Every major merger announcement includes this obvious lie.

It will lead to more choice ... in videos to watch. It will reduce choice in where to watch them or who to pay for the pleasure.

Considering the words they&#x27;re using across the announcement, it seems they&#x27;re well aware what this will trigger, everything seems carefully chosen so someone can later point at this announcement and say &quot;See, we think this will add MORE user choice, not less, which is good for competition!&quot;.

The merger needs to be accepted by other markets, too. No offense but I find it quite amusing how Americans keep forgetting about that.

With the current administration, anything can be legal.Besides, they still have plans to spin off the cable networks, so this would mostly concern the streaming assets, movie studio, and the IP.

It isn’t. They should have been stopped, too.

How is this any bigger than Disney and all the media channels they own?

I wonder if an antitrust suit will be filed, this seems like a pretty significant acquisition.

Where&#x27;s Brendan Carr when you need him?

Love the difference in the two connotations here that leads to the confusion. &quot;Netflix just bought HBO (a moment ago)&quot; vs &quot;Netflix just bought HBO (previously)&quot;.

Didn&#x27;t they just buy HBO? Nice shopping spree!

So when they say &quot;Consumers&quot;, it should really have been &quot;Netflix Customers&quot;, as for everyone else there is less choice, only already paying Netflix users get more content.

Maybe they mean more content will be produced, which I believe. But I&#x27;d also argue that we really don&#x27;t need more content on Netflix, we need higher quality. Netflix is drowning in a sea of mediocrity to the point where I have almost given up on investing in a new show because almost all of them reek of lazy writing and good-enough-but-not-outstanding direction. There are exceptions, but they are damn hard to find.

I think it will.Now they don&#x27;t have to go negotiate for every WB content item. As it stands, subscribers might or might not get WB things, same as all the other IP holders that are playing hard to get. Otherwise, they might have to contract some seasons of a show from one holder and some from another, and maybe not at all sometimes.

More choice as in “more revenue streams from which to create shareholder value.”

More choice as in more content available to choose from on Netflix?

Your Netflix bill is about to skyrocket and there&#x27;s no guarantee you&#x27;ll have access to those titles.

What&#x27;s written on the can reads &quot;please don&#x27;t sue us, we&#x27;re not a monopoly, and we will not gouge users&quot;.On the other hand Netflix will make its subscribers fund everything without reducing their income, and will not give these subscribers at least half of that content, because, why not?

But Netflix content breadth and quality varies a lot from country to country.  There&#x27;s not one Netflix.

Netflix buying WB doesn&#x27;t mean that licensing immediately becomes available worldwide.Netflix can provide its own content everywhere around the globe because they are the sole owner of it. The distribution rights to WB properties outside of the US will belong to completely different legal entities (even if those entities have WB in them).

&gt; I guess you are in the US.I am not, and WB was available via local options here (Southern European country).For me who isn&#x27;t a Netflix customer (the group which is larger than the group of people who have Netflix, obviously), the choice gets less.And obviously anti-trust regulation doesn&#x27;t care about the amount of choices for Netflix customers specifically, it cares about amount of choices for consumers at large, which will decrease with this change.

&gt; more choice and greater value for meThat will exactly follow Netflix&#x27;s price hikes.As in &quot;value for money&quot;, they silenced the latter part :D

I don’t know what do you mean by “most of the rest of the world” but it’s widely available in the American continent and Europe coverage will be almost complete in the next month(s):<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;press.wbd.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;media-release&#x2F;hbo-max&#x2F;hbo-max-nears-full-availability-across-europe-january-13-launches-key-markets" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;press.wbd.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;media-release&#x2F;hbo-max&#x2F;hbo-max-nears...</a>

I think it&#x27;s unlikely to change because most likely the content was not available for legal reasons, not technical. That&#x27;s why for example when they re-release some shows they have to switch out to completely different music – the rights were not cleared in the first place and it&#x27;d be a huge hassle to go back and negotiate with every rightholder

Netflix acquiring WB’s content will not necessarily lead to all of it being available for streaming to you in any given country. Content licensing is complicated, to put it mildly.

I guess you are in the US. For you, WB content was already available.
But you see, they never bothered to make that content available for most of the rest of the world. Netflix, on the other hand, is available most anywhere. This is exactly what it says on the can - more choice and greater value for me.

