Slashdot Mirror
Netflix Says People Watch Same Amount of Movies Regardless of Perceived Quality or Depth (news.com.au)
Two of the most common issues people have with Netflix is: the movie catalog is shrinking, and the quality of the movies aren't that great anymore. Netflix says it is aware of those issues, and it thinks, in reality, those factors don't really matter much as people end up watching the same amount of movies as they always have. From a report:According to the Netflix exec, subscribers spend about the same time watching movies on the service regardless of the depth or perceived quality of the movie library. "No matter what, we end up with about one-third of our watching being movies," he told the audience. Mr Sarandos cited two contrasting examples of the United States and Canada as proof of such behavior. In Canada, Netflix has five major deals with movie studios to use their content while in the US the company basically has none, with the exception of the recently signed Disney deal. Despite US subscribers having far less access to movies from big studios, both countries spend roughly the same proportion of their time on the service watching movies. Netflix believes that by the time many blockbuster movies make it onto the platform -- many months after being released in the cinema -- a majority of fans have already seen them. "If you were passionate (about a movie), you've already seen it," he said.
I havent watched anything on netflix in weeks precisely because I cant find anything with any quality or depth.
Am strongly considering cancelling my subscription.
This ala carte thing is really backfiring - as much as I dislike Comcast, there is something to be said for getting everything in one bill. When you add up netflix, HBOgo, hulu, CBS, Amazon, and your choice of Directv NOW, Playstation TV, or that Dish/sling offering plus a decent internet connection, its already more than the tv+net package from the cable company and the content we want constantly disappears or has some goofy restriction placed on it. The media companies are making this WORSE...
Until they cancel their subscription like I have.
To a certain extent I agree. I'm paying $9 a month and get to watch on two devices at the same time. I don't expect to get everything in the world for that price. Frankly, I am happy watching reruns of some of my favorite show once in a while or letting the kids watch an occasional movie. If the price doubled, I'd drop it in a heartbeat, but for $108 a year, I am working 2 hours a year to get a couple hundred hours of entertainment. Seems like a good deal for me.
If the same holds true for television -- that people watch the same amount regardless of quality -- it explains why I get 140 channels and can't find a show worth watching.
From personal experience, when we want to watch a movie on short notice we will go to Netflix first. We've generally got a pool of movies in mind we're meaning to watch. If Netflix doesn't have any of them (a situation which has become more common than not) we'll usually just pick one that is there out of convenience. "Lots of movies, just not the ones you want" is not a great situation for Netflix to be proud of or even satisfied with. It's like they're becoming the online video equivalent of the stereotypical used car salesman from old sitcoms hawking their huge fleet of trashy cars, and 38 rusty Toyotas is not better than the BMW you wanted.
"Hands Of Manos" Its public domain. Imagine the profits they would get!
I somewhat agree. Netflix not having a movie i like wont stop me from watching movies as often, but it will make me stop watching movies on netflix as often. If you want to pretend customers will pay the same amount no matter how bad the selection and quality gets, go for it... I guess we'll see.
A good alternative to Netflix comes along... color me gone.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
We did that to cable a decade ago and haven't looked back. I do miss the banal water cooler conversation about what one made up character did to another character, except when I'm in the break room. For the cost of cable, I can go to a sports bar and talk to real people while watching a game twice a week. Netflix entertains the kids, which is good enough. Of course, the media cartel is deliberately bleeding Netflix, but they're deliberately bleeding us, so fuck them.
And, the Netflix original material isn't any worse than the shit on TV.
According to the Netflix exec, subscribers spend about the same time watching movies on the service regardless of the depth or perceived quality of the movie library. "No matter what, we end up with about one-third of our watching being movies," he told the audience.
Ok, but how many raw hours is that? An unchanging one-third might sound fine, until you realize that it was one-third of 100 last year, but one-third of 10 this year, because the number of subscribers went down.
I don't know how/if Netflix's subscriber base has changed over the years, I'm simply stating that the metric chosen doesn't show squat.
Netflix, Amazon Prime, and for whats missing in the first two... P1r@736@y.
back when we had half a dozen broadcast stations most of the time the movies sucked. i never liked the western much but watched them along with the WW2 and others because sometimes there was nothing to do and you sat on the couch and stared at the box in front of you
I cancelled earlier in November for this very reason. They've got their market all wrong. The biggest benefit Netflix had was the volume of movies that you haven't watched but had some interest in. To recharacterize thier users as people who watch what they want prior to netflix, is a big mistake because that's where netflix had its biggest value.
If this is the real reality, the price of netflix should come down to reflect the diminished quality and selection.
