest whipping boys for his “fake news” rants during press conferences when he was President.   The drop is because CNN’s audience was people who don’t like Trump, and they’re pissed that CNN gave him a pep rally.

On top of the fact that CNN was already hemorrhaging ratings and in probably why the desperate gambit to even field Trump’s narcissism. 

[Captain Ron 12722]

32 minutes ago, Scary Stranger said:

Ratings have dropped because viewers are mad he was on or because he made fun of CNN during the broadcast?

Ratings have been dropping because of the way they handled Trump. The format was built in a way that gave him an advantage and basically an audience that he could very much play too.  Have trump, fine, but don’t make it the circus it ended up being. 

[gofuckyourself 8066]

Tarantino on streaming movies and actor salaries.

https://news.yahoo.com/quentin-tarantino-says-ryan-reynolds-122934455.html

His points don't all make sense, although I think I get the intended message. Him saying streaming movies "don't exist in the zeitgeist" ignores that it is the current zeitgeist. People don't go out to movies and even with a resurgence to "near pre-Covid" levels it's still down considerably.

I've never had a "home theater" type set up but for the first time with a new home being finished, I'm interested in setting one up with high quality and relatively low-cost visual and speakers. And making my own snacks for 90% less.

I love the moviegoing experience, but lately I'm more excited about the Paramount summer movie series, than the next tired sequel or obscure comic book movie #8 of 12.

But I'm in the middle of middle-age and no longer the "target demographic", so there's that.

[Chopper 16666]

3 hours ago, Captain Ron said:

Ratings have been dropping because of the way they handled Trump. The format was built in a way that gave him an advantage and basically an audience that he could very much play too.  Have trump, fine, but don’t make it the circus it ended up being. 

Just to expand - it was audience he could play to, one that was entirely republican, where he could say all of the same stuff he's said for years over and over, and where CNN explicitly told everyone at the "town hall" that doing anything besides cheering would lead to their expulsion.

My theory is they pissed all over a large portion of their tv audience, which is sending them a strong message in return - basically don't do the same shit you did 4 years ago. It certainly didn't help that immediately afterward you had more than one cnn reporter talk about what a disgrace the event was.

The event may also have been a tipping point of sorts because the new guard at Warner/CNN (Licht and Zas) have made a lot of changes in the past couple months to indicate they've tilted a lot of their coverage in a direction their audience doesn't appreciate.

Edited May 26, 2023 by Chopper

[henrygandorf 28883]

 

[hayden_horn 11311]

11 hours ago, henrygandorf said:

 

this whole netflix thing has been fascinating to me for years. admittedly, i never got it. the content was never worth the cost and i never had built in loyalty from the old dvd days so i was always an uphill sale on it. i still am. they are still using fucking subscriber metrics to measure growth for fuck's sake. so much so that they went on a punitive subscriber quest right during a writer strike and a dearth of content amd shitty content decisions. 

i never understood why netflix was always seen as such a market pioneer. now they seem to want to increase revenues with negative publicity. great idea dummies. 

[Gene Parmesan 3953]

24 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

this whole netflix thing has been fascinating to me for years. admittedly, i never got it. the content was never worth the cost and i never had built in loyalty from the old dvd days so i was always an uphill sale on it. i still am. they are still using fucking subscriber metrics to measure growth for fuck's sake. so much so that they went on a punitive subscriber quest right during a writer strike and a dearth of content amd shitty content decisions. 

i never understood why netflix was always seen as such a market pioneer. now they seem to want to increase revenues with negative publicity. great idea dummies. 

I disagree.  Early netflix streaming was absolutely worth it.  They had a shit ton of quality content because they could get the rights cheap since they were the only platform for streaming.  That absolutely was game changing at the time.  Cord cutting started because of Netflix.  Not saying they were visionaries, but they were absolutely at the forefront of this market.

[HamsterHookah 112]

32 minutes ago, Gene Parmesan said:

I disagree.  Early netflix streaming was absolutely worth it.  They had a shit ton of quality content because they could get the rights cheap since they were the only platform for streaming.  That absolutely was game changing at the time.  Cord cutting started because of Netflix.  Not saying they were visionaries, but they were absolutely at the forefront of this market.

