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So what we're seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930's-1950's. You want to see a Paramount movie, you must go to a Paramount theater. Today you want to watch an Apple show you must go to Apple's VOD.
We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.
The meaninglessness of $8.45b relative to amazon's scale is mind boggling. It represents 0.5% of their market cap, 20% of their cash-on-hand, nevermind their borrowing capacity @ near 0%.
If a problem is worth the Jeff/Andy's personal attention, it's worth spending $8bn on.
I'm a broken record but, current equity prices and financial climate generally makes massive consolidation very likely. Antitrust, or fear of is the only restraint... and it is not very restraining.
Unless Apple & Google are going to start issuing dividends/buybacks on an epic scale (doesn't seem likely), they have no way to put cash they have to work (besides vanguard/bitcoin). Google would need to do 10 Waymos (in for about $20bn so far) simultaneously, to invest what they need to invest on internal projects, but even their one Waymo is dubious. Acquisition is the only remaining option.
Consider that these companies can currently afford to buy whole industries outright, perhaps without involving a bank. Does Waymo need a friend? Why not buy it Ford & GM? Anything outside the S&P 10 is a snack. They literally have cash enough for both lying around... and these deals are never all cash.
5 more years on the current trajectory, and the VOC/EIC days will look quaint.
Apple could have built the most incredible semiconductor mega-hub in the world with the money it spent on dividends and buybacks in the past decade.
In-house R&D is still a thing. Capital expenditure is still a thing. Pay raises for rank-and-file staff are still a thing. Please don't suggest that acquisitions, buybacks, and dividends are the only ways for Apple and Google to put their free cash flow to work.
In this vein, $8.45B seems a bargain for the likes of Apple to instantly booster their very limited TV+ offerings. Was this an exclusive, closed door negotiation between owners of MGM and Amazon?
I'm perplexed how the final price isn't a lot higher due to a potential bidding war between all the streaming giants. Even Netflix would benefit - if anything to force competitors to pay more.
>The price is about 37 times MGM’s 2021 estimated EBITDA - or almost triple the enterprise value-to-EBITDA multiple that Discovery’s deal implied for AT&T’s content assets - according to Reuters Breakingviews.
Was there another offer for slightly less than $8.45B? What kind of thinking would lead them to that figure, rather than a different one?
Worth noting that based on AAPL's latest 10-Q, the vast majority of their cash is invested in corporate bonds, which have a nominal annualized return of ~6%. I'm sure the financial value of any acquisition is pitted against this alternative.
This makes it very likely that the beloved Stargate franchise will return as an Amazon Prime exclusive franchise, which will be great news for those of us like myself with appetite for 60+ more seasons of that show (after the 17 seasons that have already been made).
I watched the sci-fi show "The Expanse" on Amazon Prime Video. Season 4 (the one made by Amazon Prime Video) felt like it had a tenth of the budget compared to season 1 and 2. A completely different show that I found very boring and unwatchable.
Hopefully any future Stargate revival will have the budget and writing it deserves. I would spend $20/month for the rest of my life to get a season of high budget Stargate with decent writing each year. I'm sure there is a million other fans are willing and able to pay a similar amount.
SG-1 is a great show. It holds up surprisingly well for its age. Strikes a great balance between serious and light-hearted, and the self-contained episodes often have interesting ethical or social issues. I'm also fond on how the early episodes emphasize that humans are new to interplanetary travel and are still figuring things out. There are several episodes where SG-1 travels to another planet and actually messes things up, making life worse for the natives. And the show did a great job with having things change in-universe.
There are some cliches and flaws, of course. My least favorite part is probably how non-permanent deaths were, they really overdid the whole thing with characters dying and coming back to life, or being cloned.
I'm surprised that Stargate has had some sort of franchise curse where other media never succeed. They had two more shows in the franchise (I'm in the minority that loved Universe, and I think Atlantis was for the most part bad), but never a movie aside from the one that started the franchise, never a game that succeeded (most attempts failed to even ship).
I started watching SG1 again (I saw it incomplete as a kid). It’s incredibly good. It pushes rationalism and feminism in a sane way that I’m not sure would happen in today’s environment. It’s incredibly rich in historical references and concepts. It’s rarely dumb and often preempts cliches. It’s still worth watching imho (and is much less known that Star Trek in US).
> Season 4 (the one made by Amazon Prime Video) felt like it had a tenth of the budget compared to season 1 and 2. A completely different show that I found very boring and unwatchable.