I'm at amazon now. Amazon and chill.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
> If they offered separate "mini" subscriptions for only those shows, I'd probably do so.
They do. Its called itunes (and amazon prime).
But are you willing to pay a couple of dollars per episode?
You watch one 22-episode season and that's like 5 months of netflix.
I am watching 100% less movies on Netflix now than I was about 8 years ago. I cancelled the service due to their shrinking movie library and low quality. It actually pushed me back to cable. DVR > Netflix.
Typical greedy corporate logic. Just because I will eat the same number of low-grade Chinese-imported chemical cheese puffs does not mean I would not prefer to eat fresh organic locally-made cheese puffs. Eventually your customers will realize there are better options for the same money and cancel their subscriptions.
the movie catalog is shrinking, and the quality of the movies aren't that great anymore.
I've had a Netflix subscription twice and I've cancelled it twice. Why? Glad you asked. Reason #1 was that I wasn't getting adequate value for the money. No it wasn't hugely expensive but the catalog of shows was mostly older movies, B movies, or stuff that I had little to no interest in. Their original programming simply didn't hold my interest. Reason #2 was that it was a pain in the ass to find anything interesting to watch. Their navigation system was annoying and clumsy at best. It took WAY too long to find something interesting to watch and their suggestions were usually not very good even after a lot of training about what I liked and didn't. When you add Reason #1 into the mix with Reason #2 you have a pretty irritating needle-in-a-haystack problem. Just not worth the bother.
I like the idea of Netflix but it just wasn't worth the price to me given its current state. Maybe in time that will change.
There seem to be a lot of problems with this argument, at least as presented in the blurb (TFA is blocked at work.)
First, the amount of time spent watching stuff is a poor metric by itself. What you really want to know is the amount of enjoyment people get out of the service. Admittedly that is very hard to measure accurately, which is why they want to use "hours spent watching" as a more easily determinable value. However they shouldn't forget that the map is not the territory.
As long as people are subscribed to the service they're going to feel compelled to get something out of it. It's the old complaint of "a hundred channels and nothing is on", and yet people kept watching, at least until something better came along. For a lot of people if they have Netflix and they feel like watching a movie they're going to browse around until they find _something_.
And there's a strong corollary, if people feel like they _aren't_ getting their money's worth out, they're probably inclined to cancel the service. Which means suddenly they're not being measured in your survey anymore.
Of course what's being measured here is the balance between movies and TV, which _might_ not be affected by people deciding there aren't enough good movies on. However the above would still hold true if their (non-original) TV content had also seen a similar decline. I know a couple shows i used to watch have disappeared off of Netflix. Are there actually any statistics about the number/quality of TV shows they've had available over time?
Finally, saying that "a majority of fans" have already seen blockbuster movies is just dumb. Of course the "fans" who were "passionate" about the movie have already seen it. They're probably also the people who are going to buy it on DVD or BluRay. They are not your customers in this particular instance. The people who are waiting until the movie is on Netflix/Cable/broadcast TV are the people who said "that sounds kind of cool" but never got around to watching it before it left theatres. Given that they weren't gung-ho about it in the first place they're probably not going to want to rush out and buy the DVD sight-unseen, they're just going to wait until they can rent it or catch it on something they have a subscription for. There may be no one particular blockbuster movie that audience especially cares about, but if your service doesn't carry _any_ of the blockbusters then i expect that that's a serious mark against it in the eyes of many consumers.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Perhaps people watch the same amount of TV regardless of quality- but it won't all be Netflix.
It used to be Netflix was king and everything I watched was on Netflix. Over time, we've since acquired subscriptions to Amazon Prime (the wife has student account) and Hulu. As Netflix has fewer things worth watch, we spend more time watching Netflix's rivals. (Unfortunately Hulu also has fewer quality shows now too).
We still watch a similar amount of TV (not a lot, we've never been a big TV family) the difference is, most of it isn't on Netflix anymore. Still have the Netflix subscription, but they need to be careful, if we were to decide to drop one of the three services, if Netflix no longer has quality shows they might be the one to go. (in reality Hulu will probably go first after we watch Season 2 of the Path).
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
...or I'm getting truly senile, hope not. At least I don't think so, but it seems to me that Netflix have a habit of removing my "rating" settings after a while, and presents the same movies I've already seen 1 year before on Netflix as my reccomendations.
What I have noticed though - is that they now change the POSTERS for each movie regularly so you essentially get tricked into believing that it's a new movie, but it's just the same movie with different posters and snapshots.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
The one thing I really miss about the mailed disk version of Netflix was its recommendation system. It always recommended good movies that I never got to see. The reason why I continued to subscribe to Netflix was because of its recommendation system. I really wish they had everything, even if most movies were pay-to-stream.
