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Netflix Wants 50% Of Its Library To Be Original Content (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Netflix is looking to shift its content mix even further towards original TV and movies, with a goal of achieving a 50 percent mix between its own programming and stuff licensed for its use by outside studios. The 50-50 target was revealed by Netflix CFO David Wells at the Goldman Sach's Communacopia conference on Tuesday, and Wells added that they'd like to hit that mix sometime over the course of the next few years. As for its progress so far, Wells said Netflix is already about "one-third to halfway" to that ratio, having launched 2015 hours of original programming in 2015, and with the intend of achieving a further 600 hours by the end of 2016. The benefit for Netflix with a shift to self-generated content is that the licensing situation is much simpler, and the investment made represents a cost that continues to deliver value long after the initial spend. Licensing arrangements with outside TV and film distributors have a fixed term, and thus represent a recurring cost if you want to continue offering their content in your library.
It's more lucrative to be a content creator than a content distributor.
The problem is, they'd lose a lot of their current customers.
What made Netflix great was selection. That's why they're so widely subscribed. The only way the ratio is going to look like that is if they're no longer carrying so much of everyone else's content. That won't be good for subscribers, who will get less for their money.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
meanwhile, here in the UK at least, people who want to be able to stream a half-decent selection of -recent- high-quality/high-profile TV shows that -arent- 'original content' are finding it harder and harder to find a single service that isnt backing away from that.
From where will we obtain any given movie or TV show we want to watch that is not Netflix/Amazon/etc. original content? Right now the Netflix DVD service still has by far the widest selection - things like all the old British shows, old movies, all the stuff that is really desirable to watch but no longer is worth the cost to license it. I tried to find a copy of the 1960 version of the movie The Time Machine - only available via DVD from Netflix. Are we going to see a resurgence in the DVD service?
12:50 - press return.
Netflix is becoming "just another TV network", becoming less of what everyone wants and more of what some people will pay for. Very depressing.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
Netflix has slowly, but surely, been reducing the breadth of its non-original content. It used to be that Netflix was the go-to streaming service. Now, with Netflix reducing the non-original content, Netflix is turning into just another cable TV channel.
What the hell constitutes original content these days? Most movies are reboots,pleas, no more comic book superheros! And "original" content - read not a movie - is a cop show, a hospital show, a reality show with white midgets or sassy African ladies, or the always successful fallback, dumb fat guy and his smart, really hot wife.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Netflix is becoming less and less what I wanted when I purchased it. What made the streaming component of netflix a good proposition was it had a great selected of content and largely replaced their DVD-by-mail offering. Honestly, I recently switched back to their mail order component.. It's sad, but I get a LOT more choices and value-for-money that way.
When Netflix started its focus was mostly on renting movies on DVD, but it seems to be moving increasingly away from movies towards original content. Sky's NowTV Movie package used to be another good source of movies, but the quality has declined considerably and now it's mostly very old movies and B-movies. Amazon Prime Video has never had a good selection of movies, and seems to be more of a sales platform where Amazon can sell you streaming movie rentals for £3-£10 each.
I personally don't watch movies, or TV in general, but my parents like to watch movies and used to be very happy with what streaming services offered. However, the decline in the quality of the selection has lead to them cancelling their NowTV, Netflix and Amazon Prime services, and they instead just ask me to download everything (which isn't fun for me). Where did it all go wrong? For a few years we seemed to be in an age of streaming movies where you could enjoy a good selection of quality titles for a reasonable mostly cost (somewhat like music streaming services offer). However, we seem to be moving back towards more limited access to movies which is forcing people back to piracy.
What do other people think of this? Are my parents just being cheap in refusing to pay £3-10 per day to rent a movie each evening or is the movie industry being greedy?
I started subscribing to Netflix in 1999. I became a customer because I wanted to be able to watch movies from a variety of studios, not just one. If I just wanted one studio, I'd subscribe to HBO. Notice how Netflix streaming doesn't have that good of content from other studios? Probably because studios realize that if they make agreements with Netflix, they will be working with and helping one of their competitors. Like Akbar said, its a trap.
From where will we obtain any given movie or TV show we want to watch that is not Netflix/Amazon/etc. original content?
apparently all other web sites like CBS NBC hulu etc. have been removed from the internet and netflix is now the only video streaming site on the internet
Thats the only way to ever hit 50%.
Make television and movies like music with compulsory licensing? Say anything five years and older gets put into the pool of things that can be broadcast/streamed as part of your service as long as you pay the base royalties. Have the same sort of setup as music does but with a much finer grained reporting. That way everyone that should get paid, is paid.