Season 4 follows book 4, whereas previous seasons split the books in a non-typical fashion: e.g., S02E05 ("Home") was the end of book 1. Book 4 is also part of the second kind-of-trilogy and so is a bit slower paced, because it set ups the next two books.
This isn't really Amazon's fault: it's from the original content.
If it makes you feel better the fourth book of The Expanse is the most boring in my opinion and the show stuck to the plot for the most part throughout. I still enjoyed both the book and the fourth season but the action and production really picks back up in the fifth season.
SG1 is indeed an amazing series, the showrunners did a great job blending action, mythology, and light-hearted sci-fi into a very watchable show.
I was less thrilled with Atlantis, and thought Universe was completely horrible. Let's not even acknowledge the existence of "Origins".
I do hope Amazon will be good stewards of the franchise going forward. I don't want them to make new content only for it to be dark, gritty, drama-heavy, and politicised the way much of modern "entertainment" has become.
Maybe we'll even get a few good Stargate video games out of this! So many lost opportunities on the gaming front - an MMO was in the works, but never got released.
Stargate revival is my main hope about all this. I don't know that they could do a continuation/sequel because the world of Stargate at this point is pretty complex and far from our universe. So they would probably do a reboot which is risky because the actors had such great chemistry together.
Wow I thought it was just me who didn’t like season 4 of the expanse. At some point they made a turn to focusing on the flaws of all the main characters to an obnoxious degree.
> I watched the sci-fi show "The Expanse" on Amazon Prime Video. Season 4 (the one made by Amazon Prime Video) felt like it had a tenth of the budget compared to season 1 and 2. A completely different show that I found very boring and unwatchable.
Ultimately that's one show though. Amazon have spent BIG on some of their series. The Grand Tour had an enormous, enormous budget compared to Top Gear. They are spending Game of Thrones money on Wheel of Time.
> The deal can be viewed as a doubling down on business strategy that Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, articulated at a conference in 2016: “When we win a Golden Globe, it helps us sell more shoes,” he had said, referring to Amazon's diverse business divisions.
I wonder if Amazon will change MGM's stance on "Movies Anywhere"? MGM is one of the few major studios that currently does not participate in that.
OT: how the heck does MA actually work?
Suppose I buy a movie from Apple that came from a studio that supports MA. It almost immediately shows up in my Amazon Prime Video library, my Fandango library, and others. I then stream it using the Fandango app on my TV.
Does it stream from Fandango's servers? If so, who pays for that bandwidth?. Fandango accounts are free, so I've not paid them any money. Do they just eat it, assuming it will balance out due to people who bought from Fandango streaming on other services? Or does MA tell Fandango that I bought the movie from Apple and Fandango periodically bills Apple for Apple store movies played via Fandango?
Or does it stream from some common CDN that keeps track of all this and bills each seller for their share of bandwidth?
Or does some magic happen so that even though I'm playing the movie in the Fandango app, it is actually streaming from Apple servers?
I wish people didn't watch so much television. It's too good and too easy to watch an unlimited amount of content. Every hour you spend being entertained in front of your screens is an hour less you could be spending building actual social bonds with people in your community.
There is a correlation to increasing tv watching and decreased social club engagement. By social clubs I mean bowling clubs, skating clubs, 4H clubs, knitting clubs, quilting clubs, book clubs, etc. Whatever other clubs people used to do back in the pre modern television era.
Being a part of these clubs connects you with your local city. It encourages real social relationships. If the club membership is diverse, you are exposed to people of different backgrounds, experiences, and races, which decreases racism and xenophobia.
All of this will increase the amount of trust we have for random humans. And that correlates strongly to how well government is working for us.
This could also be fueling why the US has so much hostility in politics now. What if we were in clubs with people of different political viewpoints? You like these people, and you disagree politically. I think that would change things.
So please, do your part and stop watching so much bullshit on television. Sure, a few good movies and shows every once in a while is understandable. But really do you need to watch all these new TV series and every single made-for-netflix movie??
I have some pretty bad internet addiction too. It was so bad I basically stopped playing guitar in my teen years. I restarted last year and had to basically start from scratch, it was so depressing. I used to be able to sight read sheet music, then I threw a budding life skill all away to look at memes I will never remember or play some dumb quest in a game.
I was addicted really to consumption. I stopped creating. Now I'm trying to make more time for it. The other night I fell asleep on the couch before midnight with my guitar in my hand and my fingers forming a chord, rather than being wired and awake on reddit until I look and notice it's 2am again. Still, the sting of knowing I squandered probably 10 years of youth just consuming junk is a lot to bear.