No, I will not work for your startup
I've had Netflix for what seems forever, at least for 10 years or better. Bragging about that buys me zero credibility and a negative balance of /. stock, but here's why I think they are right: people seriously don't give a shit after a while and will side with convenience, comfort, and instant availability to satisfy all of our Alice in Chains 'feed-my-eyes' quest for immediate entertainment anymore, even if it's at the cost of some pixel depth and resolution crispness.
Not a single person can't tell me after spending almost the comparable amount of swiping time 'looking' for a show that it takes to actually watch one, you just finally pick something and watch it.
Heck, I can't tell you how many times I just wanted to watch a show I was jonsing to put on, that I own in that cute BluRay-DVD bundle pack, but was too lazy to go and physically put it in, so I sufficed the average HD/SD quality Netflix had to offer _for_the_same_show_.
Netflix has got it right and doesn't need to back up their claim with all the data you give them away to pillage, do big data on, run through Hadoop or whatever machine learning foo they have: We are going to watch it all in the end, regardless of what is/isnt there and what it's quality is, as long as it doesn't look too much like a 1980's Twisted Sister bootleg off a first gen tape PVR. That's how we are wired to act about this shit anymore. Anyone having a high-res flame war here is just wrong IMHO.
It's not unreasonable to assume that overall, Netflix customers tend to spend a certain number of hours each week or month watching their content. And regardless of how compelling the content might be? People still have to eventually get some sleep, or get up and go to school or work in the morning every weekday. Binge-watching probably doesn't even put much of a dent in these averages either. (I suspect binge-watchers tend to watch a lot LESS television after they just finished binging on a series. They've got the guilt factor of realizing they put aside a lot of other stuff they really need to do, for starters. Plus, there's that feeling of let-down when a great show they were into enough to binge-watch is out of episodes, and they realize you can't find anything else right then that seems nearly as compelling.)
If you really dislike everything you watch on Netflix, after trying movies you never heard of, you're eventually going to cancel and no longer be part of their statistics.
The way to really build a customer base that's loyal, though, is to offer enough *original* content of quality. I agree with Netflix's assertion that the big, blockbuster movies are the ones most people have already seen, so they don't really get as many replays on streaming services as one might think. But what people REALLY like paying for is good new content. HBO figured this out a long time ago, which is why you saw "Game of Thrones" and many other original series coming from them. Their service was slipping into irrelevance until they made that change.
Netflix would be wise not to waste a lot of money signing deals with big studios, but rather, to produce more of their own original movies and TV episodes.
when the
Netflix's shrinking catalog may have a correlation in the shrinking growth in its subscriber base. It may not matter much to its remaining subscribers, but it very well could matter to people choosing not to sign up, or to people like me that dropped the service.
Wondering if this applies to porn as well....
I mean, what could go wrong? "People buy our stuff whether it's good or not! Surely, they will continue to do that forever. Dividends for everyone!"
I have, for some time now, been wrestling with the urge to cut the Netflix cord. The catalog has shrunk, the caliber of the movies and programs is about 80% "filler" - its just plain garbage. I think that maybe its just me - there is almost nothing in the catalog that I want to watch any more - and I am multiligual - I can choose from Swedish, German, French, English, Danish and Spanish language movies. For those who watch only a single language their selection is even more limited. I'm pretty much disgusted and even if it were free it is really difficult to find anything worth investing my time to watch. Truly, were it not for my wife who watches TV a little more than I do, I would simply cut the cord and just pay for a movie that I want to watch every now and then. The only thing that Netflix has going for them is that they don't assault me with advertising. Period. I think I'm just going to cut the cord and send the message. Its not about the $10 per month - its about the diet of pure garbage in they serve up. I can absolutely live without it.
I'm contemplating on cancelling Netflix just for their shitty quality (that is so visible on a 4K with HDR colors screen! And I'm on a 350Mbit/s connection so it's not the bitrate). Added this to what you mentioned regarding hard to find _interesting_ and being settling on _something_ is not making the service compelling enough to stay subscribed.
This just in...new study shows that Netflix is nothing more than mindless entertainment.
Gee, I'm shocked.
Of course, this corporate mentality also highlights the issue of willfull ignorance these days. Consumers are ignorant, and don't care. Corporations don't care, especially when they know they're selling a rather addictive product that's also perpetuated by popularity hype.
How did we get here? Well, tends to happen when a society values and rewards shallow traits like narcissism over actual skill and talent. Go figure.