While five years seems a bit long, that's so streaming and rebroadcast doesn't cut too deeply into the DVD/BluRay sales. That should be plenty of time for that to go through the fans that really want their personal copy at release or to wait for the price to fall or discounted.
And this doesn't stop anyone from making separate deals to get it before the five year date and/or add extras to their service like trivia, blooper reels, and so forth.
Again, the point of copyright was to give people a chance to spread culture around before it is outright given away. Seeing as how locked up it's become, anything that speeds and ease of dissemination is a good thing.
Honeymoon's over, free market at work.
Early Netflix, everyone was nodding their heads and saying "lol, sure, give us money and you can borrow our imaginary property" and cooing over li'l baby DVD kiosker. Now streaming is hype, Normals are streaming so hard it's the biggest bandwidth load on the tubes. Now the joke is "netflix and chill", and that's showing up in the contracts. Letting NF rent your imaginary property isn't some cute giggle anymore, it's a threat, if you do distribution yourself or use anyone else. The drafts and proposals are surely phrased a bit different now, they simply have to say "Well, metrics say you'll have X views/usage so it's reasonable we charge you Y.". So NF decided to use their war chest to back out and coast on homebrew.
Commonersumers are sidelined, merely the ore vein patch-of-land covered in battle-torn claim flags in the eternal tug-of-war we call capitalism. Free market "best options" are meaningless under monopoly, and imaginary property (looking at you, pharma) is a great way to lock things down.
Enjoy your 200 channel packages or dozen subscriptions, the honeymoon's over. "Mainstream" isn't just some hipster word, it determines the business world. And with that, I'm pretty sure everyone should find at least one thing in this post disagreeable.
Most of what I watch on Netflix these days is their original content... Its generally well done and more intelligent than the hyper formulaic stuff TV stations churn out these days. 50/50 seems very drastic, but I would like to see more original content.
If market forces are any evidence I am in the minority, but: I just want every piece of media ever under one roof, on instant tap on demand. The only current satisfaction to this desire is torrents, and that's a bit unreliable at best. Netflix has for the most part been reliable and fast. Thus desire.
Now that I am retired in Bellingham, Washington, I miss them. Here in Bellingham, we have the Pickford Film Center, which is the only non-chain art cinema north of Seattle in Washington State. Between going there for movies and keeping busy with my multiple hobbies ans sports, I still have not touched any streaming service for entertainment.
The little video that I look at on line is how-to videos on Youtube on doing stuff as welding, sewing, glass engraving, and so on.
'In fact, I have done my own videos on Youtube such as thins one https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
So I guess we'll start see lots more titles that start their descriptions with the phrase, "not to be confused with the Block Buster...."
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
You want to go that way? Don't start series (ala Jessica Jones) and then abort them after one very successful season. Gives the false impression it wasn't well received.
Staggering production times would help as well. Why should viewers wait for all the shows to start new seasons at the same time?
Fees would have to rise and people really were upset at changes Netflix made in pricing before. They are trying to do as much as possible with the funds that they have.
If copyright was SANE there would be a HUGE library of old programming available. If all the old junk isn't preserved, it would clearly be better content than the modern programming... (which is mostly junk.)
The simple answer is that Netflix benefited by being the 1st. Today every major content owner can create their own service or make exclusive deals from an ever growing list of distributors desperate for content. This is almost EXACTLY like cable/sat channels which is why it has morphed into that direction. The HBO model works best which is why so many channels try to create compelling content of their own before they lose their budgets and become a poor rerun only channel who has to play infomercials all night.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
You have to pick or choose which shows you care to stop watching OR just go back to subscribing to the bloated service that was cable TV because it's getting to the point where the prices are even if you want a good selection of shows.
That's the problem. I want ala-carte service but I'm not about to pay for 12 different ersatz networks and end up paying more than I currently do. I'm certainly not going to pay for Netflix (or Hulu or ...) for just one or two shows. Doesn't matter how good they are.
I miss the days it was just Netflix and Netflix had just about everything.
You'll have to remind me when that was because to me their streaming service has never "had just about everything" or even close to it. I tried and dropped Netflix twice because their content catalog was full of crap I had no interest in (lots of old shitty B movies and old tv shows I didn't care about) and missing a lot of stuff I actually did have some interest in. Maybe it suits your interests better than mine but I found Netflix streaming to be poor value for money.
Guess which of us is more likely to get their wish?
I'm torn on this.
One the one hand, all of the Netflix original shows have been pretty damned good. Way WAY better than the average tripe on cable. So yeah, keep on keeping on.
On the other hand, this is a clear conflict of interest. One company should not control the creation and distribution platforms. There's really nothing to stop Netflix from jacking their prices through the roof and holding the next season of *insert your favorite show* ransom unless you pay through the nose.
