[phartenfeller]

I don't like this. Netflix rarely creates excellent content; instead, it frequently produces mediocre or worse content. Will the same happen for Warner? Are cinemas now second behind streaming?

Edit: I agree Netflix has good Originals. But most are from the early days when they favored quality over quantity. It is sad to see that they reversed that. They have much funding power and should give it to great art that really sticks, has ambitions and something to tell, and values my time instead of mediocrity.

[xp84]

I think Netflix's incentives, especially now that they have an ad tier, have changed.

With a subscription service 10 years ago, you just need to have enough must-see content:

- Original scripted TV series that become mainstream known and/or seen as prestige TV, like "The Crown," "Mindhunter," "Bridgerton," "Stranger Things" etc.

- "Crown Jewel" reruns with huge fanbases such as The Office, Friends, Seinfeld, Modern Family, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Arrested Development, etc.

- Unscripted TV series that become buzzy - like Love Is Blind, Tiger King, etc.

Having those categories all well-stocked ensures that only a fool would cancel their Netflix subscription as they'll be out of the loop when the new season of a 'zeitgeisty' show drops. You don't really need all your viewers to watch more hours to get more money every year, you can grow revenue with a combo of new viewers and price increases as long as users just watch regularly.

I think present-day Netflix sees incentives:

- to get as many people on the ad tier as possible so they can scale revenue with watch time

- to increase watch time which is a solved problem via psychological manipulation if you have good ML like they do

- more watch time without spending more money points pretty obviously to lowering cost per show as much as you can, which manifests as worse quality, more reality, more imported dubbed shows, etc. and drastically curtailing giving huge checks to the Matthew Weiners, David Benioffs, and Vince Gilligans of the world to bet on a massive superhit.

So they will want to focus heavily on the unscripted category plus whatever they can slap together cheaply, then autoplay and optimize their way to growth.

[fnordpiglet]

I’d note they’re not mutually exclusive revenue streams and both add meaningfully to their value. I think the reality is they peaked the first one and growth is in the second one. Subscriptions that are sticky however are much more valuable individually than an advertising tier user. But if you can cater to both and not downgrade subscriptions to ads tier you win in two parallel markets via the same platform. This is not a bad business strategy. But they need to not lose the subscriptions and their reason for being in the quest for growth or they’ll see nominal growth with decline in value.

[dan-robertson]

Wouldn’t an alternative be to increase watch time by making each show desirable to a larger set of people. That wouldn’t necessarily require quality to decrease?

[jmkd]

Cinema is indeed second behind streaming. The theatrical window is now so short (~40) days that audiences are happy to wait for the increased benefits and reduced cost of watching at home.

[PearlRiver]

This was inevitable. Technology was bound to catch up. Hollywood actually panicked in the 1960s. But those screens were tiny. Nobody wants to see the Godfather on a cheap 1974 Panasonic.

But TV today is at least 55 inch and in crisp 4k resolution. A modern TV is good enough for most content.

It is not Netflix that killed the movieplex. They were just the first to utilise the new tools. The movie theater became the steam locomotive.

[slumberlust]

Good. Movie theaters have been anti-consumer for decades. Time for them to reap what they sowed.

[bombcar]

It’s only older contracts and studio holdovers that are preventing simultaneous release (which has already been done at times).

[dclowd9901]

They're starting to up their quality. Frankenstein and Death by Lightning were two standout successes recently.

That said, I'm more uncomfortable with the continued consolidation of media ownership and more outsize influence of FAANG tech over media.

[josefresco]

> Frankenstein and Death by Lightning were two standout successes recently.

IMHO Frankenstein" was pretty terrible. The makeup was awful, the effects were cheap, the monster... wasn't a monster! The entire premise depends on him being a monster, not some sort of misunderstood, sympathetic EMO.

[skeeter2020]

Netflix has always had one or three stand-out projects over a year, but is that what we want from studios? It is like the tech model: 1 big success for 10+ duds (the VC show) or another superhero installment (the Google/Meta cash cow movie).

[phartenfeller]

It's about all the other projects that would have had great quality but did not secure funding because Netflix prefers to fund mass-produced mediocrity. In Germany we have a saying "Even a blind hen sometimes finds a grain of corn".