It's depressing knowing some very smart people are out there striving as hard as they can to get me and others away from looking inwardly and creating, or at least investing focus in one's own life and building yourself up, and instead hooked on the teet of endless content. It's like the end game with this endless consumption is The Matrix, where most of humanity is just plugged into the machine sitting there, thoughtless, sucking on the feeding tube and fueling the robots until they eventually die and are replaced by another warm body.
>>"Every hour you spend being entertained in front of your screens is an hour less you could be spending building actual social bonds with people in your community."
I feel it didn't used to be like that; there was a brief period of limited TV choices where it seemed to increase the bonds - it was a shared experience, and unlike most shared experiences which you have with couple of people physically present, it was shared with any number of friends colleagues and strangers. "Did you see the movie last night" or "Did you catch Ed Sullivan" show, do even "Remember the Friends episode where...". It was a common cultural reference point.
Now of course there's so much content we are more divergent and everybody watches their own TV show or Movie or Youtube channel or TikTok etc.
I'm surprised that your insightful comment (questioning the very elephant-in-the-room assumption that we all must have content to consume) has not been voted higher by this community of hackers, tinkerers, and makers.
Indeed, why is this so central to our lives? Why isn't a different kind of shared activity more sought-after?
Your point about the sheer variety is also relevant -- there's just too many echo chambers of consumption for everyone now.
Overall, the creative force has nary a chance to flourish in such environs.
Doesn't TV shows and movies also contain diverse cast and help us relate to people with different backgrounds, race, sexual orientation, etc.?
For example, i think Hollywood movies depicting homosexuality have large impact on people watching them from conservative countries.
The real question here is where players like SKY in the UK eventually go for content, I pay €40 a month for Skys satellite service and I am on the edge of cancelling it, I have Netflix/Disney/Prime for a combined approx €30 a month, recently when watching live TV I spent 40 minutes channel hopping and watched nothing, most channels are now reality show filler junk, the occasional gem in there is looking less and less worth the cost and its only a matter of time before they get squeezed out of the live sports market as well.
The problem in most countries I've lived is that there is a market capture with the whole 'triple play' trap.
I only really need a fast internet connection but I can only get that if I bundle it with TV + Phone. Regardless of how much of a 'cable-cutter' I am, it is only financially worth getting internet-only, if I go for lower speeds.
Definitely something I thing the EU competition/anti-trust teams should be looking into.
As others suggest, simply opt-out of these destructive monopolies. I’m in Europe and have been immensely enjoying MUBI[0] for the last few months.
Many classic and new films, updating all the time - and I’ve had none of the streaming problems that some AppStore reviews have mentioned. Also supports new independent film-makers (which piracy sadly does not do).
If I had to pick a single politically uniting issue, breaking up Amazon and big tech would be it.
Why has this not happened yet? Is the out of power party afraid the in power party will get credit? (This has been discussed when both parties were in power)
If the government can't get something with this kind of support done, I fear the road we are headed down .
MGM itself was formed from a merger: MGM was formed in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, and Louis B. Mayer Pictures.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
10-20 years ago it felt like it was all the telecom companies buying out these media/production/conglomerates to serve as their auxiliary arms. Now it's big tech.
The upside here is that MGM has been limping along for ages, and if Amazon ends up paying off their debts and relaunching a bunch of their titles, even if this all collapses in a few years, MGM will probably end up better off for it.
I wonder what Las Vegas would look like if tech companies started buying / building hotels in Vegas
At one point MGM owned almost 1 third - half the strip (ish) - recently they've been selling off properties which is a shame, MGM properties are my preferred resorts.
Maybe Amazon can breath some life into Excalibur or Luxor but it sounds like those are not part of the deal
MGM the studio was spun off from the much more profitable and burgeoning casino segment around the early 80s. Since then, tons of different buyers have gone in and out for the casino. Maybe MGM the studio too.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc, which is the MGM Amazon bought is not the same company as MGM Resorts International, which is the MGM that owns casinos. The casino people become an independent company year and years ago.
[+] [-] dang|4 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27289924&p=2
(Sorry for the interruption. Comments like this will go away eventually.)
[+] [-] neonate|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scyzoryk_xyz|4 years ago|reply
We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.
[+] [-] dalbasal|4 years ago|reply
If a problem is worth the Jeff/Andy's personal attention, it's worth spending $8bn on.
I'm a broken record but, current equity prices and financial climate generally makes massive consolidation very likely. Antitrust, or fear of is the only restraint... and it is not very restraining.