I would love to see the company spin off the production biz into it's own entity. Netflix could still have "first-dibs," and after a few months, license the rights to Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc. It's really better for everyone this way. For the consumer, you know exactly what you're getting, there's no content barriers or true exclusives, and you don't have to jump through hoops enabling and disabling different services month-to-month to make sure you can see the shows you want. And for the corporations, this would give Netflix an additional revenue stream, as well as smoothing out subscriptions as people no longer play the aforementioned enable/disable game with the service.
This signature is false.
Pushing Netflix and HBO into the same shape. I suppose I'll see Netflix try for stronger DRM, and hopefully HBO gets more edge servers.
I want an service that aggregates the libraries across the major streaming providers, lets me build a queue, and then automatically sorts my queue by provider AND enrolls/cancels me automatically so that the next 5 to 10 shows on my queue are always available. Basically a smart rolling enrollment system. Watch a couple Netflix shows, then cancel Netflix and watch HBO for two months, then cancel and over to Amazon, etc.
Because the rest of their Library is an absolute JOKE.
But I don't subscribe anymore because after their successful IP blocking this spring. All I can get access to now are my local version of Netflix. It sucked when they opened it and it still sucks. But I all fairness, it was going down hill for the American version too before I quit.
Well, it had a good run.
Right now I find plenty of stuff I like to see on Youtube.
I wanted to show the kids a few old-school classics (Jason & the Argonauts, Treasure of Sierra Madre, etc.) but no dice (when I looked) for streaming on Netflix or Amazon or Comcast. Seems like a market failure when I can't pay a reasonable subscription fee to stream stuff like this. I know that movie theaters and airlines and cable channels aren't paying big $$ to show these, and I'm not going to run out and buy them. It seems like the copyright holders would rather earn nothing than "too little". I don't get the reasoning.
50% original content + 50% shitty movies = mediocrity.
The issue is cost. If I have to have a subscription to Hulu and Prime on top of Netflix, that adds up. And there's a ton of content that's available on all three of those providers. If you have all three of those, you're getting dangerously close to the price point of subscription TV. Between the subscription costs and the ISP fees.
And yes, we can only watch one at a time, but if we can only find enough content for a few weeks out of the year and it's spread across the year, that makes it a shit value. The old netflix was great. You could get 2 DVDs at a time and so you'd have something to watch several ngihts a week and there was always something worth watching available.
It's not market forces, it's those exclusivity agreements. The DoJ really needs to look into the price fixing that's been going on. It's decidedly anti-consumer to have these exclusivity contracts that prevent all of the services from having access to the same programming.
They wouldn't necessarily have all of the same programming, but that would be based upon what the provider thinks the subscribers want rather than on what hasn't already been locked down by one provider or another.
At the rate they seem to be losing licensed content without a replacement, they'll accomplish their desired ratio without lifting a finger.
I already avoid Netflix original content - crafted to appeal to the lowest common denominator. More of it, even if it would not be displacing other content, is not appealing to me. It is content I am decidedly not interested in. If the content listings end up being glutted with Netflix originals it will become a much less valuable service for me.
Their library is now small enough, do not cancel even more shows!
I'm guessing that if they need that much content produced it will be stretching the term 'original'.
What makes Netflix think that they are great content creators and that I want to buy their content? I love them as an aggregator. Their homegrown content is just meh - sometimes good but mostly uninteresting to me.
There is a long and distinguished history of guys who develop an audience for doing one thing and then get the wacky idea that they can parley that into being great content creators (AOL for providing internet connectivity, Yahoo for providing search, Twitter for their platform). There must be something about the economics of the idea that make it super-attractive, because every idiot tech company eventually takes a swing at it (and mostly fails).
3 shows?
Netflix woke everyone else up, now they all want a slice of the revenue.
Well, Netflix is fast approaching a 50-50 split of content. The non-Netflix content outside of the US has always been abysmal and it isn't getting better - it is getting worse.
So I guess Netflix doesn't really need to spend more on own content, they simply need to keep spending little on other content and that 50-50 split will soon be reached.
That's because the distributors are being dicks and won't negotiate content. They'll lose in the end.
I'm not going to flit from Hulu, to Amazon, to Yahoo, to Apple, to whoever the hell else to find your stupid movie/show. Most content these days it total crap anyway... But if it's not on Netflix, there's a 90% chance I'm not going to bother watching it.
One of the reasons I was interested back then in Netflix was because of the old series and movies.. I'm not interested in most of they 'original content'..
Much of Netflix's original content is excellent. If they want to do more they can shut up and take my money!
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
my vpntorrentasaurus plex. Seriously. DIY.