Yes and maybe it's a testament to the success of Netflix that it seems so quaint. Use the internet to stream TV shows on an app. Meh, so passe, everyone can do it and everyone does it.

But in 2012 this was novel and new and ground breaking, for the 80% of the mass market who aren't sufficiently tech-savvy people.

[Chopper 16666]

Netflix made Breaking Bad as big as it became by giving people the option to stream it at home before the final season or two. 2010. That was when we first got it. BB blew up because of Netflix, which then feasted for years on the productions of others, for which they gained exclusive rights, because they were the only streamer. They didn't premiere their own streaming content until 2013 - Orange is the New Black and that Kevin Spacey political show (title escapes me).

[Ted Lange 15935]

So how long until you need a different app for every sports league/team you follow? 5 years?   MLS was the test, you can now only watch it with a paid subscription to MLSplus and watch on AppleTv.  The downfall of the RSN’s is gonna lead MLB to this route, it started this week in San Diego.   You can still watch on cable, but starting next year it’s gonna be MLB App with Padres subscription only. $20+ a month.   I’d guess all or 90% of MLB is that way sooner rather than later.  
 

As there are fewer and fewer cable subscribers,how long until NCAA football conferences go this route, while offering 1 or 2 games a week on ABC/CBS.  You will need a ESPN+ and Peacock and Paramount subscription, maybe Amazon and apple too.  
 

Watching sports on an app, when you are interested in multiple games blows, it’s also gonna end up costing at least as much if not way more than cable was.     Give me shitty directv/comcast service and hitting the back button over having to navigate multiple apps just to change the fucking station. 

[mdmost 42490]

And more content is slated to be removed. 

[HamsterHookah 112]

3 minutes ago, longhornmatt said:

Yes, it’s going to get worse until we have some option that bundles the various streaming services together into one platform - basically going back to cable packages except with streams instead of broadcast networks. 

As for Netflix itself, as stated above they benefited from being the only streaming game in town and from being able to license just about everything in the old days.  They were on borrowed time once the studios stopped licensing their big ticket content to Netflix because they wanted to keep them exclusive for their own streaming service.  Netflix’s move in response - to flood their app with massive amounts of their own expensive but nevertheless shitty original content - is a disaster.  They now survive on the gym membership model where they built up a bunch of subscribers and those people just stay out of inertia. Nobody is really out there clamoring for Red Notice 2 or whatever.  

Ugh, tell me about it. We couldn't find anything decent to watch and settled on Murder Mystery 2 (Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston) and I fell asleep.

[Chopper 16666]

27 minutes ago, Ted Lange said:

As there are fewer and fewer cable subscribers,how long until NCAA football conferences go this route, while offering 1 or 2 games a week on ABC/CBS.  You will need a ESPN+ and Peacock and Paramount subscription, maybe Amazon and apple too.  
 

Watching sports on an app, when you are interested in multiple games blows, it’s also gonna end up costing at least as much if not way more than cable was.     Give me shitty directv/comcast service and hitting the back button over having to navigate multiple apps just to change the fucking station. 

I think a couple of B10 games are going to be on Peacock or maybe some other service this year, so it's already happening with CFB too.

I believe I read google may be trying to build a service that brings in the ability to switch between streaming services. They just greatly expanded what's on google tv, including offering live channels for the first time. It seems like they may be trying to scale up to bring in all of the streaming services but they're not there yet.
 

Quote

 

Tom's Guide - Google TV is one of the slickest TV interfaces out there. A couple of the best TVs we’ve tested use it, and it has essentially replaced Android TV as Google’s go-to smart TV platform. Now, Google is taking one of Google TV’s best features and giving it to Android TV.

Starting this week, Google will be rolling out Live TV to Android TV users (hat tip to 9to5Google). This means Android TV users — myself included — will now get Google TV’s “Live” tab as part of the Android TV user interface. This brings tons of free TV channels to you, all in one place, including many of the best free streaming services such as Tubi, Pluto TV and more. In total, Google says this will give users over 800 channels in more than 10 languages.

