There are really three elements to the story of Netflix’s share price collapsing and their market cap falling through the floor.
The first is the simple stuff: Netflix’s offerings are dire. I think there should be an award for the guy who can scroll through their movie menu and find something he really wants to watch, in under 30 minutes. Speaking for myself, I find myself looking for movies on Netflix longer than I actually spend watching any. This is because Netflix’s own movies are about 10% decent and 90% utter trash. The 10% includes the brilliant After Life (Ricky Gervais). The 90%? Oy. They run from endless permutations of women finding themselves while reconciling with a dying parent / sibling / whatever, to mindless celebrity pablum (“my Scientology experience”) to cartoonish rubbish action movies featuring female superheroes, and woke “dramas” riddled with angst.
After a while, I either turn off the TV altogether, or else take the option of Netflix’s other problem: I go to another movie outlet. Not that Amazon Prime is much better; in terms of content, they’re about the same as Netflix: 10% decent, the rest ugh. Even worse are Prime’s options, in that they’ll show you the first season of a show for free, but then you have to buy the rest. Fuck that. There, Netflix’s offer is at least consistent: subscribe, and everything’s “free” thereafter. Hulu and Roku throw in atmosphere-destroying commercials, so forget that shit as well.
I rather like Discovery+, especially their true crime documentaries, while New Wife likes all the shows about Alaska, and some of the real estate shows. But that’s pretty much it, because I absolutely refuse to subscribe to any other of the streamers like Britbox. Thank gawd for Turner Classic movies, because I think I’m nearing the end with Discovery+.
Netflix’s third problem is a common one in the business world: over-demanding shareholders and accountants. You see, once a startup company reaches a commanding market share, further growth becomes increasingly difficult if not impossible, especially if new players enter the fray with similar offerings. None of that matters to the shareholders and finance people, who have grown used to and got rich from annual gains of 25% in market share and / or the share price, and who want that gravy train to last forever. It can’t, of course, even absent stupid business decisions (like embracing wokedom). Market growth is finite, and expanding markets by getting into bed with evil yet populous societies like China or Russia have risks that could (and do, and have) endangered many, many corporations and organizations(Apple, NBA, coff coff ).
So there you have it: a classic case of corporate hubris.
And I see that Disney is starting to see its own ass, too.
I still have netflix, but yes you’re 100% correct. The netflix produced shows and movies are, by and large, trash. Even the somewhat enjoyable action movies are basic trash that you wouldn’t watch twice. The non-netflix produced stuff (older movies, TV shows, etc.) are either lame or stuff I’ve already seen three of four times. I’m not sure why I still pay for it – oh wait – since most major networks no longer do Saturday morning cartoons (when the hell did that stop?) I use netflix to keep the grandkids entertained when they visit over the weekend.
Amazon is butt-raping me on their “prime” crap. Every time I see a show I really want to watch, it ain’t on amazon, it’s on one of the special channels like HBO or starz or something, which is an added $10 monthly fee on top of my amazon fee. I have 3 or 4 monthlies right now that I need to figure out how to cancel. Bleeding me dry.
I’d actually be content to surf the net or read every evening instead, but not the wife. If I were single, I’d cancel everything and save enough to buy 4 or 5 nice pistols a year (plus ammo).
we have Netflix, Prime, Hulu Acorn (british tv) and MyOutdoorsTV. I think Pluto is free and we use that from time to time. I think that we’re going to cull the herd later this year.
I like the shows from Alaska. Can you recommend more?
To quote the great philosopher Groucho Marx, “Television is very educational. whenever someone turns on a set, I go in the other room and read a book.”
JQ
PS Disney can’t plummet fast or far enough. I’ve despised them for decades.
Been a Netflix subscriber for years. Couldn’t agree more. Reached the end of anything on Netflix about a year ago. Everything else is garage. Watched the doc on Jimmy Saville because it was the least awful of the options. The other thing that I hate is to have the “celebrate black voices ” or lgbtqstfu stuff always first up shoved in my face. Bezos tv is the same.