They're going to have to start upping the quality of content. Their rude rip-off of the Brits' "House of Cards" has been a long, drawn-out mess, with none of the political logic in the original...and Spacey is LOUSY as a corrupt politician. We watch a lot more British shows than we do Netflix, and what we DO enjoy on Netflix are recent series we wouldn't otherwise get (think Miss Fisher's Mysteries, or Doc Martin).
If they favor their own content, licensing will be cheaper, but they'll bear ALL the production costs, and with a corporate cheapskate like Netflix that means YouTube quality scripts, and production values.
The pricks have lost sight of the usefulness of their original idea.
What made Netflix great was selection. That's why they're so widely subscribed.
yes indeed netflix MUST carry ALL content because why??? so what if you have to surf somewhere else to watch tv shows?
That won't be good for subscribers, who will get less for their money.
normal human beings can only watch one show at a time, maybe you are advocating on the part of some other species ?
I was waiting for the monkeys to come flying out of your @$$ proclaiming that it must be "an essential human right" or an "EU or UN declaration" that Netflix must carry online everything they have ever had in their catalog in their entire existence.
Oh well...maybe the next post I read?
It's not market forces, it's those exclusivity agreements. The DoJ really needs to look into the price fixing that's been going on. It's decidedly anti-consumer to have these exclusivity contracts that prevent all of the services from having access to the same programming.
They wouldn't necessarily have all of the same programming, but that would be based upon what the provider thinks the subscribers want rather than on what hasn't already been locked down by one provider or another.
The US DoJ is not likely to do anything about these contracts, unless you want even more government intrusion & "forced socialism" into your life. Do ya punk?
Those contracts tend to be exclusive because they are awarded by the content rights holder to the highest bidder that meets whatever selection criteria the rights holder wants to meet. Selling rights to distribute content online is not like selling gasoline or books or heads of lettuce. If multiple outlets carried the same content, then the price for that content should go down; think Economics 101 and the Laws of Supply and Demand. The rights holder most likely has a fiduciary interest to earn the most possible from the rights they hold for the investors they serve; any US for-profit corporation is like that.
Less money made from distribution may "signal" the studios and investors that making less content is a better move; limited supply equates to more profit (Economics 101). Are you willing to sacrifice the variety of content that is available online of less content at a lower price? I doubt it. Remember, everybody involved in the process of content creation and production needs to be paid; none of them will work for free. Almost every aspect of content creation and production has a Union component to it, and those Unions want to make money for their members so they all fight to get better and better "residuals" for their members. Do you blame them? Or are you truly a socialist or communist at heart?
Exclusive contracts are not uncommon in the US. The same brand of gasoline isn't sold on every street corner in town, but most brands offer very similar "value for money" so there is still some competition based on price to be found even if you can't find your favorite brand everywhere you go. If books were sold everywhere, prices should come down due to increased supply, but then there would be an oversupply of books (excess inventory sitting around unsold) and publishers would have to struggle to make a profit or leave the business. Food is a basic commodity with little differentiation, and so it can be widely sold at lower prices and it's perishable nature prevents inventory buildups.
Online content tends to be unique by it's very nature. Watching Star Trek: TOS (for example purposes only) on 1 service is likely to be the same "experience" as watching it on another service; they are both showing the same show. As a content rights holder I would want the most $$ I can make from distribution since there may be lingering production costs still to pay, investors that still need to be paid, definitely "residuals" ("rerun royalties") have to be paid to various parties (and those performers want more and more $$ in every production in which they work), and content rights holders definitely want to make a profit for their investors and "owners".
Sure, it sounds simple: Increase distribution (Star Trek: TOS on every online streaming service!!) to maximize my profits, but it actually decreases the maximum possible profit because the $$ received from each distributor, normally as a single set price for the right to distribute for a fixed period of time (easier & more accurate accounting than pay-per-view remuneration), will be less because each distributor will point to the others and say, "Hey! They got it also so we are not likely to get as many viewers. So why should we pay so much for our distribution rights?"
In the end it all comes down to Economics 101: limited supply ("scarcity"...gotta get it from only this place and right now) equals higher prices and more profit for very unique products like "content".
The only reason I subscribe to netflix is for the non-original content. 50% ratio is too high for my liking, I'll probably jump ship before that.
yes indeed netflix MUST carry ALL content because why??? so what if you have to surf somewhere else to watch tv shows?
Because I don't want to pay $xxx/month for Netflix, of which I'll only watch a small portion. And I don't want to also pay $yyy/month for Amazon Prime when I only want to watch a few titles from there. And $zzz/month for Hulu. And more for HBO. I just want one streaming service and have all the things there.
Considering the quality of the content its probably for the best anyway.