Now, you’ll need to download the respective Android TV app for some of these services for them to appear in your Live feed. Tubi, PlutoTV, Plex and Haystack will all be available in the Live feed if you have the app set up for the respective service. But even if you don’t want to sign up for any of these free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) services, you’ll still get free Google TV channels in the Live tab, so there’s something for everyone.

Google says the Live tab will begin rolling out to U.S. Android TV devices over the next few weeks — currently, my TVision HUB remains without the new feature — so keep an eye out for this update on your device. Android TV devices include the Nvidia Shield TV, as well as 2021 Onn streaming devices, and select TVs sold prior to 2022.

 

 

[Chopper 16666]

4 minutes ago, HamsterHookah said:

Ugh, tell me about it. We couldn't find anything decent to watch and settled on Murder Mystery 2 (Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston) and I fell asleep.

I've said it in the 'Other streaming services thread' before but BritBox and Acorn are both amazing. And relatively inexpensive. I used to not get it when I was younger and people would speak snidely of Hollywood writing, actors and productions but I sure do now.

[Ted Lange 15935]

The other thing that sucks about streaming, watching at a bar/restaurant.  I assume at some point they will all catch-up but in he meantime, “do you guys have AppleTv, Peacock, Paramount, ESPN+ “

waitress/bartender

[HamsterHookah 112]

Even as the Hollywood writers strike grinds on, the folks who put their words into Action! agreed to a tentative contract agreement with the major studios.

The Directors Guild of America, the union representing film and TV directors, said it inked a “historic” three-year contract with producers that addresses some of their biggest concerns.

AI: The labor deal asserts that generative AI is not a person (huge) and that it cannot replace guild members’ responsibilities.

Gun safety: The contract bans live ammunition on set following the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during the filming of Rust in 2021.

Residuals: Foreign residuals—a type of royalty that’s been eroded in the streaming era—will get a 76% bump for the biggest streaming services.

The Guild and its negotiating leaders framed the contract as a big win for directors that gives them “unprecedented gains.” The union members will show whether they concur when they vote on the proposed contract tomorrow.

Big picture: The agreement with the directors resolves just one of three high-stakes labor negotiations in Hollywood right now. As you know, more than 11,000 writers have been striking for five weeks, and actors will also vote on whether to authorize a strike by 5pm PT today.

[Queen Bitch 1692]

Lapdogs gonna lapdog — on the strength of the writers picket lines no less. Not surprising, it’s just what they do.

Meanwhile, the actors correctly told the studios to get bent with an overwhelming strike authorization vote.

 

[Don Johnson 4726]

I miss the days - only about 5 years ago - where I could hop On Demand on a Friday night and there were about 10 movies that I'd heard of that were "new releases" in the past few weeks.  

[henrygandorf 28883]

directors were never going on strike, because they never do.  actors joining in (their deal ends on june 30) should speed this up.  that's a high number and my actor friends are pleased with it.  i had a dinner last thursday with someone on the agency side who said they're hoping this wraps up by august.  lots of assistants getting laid off and some agencies are reducing salaries like during covid.  it's bad right now.

[Stringer 1423]

This is probably a dumb question, but what is the reason for reducing the libraries? Is there an ongoing cost for them (I didn’t think so as that is part of the WGA fight) or is it just a way to have a huge tax write off for things that aren’t driving revenue? Some of both?

[henrygandorf 28883]

45 minutes ago, Stringer said:

This is probably a dumb question, but what is the reason for reducing the libraries? Is there an ongoing cost for them (I didn’t think so as that is part of the WGA fight) or is it just a way to have a huge tax write off for things that aren’t driving revenue? Some of both?

yes.  an impairment charge.  that show disappears and nobody has to get paid residuals on it.  dirty business.

[HonkeyVape 107]

Is this illegal? Desperate? or Standard Strike Porcodure?

The Flying Squadrons are on set, but they’re not there to dazzle cameras with aerial maneuvers. These are battalions of picketing Writers Guild of America members out to cost studios millions by disrupting movie and television shoots. Named after striking 1930s textile workers, these WGA squads are blocking deliveries to sets, closing off production-lot entrances and photobombing scenes shot in public places, The Wall Street Journal reports. As one veteran showrunner tells the Journal, “keeping a show up and running involves the exact same skill set required to shut a show down.”