Eventually, if the quality stays low, people will learn to do something else with their time. My wife and I have transitioned to watching TV shows on Hulu instead of Netflix. The main reason we still have netflix is for the kids shows.
Get off my lawn
I've seen this trap at another company that "makes decisions based on data."
1. decider: make decision
2. decider: scrape some data off the floor and build a story around it.
3. skeptic: "The data supports my hypothesis as well or better than it supports yours, and my hypothesis argues against your decision." / decider: "fine. But that's just like, your opinion, man. Where's your data? Do I need to remind you of our corporate principle?"
Data-based decision-making relies on a good intent and a lack of manipulative smarm / sophisticated credibility management that doesn't exist in people who bill themselves as professional decision-makers.
When I get home from work, I plop in my chair and veg out. I've done that for as long as I've had a job to get home from. But I'm not doing the same crap. I went from watching Primetime crap to watching non-primetime crap on the DVR, to watching Netflix. Just because I'm doing some form of mindless entertainment doesn't mean it will be Netflix. If their content drops enough, there's Hulu, or if not that, something else.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
So I have a different perspective on this. Not only have big movies been disappearing. So have many of my favorite TV series that have been there for some time. So true, I have spent the same PROPORTION of my Netflix time on movies vs TV series as before. I've just spent less TOTAL time on Netflix since it is no longer having what I want. I end up looking at HBO GO (even with its terrible UI) or something else. Right now, Netflix probably sees "yeah, total bandwidth use down". But they will lose subscribers if they continue to ditch big movies and drop back catalog TV series. Whose fault will that be? And no, I've never watched a Netflix original.
The problem is too much choice and not enough quality material. If you have 4 TV stations, like the UK use to have, each of them has enough revenue to be able to produce quality programs that a large segment of the population will enjoy. When you have 100+ stations the audience is fragmented and most of the stations have less money since there re more staff to support and so they can only afford reruns or crap new shows which are cheap to make.
The same is true for streaming. If you look at the content on Netflix in Canada there are no real alternatives since Shomi shutdown and as a result the content they have is much better than the US. If you have 5 streaming companies then that same content will be split five ways and the money each has for new programming will be much less because now that same revenue has to support 5 sets of admin and support staff etc.
Why make customers truly happy when you can still turn a profit by doing the bare minimum?!
While I was a Netflix subscriber (before the VPN ban), I was already appalled by the lack of quality content.
The way I handled it was by using the worthless Netflix shows as background noise (ie: doing the chores) and reserved the few good ones for when I had a couple of hours to chill-out in front of the screen.
I know for a fact that's a quite common habit around here.
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
My use of Netflix is down to about 20% of what it was 4 years ago. Multiple days will pass between using the service.
For now, the TV shows are okay but once BBC sets up is own private service I may start dropping netflix for 6 months a year.
And the only other service I get is Amazon Prime but I rarely use it for shows because their interface leads me to pay per view shows half the time and that pisses me off. So I use them for the cheap shipping.
Actually, most of the "lost" netflix hours go to original Youtube now.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I understand NF decision to focus on original content.
From their perspective it makes sense, and from what I've seen, they are trying a "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" method.
Most of their original content isn't that good.
However, some of it is exceptional.
Also, there are loads of vintage Hollywood classics on NF, as well as docs that are really good.
When I hear people say they can't find anything to watch on NF I assume their interests in film are likely to be the sort of garbage you can get at Redbox.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
It's funny to watch executives try to reason from statistical evidence through to a valid interpretation of that evidence. I mean "funny", not in the ironic sense, but in the clownshow sense.
So it has not occurred to any of these bozos that that American viewers who care about the the size of the movie catalog do not use Netflix but choose an alternative, and Canadians who care about the size of the catalog do choose Netflix? American thinks, "Netflix sucks, too small a catalog, I'm renting elsewhere." Canadian thinks: "Hey, Netflix has a good size catalog, I'll go with them". It fits the evidence which Netflix offers perfectly. It's not a proven fact, it is an alternative explanation which must be excluded on the basis of evidence before concluding that the audiences do not care about the catalog. It might be the people who are not your customers who do care.
MBA : noun, A magical power which greatly increases the ratio of income to brains.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
The most important thing about my TV time is: I try to limit by TV time to hours a day. I probably average 10 hours a week. Some of that time I like to spend watching something great, but I'm quite happy at times watching mindless drivel to 'decompress.'
I'm simply aware of the difference between entertainment and watching something that is a great artistic and/or uplifting acheivement, or is for some reason is highly regarded as a 'must watch.' Many times watching something in the great artistic etc. category I find to be disappointing, unsatisfying, or too much 'work.'
But because of this and my time limitation, I don't worry too much about missing something "I must watch."
