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Maybe (HBO) Max Just Isn’t Worth It (www.wired.com)
submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Maybe (HBO) Max Just Isn’t Worth It::Warner Bros. Discovery's latest earnings call reveals Max shed 700,000 subscribers in the past three months, even as it made money. That might work for Wall Street, but what about viewers?

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[-] [email protected] 112 points 8 months ago

I just for the life of me cannot understand why all these companies thought it was a good idea to invest the time, money, resources, infrastructure, maintenance, and so many other things into developing their own service. Instead of just pawning off their content to some other sap who has to do all that shit for you. And making them pay you a pretty penny because you know they want your content. It's just such incredible short-sightedness from companies that are constantly just chasing the biggest dollar. Like if anyone thought about it for a minute, all these companies would see that it wasn't worth it to develop these services. They got scared cuz Netflix made some of its own good content. But realistically, if they just calm down they would have realized that Netflix can't make bangers forever. And they're still going to be invested in buying content from you. These big company should have gotten together and figured out how to reduce the price of cable so people fucking sign up for it and keep watching the mass amount of fucking ads.

[-] [email protected] 53 points 8 months ago

"Man, selling books online is so much hassle, we'll let Amazon do it for us..."

Borders Books, 2001.

[-] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago

The difference is, Borders wasn't creating books. They were just the middleman. It would be more like if individual publishers decided to all start their own book stores to compete with Amazon.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago

To be fair, they also did a Borders Rewards program that didn't cost anything. They didn't change the prices of the books, but they gave them huge discounts. Which meant the 40-50% of can't from Borders cut. And they pushed them HARD. Everyone had coupons. It was thought that this would get them loyalty over Barnes and Noble. It took maybe a full quarter for them to realize and backtrack the huge discounts, but it was too late. People used them for the coupons, and then bought everything else online or at Barnes and Noble. It was a fast track to profit loss.

Source: I worked there before the Amazon partnership, and after the board admitted they needed to walk back the rewards.

Amateurs making key decisions.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago

They saw Netflix was making a lot more money from their content and wanted s piecd of that pie. Now they’re slowly realizing it takes quite a while to get there.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago

Yeah but Netflix paid them for that content so it their fault they didn't ask for a "fair price" or something. Also I guess they wanted to fuck over the artists by fudging with streaming numbers and pay them nothing.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Netflix doesn't pay per stream.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago

Yep. Costs a bunch of money upfront and ongoing to operate a streaming service, and even more to make even just an alright one. Plus you split consumers which will naturally give you and competitors fewer subscribers over all. All of that just to get paid directly instead of just getting free money, even if less per-view.

[-] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

much less per view. They tried this initially. Studios had stuff on Netflix remember? Back when netflix was worth subscribing to.

This was because netflix was just some free extra money on the side, kind of like selling a tv show to a foreign network. But then netflix ate into their actual money from network broadcast. So now they need to get serious and charge netflix a license fee for the show that reflects that.

They upped the license fees for the show and netflix just didn't pick them up. All your favourite shows dropped from netflix and the studios had to build their own services.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

The studios did not have to build their own services. And a lot of them willingly pulled their shows from places like Netflix to build their own services. And there was enough players in the game at the time when Netflix began dropping a shows that someone else like prime or hulu was willing to spend a lot of money to pick them up.

From my point of view, even if overall it was potentially less money. That doesn't factor in just the cost of operating your own content. They have to hire a whole new division to develop the website and app and streaming service and pay all those people. Or they could have just sold it to someone else to do all that work. And said we know what we have. We know you want friends on your service. Lol.

And even on top of that studios had no idea how lucrative streaming services were going to be. So they should have just renegotiated better contracts for the content they were selling. A lot of them ended as it was which is when they got pulled from places like Netflix. And I absolutely guarantee you Netflix would have been able to pay way more for something like Parks and rec or the office if they wanted to. Because Netflix knows just a sheer numbers game on those types of shows.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Or they could have just sold it to someone else to do all that work

they tried to, netflix chose not to take the deals. Netflix chose to invest their money in netflix content production instead of relying on third parties.

I know you want to frame this as netflix could be a provider and everything else just produce content for it - you need to understand that netflix chose not to invest in paying for third party content, favouring it's own shows. that was a netflix choice.

the prices that netflix used to pay for things like the office and parks and rec were not "can actually fund development" levels, it was "make some extra money after the costs were already paid by cable" levels

[-] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

They all hoped their own service would dominate and incorporate all competition.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Which is short-sighted.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

I'm pretty sure that's how Hulu started. A joint venture through several companies to stream all their shows. Problem is once Disney got in everyone else tried to spin up their own and cash out of Hulu.

It'll be investing to see what alternatives crop up one piracy makes it's comeback.

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[-] [email protected] 32 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Once they fired the old CEO that partnered with Warner Brothers and had a streaming-first mindset, the service has gone way down hill. Most of the new content is dumb shit like syndicated reality shows.

I may tune back in for the occasional series releases like Rightous Gemstones, but then I'm out.

[-] [email protected] 21 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

It seems like the interface took a nose dive too. It’s a lot more sluggish and harder to find new things to watch.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

The interface absolutely became way worse overnight. You're right about that.

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[-] [email protected] 28 points 8 months ago

[-] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

A different kind of pirate!

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[-] [email protected] 23 points 8 months ago

I’m kinda over paying for it. I really only got it for Jon Oliver and it’s basically free on YouTube so idk. Also on my computer I click on my Max bookmark and it’s like “hey we’re not HBO max anymore! Now it’s just Max! Redirecting you now…”

What? Am I going crazy? What is even the point of that.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago

Rebranding is a way of indicating that they’ve done something (hopefully worth paying more for) without really doing anything at all. Great way for a new executive to make a non-decision.

[-] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago

They did do something though, dropped a lot of content and added in shitty reality shows. I didn't renew a few months ago when the price went up and the quality of content went down.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

You forgot the large price increase they paired witht he drop in quality content.

[-] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago

It never was. I canceled after the end of Game of Thrones and never saw a point in paying their extremely high prices. Just like my house never had HBO growing up, I saw no need to get it now

[-] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago

Honestly I stopped playing video games a few years back and picked it back up during the writes strike. Dropped like $4,000 on a 7800x3d/4090 build. Cancelled all my steaming services , HBO Netflix, all of em, and signed up for game pass instead. I'm done watching stuff on them, if a series comes out I really want to see I'll grab my wooden leg and eye patch from the back of th closet.

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[-] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago

I waited for the service to be available in my country for a very long time, now I don't care 🏴‍☠️

[-] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

Well yeah, I've watched the new season of Harley Quinn, what else am I waiting around for?

[-] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago

Our Flag Means Death is pretty good.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

I don't know, because all I do is pirate. I used to use Netflix five or six years ago, but it went to shit enough where pirating just became easier again.

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[-] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

When I saw that Blue Beetle was out on physical before streaming, I just went ahead and pulled the plug.

I prefer physical anyway, and if they aren't streaming the newest content, what's even the point?

[-] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Because it's a lot cheaper and more convenient?

[-] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

Fuck em

[-] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

In the east EU I am paying 4,66EUR monthly for HBO Max service, which we share in 5 households. That is under 1EUR for each household. I will gladly pay that instead of downloading whatever already is on HBO Max.

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this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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