[UltraSane]

Frankenstein looks oddly cheap and fake with really bad lighting in many scenes. You can tell they used the volume virtual production to shoot scenes and it doesn't look great.

[sparklingmango]

In parallel, they're also starting to downgrade their quality. In the latest season of Stranger Things there's a wild amount of in-scene exposition, where the characters explain what's happening while it's happening. I did some digging and learned that they may be dumbing down their shows because they know users typically look at their phones while watching Netflix and users are more likely to drop off of a show if they don't know what's going on.

See here: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/jan/17/not-sec...

Edit: I did really enjoy Frankenstein.

[chrisgd]

I would disagree. I think what you see is the popular, but less well done material. Dept Q was an original 8-10 episode detective drama that was highly thought of. It received no press but it likely showed up on your carousel. Netflix knows eventually you will find it but not sure they can bring you everything.

[HDThoreaun]

HBO releases tons of great shows every year. They will reliably have at least one running all the time. Netflix releases maybe one good season a year padded by endless amounts of cruft.

[wooque]

There is nothing original in Dept Q. It's British adaptation of Danish book and TV show.

[rPlayer6554]

They have a “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.” Sure it has a lot of crap but they also have major hits like Squid Games, Stranger Things, (both became cultural phenomena) and Daredevil.

[yibg]

I think such is the reality of serving a large customer base on something subjective like movies and TV. Most people would find most content not that appealing, and a small subset they like. The problem is everyone's small subject are different.

It's like having a restaurant that serves 300 million people. You can try to offer every type of food there is, but most people may not like most of them. Which is fine, as long as you have something they like.

[phartenfeller]

I think you are true to a point. But great movies get almost universal praise with scores of 9/10 on IMDb or near 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

The same goes for food; there are things that are quite controversial, but who says no to fantastic ice cream or bread?

But most importantly for movies, it is not the micro-genre that decides. People who are not into fantasy or astrology still love Lord of the Rings or Interstellar because they are particularly highly produced, where all crafts making up that movie are treated highly instead of strategizing and optimizing.

[johnnyanmac]

Well we have over a century of media and it should be diverse enough to serve everyone. The issue is we're shifting towards a future full of McDonalds and Dennys instead of culture. Safe, inoffensive slop that you grab because you're hungry, not curious.

It's also almost like we shouldn't have one restaurant serve 300m people. Aka a monopoly.it'll collapse overtime anyways, because of you're competing on slop you can't beat the social media model of a bunch of low cost addictive TikToks for "free". The race to the bottom was already won and ot doesn't cost $25/month.

[afavour]

Warner makes a lot of crap too. They both make what sells.

[lotsofpulp]

This was clear many years ago when I opened up the HBO app and saw the full screen background ad for Fboy Island.

[johnnyanmac]

By design. That's why they are ready to sell to Netflix.

[jader201]

> Are cinemas now second behind streaming?

It feels like a race to the bottom. Movie and TV content quality has taken a nose dive in the past decade.

Yes, there are exceptions, but it’s hard to find these days.

Maybe it’s because producing movies/TV is so much easier and cheaper that there is now so much low quality noise, that it makes finding the high quality signal so difficult.

But it seems like you used to be able to go to the theater and you’d have to decide between several great options.

Now, I almost never care to go because it’s only about 2-3 times a year that anything comes out worth seeing.

[robotresearcher]

> it’s only about 2-3 times a year that anything comes out worth seeing.

This was probably always true, with some randomly amazing years every now and again, like 1972 (The Godfather, Cabaret, Deliverance, What's Up Doc?,...).

IMDB listing shows 470 films released US in 1972. Google says there are ~3,900 IMDB entries for 1972 (why the 4X discrepancy?). The hit ratio was veeeery small even in killer years.

[doctorpangloss]

the kind of person who watches a LOT of television and movies likes slop, it's not complicated.

still different than media people PAY for. for example substack sells empty opinions that agree with you. it is totally wrong to say that slop sells. it is merely the highest engagement for an audience that DOESN'T pay.

you could say, "engagement is the wrong metric," but if that were really true, tech jobs would contract like 50%. the alternative becomes, "would you like fries with that?"