I'm sure Netflixs figured out a long time ago that most people operate in a similar fashion; I just thunk it out and am more aware of it than the typical person.
At some point the bean counters in Netflix prevailed. Same gross sales, less overhead.
If the movie you want to watch is on Netflix and that's all you got, then you're going to watch it on Netflix. Most people are not going to run out and buy a disc for a movie they want to see once, and most people don't care if it's theatre-quality if it's on their TV, so this whole subject is pointless, really. Seriously, do you think the average person is going to think "..well, the bitrate and quantization are not quite up to my standards, so I'm going to spend the next hour or so setting up an Amazon subscription so I can stream it from them instead, or maybe I'll spend the next two hours driving to Best Buy to see if I can buy this movie I want to watch once". Nope, they'll think this: "Whatever, it's not great, but at least I get to watch it, who cares anyway, it's only Netflix, what do I expect?"
I use Netflix to watch that odd movie or show I really wanted to see when it first came out but somehow missed. I caught a good part of the first season of Daredevil on Netflix over the Thanksgiving holiday.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
In other news, humans eat about the same amount of food whether it is nutritious or junk.
So basically they are saying that since people consumption is the same they will not increase that consumption by adding the content consumers want because they are ok. This is why people freak out when we talk about AI and interpreting data. Netflix will not add movies into the catalog because of stupid legal blocks. People want to choose what to see, have options, instead, they will say 'it is ok' because they are investing in a lot of original content (which is great) but a lot of good movies will not be watched in Netflix simply because they don't care.
I agree: The DVD disk physical quality is getting worse.
But I do like the breadth of the DVD catalog.
And then there's handbrake :).
I don't even own a TV!
Yes, I am that guy. (Or is this fake news?)
"Whatever most people will quietly settle for is exactly what they will get." -- Corporate America
If all the grocery stores sold was bread, I suppose most of us would just eat bread. That doesn't make it a good thing. Netflix badly needs a real competitor. Perhaps turning movies and television shows into commodities and forcing all distributors to get the same non-exclusive deals might work. i.e., if I want to distribute a movie, I pay the same per viewing to do so as anyone else.
The other day my wife and I realized the same thing---we hardly watch Netflix anymore and we are considering cancelling it altogether.
I find Crackles ad-supported free content is better than Netflix. They continue to update their selection with movies and TV shows from the 80's that I love. It's certainly enough to fill the few times a week that I don't have something else to do. The majority of my viewing time is dedicated to Twitch and Youtube.
Random shout-out: RealRussiaBlog (https://www.youtube.com/user/realrussiablog) on Youtube is currently in the middle of a video series covering his cross-country road trip in America.
If you're moto is:
"If we offer you shit, you'll still be here"
It just tells me you have no respect for your customers.
Netflix is admitting that it has failed. "Our customers are willing to settle for anything we dish up." is an effort to redefine who their customers are/will be. I had both their streaming and mail service until I literally ran out of movies to stream - and that's with me only streaming a couple per month. Recently, their mail service has removed from the "New Arrivals" section the option of looking at movies released (to netflix) in the current week. As far as I can figure, if I want to add new movies to my queue,I have to look through their entire line-up. Compare that to when previously, I could check new arrivals weekly for anything of interest. I will be canceling when I've exhausted my queue.
I actually canceled my Netflix streaming account a couple years ago, and went DVD-only. Then about 6 months ago, I realized that I was spending about $3/movie that way. I switched to VidAngel at that time, and have been thrilled with the service. $1 rentals, streamed, and with a full selection of all the latest studio hits. Only drawback is that the first movie cost $20.
And yeah, this is a slashvertisement; if you access via this link, I get a free movie if you sign up. If you don't want to give me a free movie, use this link instead.
Most younger generations don't like to watch old things. :)
If you were passionate (about a movie), you've already seen it," he said wrongly trying to squeeze an extra dollars from consumers.
Passianate about a movie vs MPAA/DMCA. Due to the laws, I'd rather wait.... and wait like the rest of you with me.
I studied myself, and noticed the same thing: that my choices were a direct function of the quality of goods available. So I fired all the low quality options (and haven't looked back).
Also, if there's a giant bag of potato chips in the house, my odds of cooking a healthy meal go down by about 50%. So I fired the chips, too.
Netflix is right: all lizard brains are created equal.
The NetFlix Exec is right but if people can't watch what they want to or have to resort to watching crap then Netflix are opening themselves up for competition and people cancelling.
I think a large movie cataloge is needed to lure new customers in - look what we have, come join us.
Once they're in, it indeed doesn't matter that much anymore.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.