The OTT Streaming Content Landscape in 2019 and beyond

on the one hand, I prefer this to paying for cable TV, especially since I don't watch all that much these days

on the other hand, Comcast is bleeding me dry because I have no patience for calling them up and demanding a better rate for whatever antediluvian asymmetric cable connection, and even with sharing passwords with my family in accordance with various reciprocity agreements the $x a month starts to add up

on the third hand my sister is in LA trying to break into writing so the more shows there are the better her odds in the grand scheme of things I guess

After I read the Disney and Warner articles, I thought "wasn't ESPN supposed to start something? I wonder when that is happening?" Turns out it started in April.

Sigh, how long is going to take for these knuckleheads to learn that they/we will all be much better off when they put their heads together and figure out a way to package all of these services.

Yeah, eventually there's going to be a one stop streaming site which has TV, film and music.

started by this guy?

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/712Bi59beRL._SX425_.jpg

Jeff Bezos is looking a bit chubbier than I remember.

I wonder how niche a niche service can go and still be viable.
https://www.walterpresents.com/ , all your Walter Iuzzolino-curated content in one spot for $7/month.

A virtual Godard festival added to Kanopy:

BREATHLESS (1960)
VIVRE SA VIE (1962)
A MARRIED WOMAN (1964)
LA CHINOISE (1967)
LE GAI SAVOIR (1969)
HAIL MARY (1985)

Is anyone here signed up for byNWR, that ultra-niche Refn thing?

All the films on there get shown on mubi first, from what I’ve seen they are more tedious borderline unwatchable garbage than lost exploitation masterpiece

Should note that since this thread started they have also announced Apple Prime or whatever they’re calling it

My way to deal with service creep is to aim for yearly subscriptions whenever I can and to stagger them out across the year so it's just a payment at once rather than a niggling series of bills. As such the only things I'm subscribing to monthly are Netflix, Hulu, Showtime and WOW Presents + and the latter two I can/should switch to yearly here soon -- kinda hoping that whatever Disney's got in the works for Disney+ and Hulu (they've been making noises) allows for a combination that's yearly though at least Disney+ will offer a yearly option straight up.

I did the math yesterday and I pay about $82/month for content on top of my internet cost. Higher than I'd like -- if it were just me, I'd cancel everything but the Criterion Channel. And I'm sure there will be a household negotiation for Disney+.

general industry calculation is tv subscribers have a five or six subscription ceiling (interestingly gamers have a *much* higher ceiling). even tho netflix leads the pack it’s also potentially in the weakest position in the face of large media consolidation.

both amazon and apple use media as part of a wider business strategy (to sell more shoes, for amazon, as bezos put it, and to sell the apple ecosystem). those big media-telecoms empires have existing channels of distribution that they’re looking to shore up/prevent disruption, and also connectivity or data packages to sell.

netflix’s long-term aim has always been a bit of a mystery to me. its model of chasing new subscriptions by creating more content is a cashflow nightmare, and the only possible endgame is a global monopoly. in addition they reached saturation point for US subscriptions a couple of years ago. they’d love to go for china but can’t, so its western europe and india. the first is linguistically and culturally fragmented which makes it harder to target subscriptions with content and the second isn’t as cash rich on an addressable consumer market basis.

i ended up coming to the conclusion that it was a case of “make hay while the sun shines” and then manage product decline with existing media assets.

there’s a wider question for me about the role of VC in disruptive technologies. Netflix has had its IPO so this doesn’t necessarily apply now, but did. VC enables new technology companies to operate at enormous loss margins, unsustainable for any “normal” business. It can seriously transform a market and an industry, as Netflix has done. Yet as VC is effectively a) a spread betting mechanism and b) often relies on the company being bought out rather than going to IPO, the model it forces on the market often seems to me unsustainable.

I note that Netflix has gone for a post IPO debt round of funding as well.

anyway, more digital platforms, with more content overall, but a fragmented, diluted and price competitive OTT ecosystem is what we’re looking at i think.

Great post.

I forgot mlb.tv, so prorating that monthly I guess it pushes me up to $90/month. Ugh.

This is so depressing to me whenever I spend hours looking for something to watch and find nothing although I have 5 Streaming subscriptions (+ regular TV programs)... That's like hundreds of channels/thousands of programs !
It feels like prehistory when I was a kid and we only had 3 channels...

worth reading imho

The brave new world of digital streaming promises instant access, but choice is a pernicious myth when entire swathes of cinema are conveniently forgotten or actively suppressed (as is happening with Disney’s continued withholding of 20th Century Fox titles from repertory theaters). Everything is market-tested, only for us to be told that what people want is more of the same. The late-capitalist logic is seamless: what we get is not, as advertised, plenitude, but its precise opposite, a narrowing of options to an algorithmically determined menu and a simultaneous impression that no other options exist.

https://www.filmcomment.com/article/the-termites-return-dennis-lim-best-of-the-decade/