[dandellion]

They're fourth now. Video games are first, then books, streaming, then cinema, and music after that. If I'm not mistaken.

[UltraSane]

Netflix also created "Netflix lightning" where there are zero shadows to make lighting scenes faster but is really ugly.

[lanthissa]

i dont think this should matter, plenty of conglomerates have brands across quality levels.

think old navy, gap, banana republic.

the quality difference is important for the conglomerate same with netflix vs hbo, the corporate benefit is being able to save on costs around like amortizing the corporate side of things (accounting, marketing, real estate, research ect)

[lossolo]

I just checked and I've rated 1,788 movies and 326 TV series so 2,114 titles total on IMDB.

I agree with this take. Netflix has some good originals, but it's not in the same category as HBO/WB. Most (not all) of their series feel cheap, shallow, unoriginal. The quality and hit rate just aren't the same.

[newsclues]

Cinema needs to be a real experience, beyond just expensive popcorn and other people on their phone.

The cinema experience lost its magic. If Netflix reimagined a new model of cinema, what would it look like?

[abustamam]

Cinema used to be a really good shared experience. I don't go to cinema anymore because we have a newborn at home, but we used to pre-order tickets in advanced for movies we really wanted to see (like Wicked last year, Fantastic 4 this year) and the theater was almost empty at opening night for both of those.

Contrast a few years ago when avengers endgame came out, and Spiderman far from home came out shortly after that, and No Way Home a few years after that... They were lively events. People dressed up, the theater handed out free swag and merch, and it was just a really cool shared experience, almost akin to a live concert.

I don't know exactly what's changed in that time, considering No Way Home came out after Covid and it was still a spectacle of an event, but I don't think cinema will get its magic back.

A few years ago I did go to a "Stranger Things" experience and I think that might be the future of shared experiences/narratives. It was essentially a week-long pop-up event, you'd get tickets, and it was basically a "walking simulator" that took you through a narrative within the Stranger Things universe. This wasn't just a bunch of people looking at a screen, it was live actors, holographics, sound design, lights, a lot of crazy stuff for a pop-up venue.

As a fan of the franchise it was really well done. A friend of mine want to a similar "Experience" for the Bridgeton universe, which I care nothing about, but she really enjoyed it as well.

So I think if Netflix were to reimagine cinema, it would probably be in that direction.

[kulahan]

Major studios haven't made excellent content for a while, so them acquiring WB doesn't matter much. If you want to see the "excellent" films (i.e. I'm assuming you mean well-directed, well-written, well-acted, meaningful, etc.), watch film festivals. They have lots of fantastic stuff, and their movies are getting easier to access.

We've lost nothing with WB except more Joker: Foile a Deux and Wonka garbage.

[n4r9]

Lots of good lesser-known stuff on Netflix if you wade through the crap:

* The Devil's Plan

* Alice in Borderlands

* Extraordinary Attorney Woo

* Brassic

* Back to Life

* Intelligence

* Black Doves

* Top Boy

* Mo

* The Breakthrough

* Borgen

* Love Death & Robots

* Scavenger's Reign

As well as well-known stuff like Stranger Things and Squid Game as a sibling comment mentioned.

[Edit: replies point out some of these are bought rather than produced but I think it still counts for overall quality]

[fullstop]

> Scavenger's Reign

Oddly enough, this was originally an HBO Max production.

[echelon_musk]

IMO their only truly noteworthy production is BoJack Horseman.

[lawgimenez]

Some foreign series gems also like The Asset, Mercy for None.

And some newer ones, American Primeval and the Beast in Me.

[Jenk]

They licensed Brassic, it was filmed for Sky One, not Netflix.

[BurningFrog]

The cinemas not already dead are dying.

Cinemas were a way to share the cost of technology to show high quality movies among hundreds of people.

Most people now has that tech at home, so there is no need for cinemas anymore.

I went to my local cinema a few times before it closed last year. There were never more than 3 spectators.

[johnnyanmac]

Maybe it's different for me in the heart of LA, but I still need to plan around a movie if it's opening week. Theatres will fill up.