Unless Apple & Google are going to start issuing dividends/buybacks on an epic scale (doesn't seem likely), they have no way to put cash they have to work (besides vanguard/bitcoin). Google would need to do 10 Waymos (in for about $20bn so far) simultaneously, to invest what they need to invest on internal projects, but even their one Waymo is dubious. Acquisition is the only remaining option.
Consider that these companies can currently afford to buy whole industries outright, perhaps without involving a bank. Does Waymo need a friend? Why not buy it Ford & GM? Anything outside the S&P 10 is a snack. They literally have cash enough for both lying around... and these deals are never all cash.
5 more years on the current trajectory, and the VOC/EIC days will look quaint.
[+] [-] asperous|4 years ago|reply
https://www.barrons.com/articles/tech-giants-have-ramped-up-...
Apple recently $77B in buybacks, Alphabet $8.5B, Facebook $3.9B
[+] [-] totalZero|4 years ago|reply
Apple could have built the most incredible semiconductor mega-hub in the world with the money it spent on dividends and buybacks in the past decade.
In-house R&D is still a thing. Capital expenditure is still a thing. Pay raises for rank-and-file staff are still a thing. Please don't suggest that acquisitions, buybacks, and dividends are the only ways for Apple and Google to put their free cash flow to work.
Not to mention that both companies carry debt.
[+] [-] dawnerd|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulpan|4 years ago|reply
I'm perplexed how the final price isn't a lot higher due to a potential bidding war between all the streaming giants. Even Netflix would benefit - if anything to force competitors to pay more.
[+] [-] flavius29663|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prvc|4 years ago|reply
Was there another offer for slightly less than $8.45B? What kind of thinking would lead them to that figure, rather than a different one?
[+] [-] fairity|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] magicalhippo|4 years ago|reply
My coworked compared it to the Dogecoin marketcap of $44b... kinda puts things in perspective.
[+] [-] someperson|4 years ago|reply
I watched the sci-fi show "The Expanse" on Amazon Prime Video. Season 4 (the one made by Amazon Prime Video) felt like it had a tenth of the budget compared to season 1 and 2. A completely different show that I found very boring and unwatchable.
Hopefully any future Stargate revival will have the budget and writing it deserves. I would spend $20/month for the rest of my life to get a season of high budget Stargate with decent writing each year. I'm sure there is a million other fans are willing and able to pay a similar amount.
[+] [-] ACS_Solver|4 years ago|reply
There are some cliches and flaws, of course. My least favorite part is probably how non-permanent deaths were, they really overdid the whole thing with characters dying and coming back to life, or being cloned.
I'm surprised that Stargate has had some sort of franchise curse where other media never succeed. They had two more shows in the franchise (I'm in the minority that loved Universe, and I think Atlantis was for the most part bad), but never a movie aside from the one that started the franchise, never a game that succeeded (most attempts failed to even ship).
[+] [-] xixixao|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throw0101a|4 years ago|reply
Season 4 follows book 4, whereas previous seasons split the books in a non-typical fashion: e.g., S02E05 ("Home") was the end of book 1. Book 4 is also part of the second kind-of-trilogy and so is a bit slower paced, because it set ups the next two books.
This isn't really Amazon's fault: it's from the original content.
[+] [-] enragedcacti|4 years ago|reply
EDIT: VAGUE REFERENCES TO SPOILERS BELOW
[+] [-] forgingahead|4 years ago|reply
I was less thrilled with Atlantis, and thought Universe was completely horrible. Let's not even acknowledge the existence of "Origins".
I do hope Amazon will be good stewards of the franchise going forward. I don't want them to make new content only for it to be dark, gritty, drama-heavy, and politicised the way much of modern "entertainment" has become.
Maybe we'll even get a few good Stargate video games out of this! So many lost opportunities on the gaming front - an MMO was in the works, but never got released.
[+] [-] hrgiger|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jccalhoun|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrfusion|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mindwipe|4 years ago|reply
Ultimately that's one show though. Amazon have spent BIG on some of their series. The Grand Tour had an enormous, enormous budget compared to Top Gear. They are spending Game of Thrones money on Wheel of Time.
[+] [-] texaswhizzle|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] loceng|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wut42|4 years ago|reply
This part is a real nugget.
[+] [-] tzs|4 years ago|reply
OT: how the heck does MA actually work?
Suppose I buy a movie from Apple that came from a studio that supports MA. It almost immediately shows up in my Amazon Prime Video library, my Fandango library, and others. I then stream it using the Fandango app on my TV.