Sturgeon’s Revelation (more commonly known as Sturgeon’s Law)
https://infogalactic.com/info/Sturgeon%27s_law
And then, Fred Waring as well as other various:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/07/24/tv/
Yep, I have Netflix and Prime and as said above I spend about an hour trying to find something worth watching, my wife and I give a few, might be good, movies a shot and then often dump them ten minutes in. Very few good movies with actual men having great adventures doing a lot of good violence to right the wrongs of the oppressed, they quit making those about 15 or 20 years ago.
I have not had regular TV service for over five years and recently we tried to watch an older series with commercials which I mute and I was amazed at the demographics of the people who use the products, lots of dark hair light brown people and also some goofy looking Walmart folks, crazy hair, ink and metal and some very well fed, I don’t understand how that works at all, what a total crock of crap.
If you haven’t watched Peaky Blinders on Netflix, you might enjoy that Kim.
I’m currently making my way through the series The Blacklist, enjoying James Spader’s performance as the likeable villain.
We are also watching The Witcher and enjoying it, although that one probably isn’t up your alley.
We haven’t had cable or satellite or broadcast tv in over a decade, Netflix or the occasional rental from Prime is more than enough TV watching for us.
Agree about spending more time searching for something to watch than watching, and it’s become a cliche in our house that I’ll give this or that movie 10 minutes… and usually that’s all.
We did add Britbox, though, and we’re binge watching the fine Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett and also Death in Paradise, which has the novel approach that sometimes the killers are actually black people, unlike the execrable woke vehicle Midsommer Murders became.
Binge watching, in our case, means one show per evening, most evenings. We’re nearly done with Sherlock, so we’ll be going twice as fast through Death in Paradise after this. I’ve looked around Britbox for other shows, and I think we’ll cancel the subscription after we’re done.
The best description I’ve heard of Death in Paradise is “The British version of Murder, She Wrote”. Every time I watch an episode, I wonder which of the guest actors is actually some famous Brit keeping their career alive by guesting.
Does BritBox have Sharpe’s Rifles? It was a show based on Bernard Cornwall’s novels about the Napoleonic wars in Portugal and Spain.
I Bought the Grenada TV Sherlock Holmes series with Jeremy Brett, Edward Hardwicke etc. just in case these streaming services start pulling good television programs
JQ
Netflix allows account sharing even in separate households. We have Netflix only because our son pays for his account and we poach on it. Apparently a significant number of Netflix “households” do this. Did I read 30% or more? … maybe. Anyway, Netflix has said they are considering eliminating this “password sharing” feature as a way to boost revenue. Good luck. That would, of course, be my last day on Netflix as I am not going to pay for that shit myself. I also imagine it would be the final nail for them, customer satisfaction wise.
Got rid of Netflix and hoisted the black flag around the Cuties porn publishing. Haven’t missed it. I don’t think I’ve even bothered to pirate any Netflix OC, because none of it has been worth watching.
Most of what the wife and I watch now is either pre-2005, or youtube. Some zoomer alone in his bedroom who doesn’t know how to pronounce “descendant” is still making better content than multi-billion studios. Of course, they aren’t making content, they are making “programming”. Big difference.
(Not shitting on the zoomer. When someone uses a word correctly but mispronounces it, it’s almost always because they are an autodidact who has only read the word.)
That last sentence is so true. It also lets the people who wouldn’t know an autodidact from an automatic transmission something to feel superior about as they are spoonfed what to think.
Thank goodness. I thought I was the only one who watched YouTube. Who cares about the plot. I want the kind of leading lady that I could fall in love with (if I was forty or more years younger). You can find just about any Formula One race on YouTube from 1980 onward, though usually edited to avoid copyright, and I can recognize any part of the Nordschleife from a two-second clip.
A friend of mine lives on a dead end street and the neighbors get along quite well. At least once a summer they kind of block off the end of the street and have a huge block party with a cookout. Several years ago when streaming TV started to become popular, a bunch got together and they each decided to get one service then share the passwords with each other. So for $15-20 a month, the end of their street shares a ton of streaming including sports packages. I think that’s a great system.
JQ
My wife and I use Netflix, but I honestly can’t recall the last time we watched something on it that was in English. We pretty much only watch Asian shows on it anymore as they aren’t infected with the woke virus. Sure, we have to read subtitles, but they stop being annoying pretty early on.
I recently found a nice Korean streaming service that seems to have all of the offerings that Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon have, plus more, so…. I’m canceling Netflix and Hulu at the very least now.