Home is convenient, but also small and thus limited. Having a large commons to go out to helps. But that might not be the case for Gen Z as they adjust from 200 inch screen to 7 inch ones for consuming media. Why spend 150 million on a cinematic experience when a single creator spends maybe a week planning a 30 second tiktok for engagement?

[citizenpaul]

It seems to be endemic to the industry. Why was the latest predator movie turned into what is functionally a buddy comedy with some action scenes?

[ch4s3]

> Netflix rarely creates excellent content; instead, it frequently produces mediocre or worse content.

I'm really concerned about them ruining the Magic Mike franchise.

[santiagobasulto]

> it frequently produces mediocre or worse content

I agree, and I go one step beyond:

Any "series" is BY DEFINITION, bad. If to tell a good story you need +4 episodes, you're doing a poor job. Or, what's real, you're just bloating it ON PURPOSE to keep people attached to their screens.

If Citizen Kane, Tokyo Story, 2001 Space Odyssey or any other good film managed to tell their story in <3hs, I'm sure any other of these "originals" should be able to do the same.

The real quality resides in making something SHORTER and condensed. This is when you start playing with REAL cinematic mechanisms. For example, Seven Samurai is well known for its use of motion and dynamism. Kurosawa communicates a lot without using dialogue, just by the use of movement of the characters or the background. Today's productions are just: explicit dialog > cut scene nature > explicit dialog > cut scene nature > etc.

Some stories might need longer runtimes, like Lord of the Rings or whatever "bigger universe" it is. But these are EXCEPTIONS, not the rule.

For the record, I do enjoy some Series: Friends, The Office, etc. But these are just comedies, and one could argue they're explicitly made to be "bloated" (in terms of length span).

> Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away

PS: I know I'm going to get downvoted to oblivion but I don't care.

[johnnyanmac]

>I know I'm going to get downvoted to oblivion but I don't care.

I wasn't going to downvote you till this part.

Anyways, I disagree. But it really comes down to what you value in a story. You're not going to get the rich lore of Mordor, or even Tamriel in a 2 hour runtime. Movies excel at creating character moments, and any kind of worldbuilding that isn't built on an entire series will feel shallow. Or maybe boring because it will take the entire runtime and you have nothing to attach to.

Samurai jack feels like a great example. It could have been a focus oneshot on how Jack got back to the past and beat Aku. A great one, even. But that's not what the show is about. It's showing the long term effects of aku' reign, how society adapted around it, how the next generation receives propaganda to keep serving their tyrant, and the small bits of rebellion and hope shed among it. Jack getting back to the past to undo all that wasn't why Jack is thought of as a great hero. It's the influences he had and seeds of hope he sowed among the dystopia

(And yes, now Netflix owns that).

[mattmanser]

Seriously?

The Crown, Stranger Things, Unbelievable, Russian Doll (wow, just wow), Orange Is The New Black, Narcos, Narcos: Mexico, GLOW, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Ozark, Nobody Wants This, Altered Carbon, Dirk Gently, Mindhunters, The Queen's Gambit, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

And that's just what I can remember off the top of my head. And that's my taste, there's more not to my taste like Squid Game, Wednesday, Bridgerton, etc. And not including the films, documentaries, shorts, etc. they done like Love, Death and Robots.

[quasigod]

The majority of that list is quite old. Have you seen what they're doing now? Not saying every single thing they make anymore is bad, but the average quality is far lower than it used to be.

[vimy]

Interesting that most of the shows you like are +- 10 years old. From the early Netflix days.

[jerojero]

a lot of these projects were cancelled though.

imo, that's the worst thing about Netflix. its not that they don't produce good series, its that when they do they have a high peobability of getting cancelled.

[CamouflagedKiwi]

Of course Jessica Jones is on Disney+ now. I think most of those others are still on Netflix, but it is a bit of a problem for them - when they don't own the content they eventually lose the ability to stream it, especially as the content owners have entered the streaming space too.

[fullstop]

The first season of Altered Carbon was great. It's a shame that they never made a second season. ;-)

[fooblaster]

I watched half of those and I haven't had Netflix in 5 years. it's not worth it anymore.