Does it stream from Fandango's servers? If so, who pays for that bandwidth?. Fandango accounts are free, so I've not paid them any money. Do they just eat it, assuming it will balance out due to people who bought from Fandango streaming on other services? Or does MA tell Fandango that I bought the movie from Apple and Fandango periodically bills Apple for Apple store movies played via Fandango?
Or does it stream from some common CDN that keeps track of all this and bills each seller for their share of bandwidth?
Or does some magic happen so that even though I'm playing the movie in the Fandango app, it is actually streaming from Apple servers?
[+] [-] socialist_coder|4 years ago|reply
There is a correlation to increasing tv watching and decreased social club engagement. By social clubs I mean bowling clubs, skating clubs, 4H clubs, knitting clubs, quilting clubs, book clubs, etc. Whatever other clubs people used to do back in the pre modern television era.
Being a part of these clubs connects you with your local city. It encourages real social relationships. If the club membership is diverse, you are exposed to people of different backgrounds, experiences, and races, which decreases racism and xenophobia.
All of this will increase the amount of trust we have for random humans. And that correlates strongly to how well government is working for us.
This could also be fueling why the US has so much hostility in politics now. What if we were in clubs with people of different political viewpoints? You like these people, and you disagree politically. I think that would change things.
So please, do your part and stop watching so much bullshit on television. Sure, a few good movies and shows every once in a while is understandable. But really do you need to watch all these new TV series and every single made-for-netflix movie??
[+] [-] asdff|4 years ago|reply
I was addicted really to consumption. I stopped creating. Now I'm trying to make more time for it. The other night I fell asleep on the couch before midnight with my guitar in my hand and my fingers forming a chord, rather than being wired and awake on reddit until I look and notice it's 2am again. Still, the sting of knowing I squandered probably 10 years of youth just consuming junk is a lot to bear.
It's depressing knowing some very smart people are out there striving as hard as they can to get me and others away from looking inwardly and creating, or at least investing focus in one's own life and building yourself up, and instead hooked on the teet of endless content. It's like the end game with this endless consumption is The Matrix, where most of humanity is just plugged into the machine sitting there, thoughtless, sucking on the feeding tube and fueling the robots until they eventually die and are replaced by another warm body.
[+] [-] NikolaNovak|4 years ago|reply
I feel it didn't used to be like that; there was a brief period of limited TV choices where it seemed to increase the bonds - it was a shared experience, and unlike most shared experiences which you have with couple of people physically present, it was shared with any number of friends colleagues and strangers. "Did you see the movie last night" or "Did you catch Ed Sullivan" show, do even "Remember the Friends episode where...". It was a common cultural reference point.
Now of course there's so much content we are more divergent and everybody watches their own TV show or Movie or Youtube channel or TikTok etc.
[+] [-] disqard|4 years ago|reply
Indeed, why is this so central to our lives? Why isn't a different kind of shared activity more sought-after?
Your point about the sheer variety is also relevant -- there's just too many echo chambers of consumption for everyone now.
Overall, the creative force has nary a chance to flourish in such environs.
[+] [-] supuun|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WarOnPrivacy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mywacaday|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DoingIsLearning|4 years ago|reply
I only really need a fast internet connection but I can only get that if I bundle it with TV + Phone. Regardless of how much of a 'cable-cutter' I am, it is only financially worth getting internet-only, if I go for lower speeds.
Definitely something I thing the EU competition/anti-trust teams should be looking into.
[+] [-] null_object|4 years ago|reply
Many classic and new films, updating all the time - and I’ve had none of the streaming problems that some AppStore reviews have mentioned. Also supports new independent film-makers (which piracy sadly does not do).
Thoroughly recommended.
[0] https://mubi.com/showing
[+] [-] frankbreetz|4 years ago|reply
Why has this not happened yet? Is the out of power party afraid the in power party will get credit? (This has been discussed when both parties were in power)
If the government can't get something with this kind of support done, I fear the road we are headed down .
[+] [-] rtoway|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ape4|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scyzoryk_xyz|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kipters|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tibbydudeza|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ocdtrekkie|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qwerty456127|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] croes|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lsiunsuex|4 years ago|reply
I wonder what Las Vegas would look like if tech companies started buying / building hotels in Vegas
At one point MGM owned almost 1 third - half the strip (ish) - recently they've been selling off properties which is a shame, MGM properties are my preferred resorts.
Maybe Amazon can breath some life into Excalibur or Luxor but it sounds like those are not part of the deal
[+] [-] skinnymuch|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thedogeye|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] astura|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akudha|4 years ago|reply