 

• “Billions,” “Severance,” “American Horror Story,” and a new “Ghostbusters” movie are among the productions that have recently been delayed, disrupted or postponed due to demonstrations by striking WGA workers.
• The writers' strike is now into its sixth week.

[henrygandorf 28883]

1 hour ago, HonkeyVape said:

Is this illegal? Desperate? or Standard Strike Porcodure?

prob a mix of all 3.  but like many public demonstrations, the optics of a group of protesters being hauled off in cuffs is...not ideal.

[Neonmoon 38126]

Question, does SAG-AFTRA include internet artists? 

[HonkeyVape 107]

In the absence of any Hollywood news with the strike being old news, this is interesting: https://puck.news/de-niro-and-the-nastiest-assistant-legal-saga-ever/

The 158 page judgment of DeNiro vs his assistant he sued for $6mm was just unsealed and makes for an interesting read.

[HonkeyVape 107]

In other news: 

Soon, you may be able to catch your favorite HBO show on ... Netflix? Warner Bros. Discovery is in talks to license certain original HBO programs to Netflix, according to various outlets, including Deadline. The arrangement would "mark the first time in nearly a decade" HBO content made the leap to a rival streamer, Deadline notes. Issa Rae's "Insecure" is reportedly part of the discussions, which sources say is a revenue play opposed by some from HBO. Still, it fits with Warner CEO David Zaslav's push to better monetize the firm's vast library.

While Netflix may gain HBO titles, it's poised to lose "The Watcher" and "American Horror Story" producer Ryan Murphy. He is reportedly leaving for Disney, a move that will reunite him with Disney Entertainment co-chair Dana Walden, who headed 20th Century Fox TV before Disney bought it in 2019.

[henrygandorf 28883]

netflix and warner/hbo/disco/t-nets are both flaming garbage heaps right now.

 

[HonkeyVape 107]

People are freaking out that Marvel used AI to create a trailer. Duh, it's the perfect use case for it. Granted it wasn't good and won't be good for a while, but "good enough" is good enough, sometimes.

I think this is very much a situation of toothpaste out of the tube and either get on board with the new tech and new way or get run over:

https://deadline.com/2023/06/secret-invasion-opening-credits-ai-backlash-marvel-mcu-disney-1235421667/

[HonkeyVape 107]

Was reading a story this morning referencing Netflix’s success in password sharing monitoring (Costco revenue down 4% despite revenue being up 2%, I think it was, prompting Costco to implement policies making membership sharing harder), and saw this about Netflix. I know lots of people thought it was a bad idea and would bite them in the butt:

“Netflix received a larger influx of new users after blocking account sharing than it did when nearly everyone was home watching TV during the COVID lockdowns of Spring 2020.

Netflix received nearly 100,000 daily sign-ups on both May 26 and May 27, according to Antenna. The company started notifying U.S. users about the password sharing crackdown via email notification just days earlier on May 23. This spike is an overall 102 percent increase in sign-ups over the past 60-days.

….

It's obviously still early, but so far Netflix's decision to curb password sharing seems to have been a successful one. And you can guarantee that other streaming services are watching how it goes, ready to roll out similar policies of their own.””

[CooterBrown 17760]

It makes sense. Somebody was paying for that shared account and they're most likely not going to cancel the subscription because they can't share it any longer.  All Netflix could do is gain subscribers from cracking down on sharing accounts.

[Gene Parmesan 3953]

1 hour ago, CooterBrown said:

It makes sense. Somebody was paying for that shared account and they're most likely not going to cancel the subscription because they can't share it any longer.  All Netflix could do is gain subscribers from cracking down on sharing accounts.

Yeah, I don't know anyone that splits the tab on a shared account, it's all just people mooching off their parents or friends.

[henrygandorf 28883]

now if they could only fix that pesky content problem.

[HonkeyVape 107]

1 hour ago, henrygandorf said:

now if they could only fix that pesky content problem.

All they have to do is call your representation and bingo, bango, I'd re-subscribe just to watch your show and flame you on here (even if I liked it).