[stuffn]

I got netflix a looooong time ago when they still had good movies on there and weren't cycling. It kept getting worse and worse. Then I got rid of it a few years back.

Nearly everything on there sucks now. It's all campy politically-undertoned garbage and not anything I would consider fun to watch or a great way to waste my time. The first squid games was neat. A novel concept and interesting. Then Netflix did what they do best and netflix-ify it into a political message rather than a horror film. The latest Ed Gein show had the potential to be amazing but ended up falling into the same campy, political, director had too much creative liberty trash.

They are a tired company that has strayed from their roots. The Warner Bros acquisition makes complete sense because the entire media entertainment apparatus is capable of only producing:

1. Remakes of movies that are themselves remakes

2. An hour and a half movie where they try to inject The Message into as many frames as possible

3. A campy nearly serious movie that needs stupid jokes injected for the squirrel-brained morons that pay for it.

The entertainment industry is in a financial nosedive because no one wants this garbage anymore.

[Phelinofist]

Pretty subject to personal taste. Half of that list is garbage IMHO

[amrrs]

Honestly speaking Netflix has good catalog, much more comparable to Hollywood. Take the latest Frankenstein for example.

Don't look at only series. They also have recipes repurposed. But they acquire good titles and also produce some good ones.

[tiborsaas]

I have 459 titles on my IMDB watchlist and a tiny percentage of it is available on Netflix (if at all), but this is anecdotal and might have to do something to where I live.

[JeremyNT]

Is it actually worse than the status quo though? I'm not so sure.

I hate this era of consolidation but Warner and HBO have already degraded, so this may be the least bad outcome here.

[thechao]

I don't want you to think I'm picking on you; but, I've been thinking about the MBA-bullshittism "consolidation" for a while. It's really a euphemism for "trust formation", right? It seems like we fought tooth-and-nail just 100 years ago to set up real antitrust laws, with real teeth... and now every industry is "consolidated". What's going on in health and seed and cars makes me seethe.

[bee_rider]

Yeah, HBO has moved decidedly down market.

Apple is at least trying to fill their old niche. It seems quite telling that the only company truing to do the whole “prestige TV” thing is a kind of side-project for a hardware company. At least nobody can buy them, though.

[snarkyturtle]

Warner Bros has had their best summer in years (Sinners, Superman, etc). HBO still makes highly regarded prestige TV series (The Last Of Us, Task, etc). This is just false.

[colesantiago]

> I don’t like this

please stop them.

[unglaublich]

Netflix is `while profitable(): make_sequel()` which _always_ ends with shitty content and incomplete stories.

[bmacho]

How are Netflix created contents profitable? I guess Netflix pays shows based on user time spent, and a Netflix show is profitable if users spend time on it, and not on other shows?

[user2722]

All TV series on Netflix end in S01. Even if they don't, it's a new show with same characters but lousy writing. Looking at

* The CIA laywer who doesn't know about green passport

* FUBAR

* The Diplomat

[afavour]

I actually think that’s the opposite of Netflix. TV shows rarely make it past a second season, as soon as there’s even a mild drop in viewing figures they drop a property like a hot potato.

[hbn]

What you're describing is more of an American television problem.

The Simpsons, The Office, Game of Thrones, etc. all managed to go on too long without the help of Netflix.

[triceratops]

You're describing the entertainment business.

[Oras]

They are agile

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

>it frequently produces mediocre or worse content. Will the same happen for Warner?

HBO hasn't produced good content in years at this point. Since before the last season or two of Game of Thrones, I should think. The other brands in Warner didn't even really have that much prestige.

[emmp]

Succession, Hacks, The Last of Us, White Lotus and Euphoria have all been recent buzzy TV hits for HBO post Game of Thrones

[phartenfeller]

It is probably not just a Netflix issue. But it is also quite a philosophical question as to who is to blame. The consumers who watch and pay, or the ones who fund the mediocrity.

It is definitely sad to see Netflix turn from their early phase, where they valued quality over quantity, and since have reversed that.

I just want to see more great art that really sticks, has ambitions and something to tell, and values my time.

[egads]

This is Succession erasure.