The world’s largest traditional entertainment companies face a reckoning in 2024 after losing more than $5 billion in the past year from the streaming services they built to compete with Netflix.

Disney, Warner Bros Discovery, Comcast and Paramount—US entertainment conglomerates that have been growing ever larger for decades—are facing pressure to shrink or sell legacy businesses, scale back production and slash costs following billions in losses from their digital platforms.

“TV advertising is falling far short, cord-cutting is continuing to accelerate, sports costs are going up and the movie business is not performing,” he said. “Everything is going wrong that can go wrong. The only thing [the companies] know how to do to survive is try to merge and cut costs.”

  • @Nobody@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    956 months ago

    Netflix was one place you could go to get a massive amount of quality content. Now, that content is divided among a dozen apps, each one perpetually raising prices and trying to include advertising.

    Negotiate a bundle that recreates the old Netflix experience, price it reasonably, and promise absolutely no ads ever in writing. I’d sign up for that service and keep my subscription perpetually. Like we all did with Netflix.

    • @echo64@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      06 months ago

      That “reasonable” pricing needs to cover all of the development of tv and (most of) movies that we have today. This was the entire problem with the Netflix model.

      The netflix experience of old only worked because media companies licensed shows and movies to it like they do to broadcasters in other companies. Paramount in 2011 is as happy to license Frasier to Netflix as they are to the BBC.

      This only works when the media companies are making enough money via their main business, as such that licensing is just extra profit.

      Netflix ate their lunch and devalued the entire ecosystem. Netflix sold the lie that tv can be made on 10 bucks a month instead of 100 like cable was. The economics of that just don’t work, however. So now we have an industry where the bottom has fallen out entirely.

      Maybe you’ll be okay with a 100/month netflix subscription. I doubt most would. But that’s what it would need to be to be the one subscription you have like it used to be. There’s no cable audience to fall back on now.

      • Aniki 🌱🌿
        link
        fedilink
        English
        -16 months ago

        Do you have any real numbers to back any of that nice little theory up or is it all just pulled from your ass?