Adding Warner Bros. catalog will naturally lead to more titles to choose from for Netflix users. The choice of streaming services will be slimmer though. It will be interesting to see how regulators see it.

Only when it&#x27;s written in the memo line of the lobbying cheque.

I think that wording is targeted at anti-trust regulators.

That is, maybe, until they gate keep the WB content beyond additional premiums.

It potentially means fewer subscriptions to have more content options (eg, a bunch of services get folded into Netflix). Of course it will be region dependent for other licenses and rights.

&gt; No doubt about the last part, but how does merging two giants create &quot;More Choice&quot;?This is performative marketing for the regulators to allow the merger. No one (including the regulators) believes this, and it won&#x27;t come to pass. (&quot;More choice&quot; won&#x27;t, I mean, the merger will and a lot of regulators and politicians involved will end up with new cars, boats, and kids&#x27; college tuitions paid.)

There should be never any talk about &quot;Shareholder Value&quot;. Shareholders do not create content, they do not subscribe at scale. Once your customer is no longer the focus, it&#x27;s downhill from there, and it&#x27;s been downhill for a WHILE.I killed my Netflix sub over a year ago and I never even think about it. It&#x27;s all dull, empty-calorie background TV.The sad part is how the iconic HBO brand, already beaten by WBD into a pulp, is just going to merge with this average-ness and fade. End of an era, indeed.

&gt; Combination Will Offer More Choice and Greater Value for Consumers, Create More Opportunities for the Creative Community and Generate Shareholder ValueNo doubt about the last part, but how does merging two giants create &quot;More Choice&quot;? I know corporate double-speak is already out of control and I know they&#x27;re writing whatever they can do avoid regulators who surely are looking into the acquisition, but surely these executives cannot believe acquisitions lead to more choice, right?

Netflix is already the sole client of a huge studio outside Madrid.

Unfortunately, Netflix thus far seems to lack the creative vision to fully utilize any size of production house (barring rare exceptions).

Interesting, that will bring a big production house capabilities within Netflix itself

So they can raise the prices again in a few months?

Yeah, as a physical media collector, this is pretty devastating.

If they stop making them its gonna be hard to rip them.

Plenty of blu-rays thrive in the high seas.

Buy those blu-rays while you still can (:

It&#x27;s been talked about for like a month now

Its been going around in cicles between &quot;WB is fine, just rejected 2 other offers, whats the worst that could happen&quot; and &quot;Netflix buy out any day now WB is in the toilet&quot;

This wasn’t on my radar at all. Was this kept quiet or did I just not hear about it?

Based on some experience, it&#x27;s like a bond to appear in court. The number is mostly an arbitrary calculation designed to discourage you from not following through.

There’s a rough baseline of “cost to be acquired” and you start there, and do some doubling or other increases.Basically, being acquired is a pain in the assets and you want it to be worth your while to pursue it, even if it falls through, otherwise the board is looking at getting replaced.

Like everything else it&#x27;s just a negotiated figure. Arguments to and fro would include the likelihood of breakup (such as regulatory risk, unforeseen events), how disruptive the whole process is and also simply how desperate the buyer or seller is.There&#x27;s no modeling, it&#x27;s a punishment or incentive. The intention is to inflict financial pain.

Does anyone who&#x27;s participated in M&amp;A know how they come up with a breakup fee? I believe this one is $5 Billion (per Bloomberg), and Adobe &lt;-&gt; Figma was $1 Billion.Interested to understand the modeling that goes into it.

Netflix already has a cheap subscription with ads.

Netflix added ad-supported plans in 2022.

I wonder when the ads will come. There probably already is a enshittification roadmap that they’re working against.

$82.7BILLIONno wonder my subscription keeps going up

I thought someone really had to break some threshold so they wouldn&#x27;t close the deal unless they got another .001. Like maybe some bonus depended upon some target value.

WBD price at this moment is just  $25.28. I think there are some complicated conditions associated with the terms.

Note: this is after completion of the current splitting of WBD; as you&#x27;d expect Netflix wants the catalog and production but they&#x27;re not taking the sports and some other pieces. The left over &#x2F; newly revived Discovery Global will likely be a hollowed-out shell of less desirable properties saddled with a bunch of debt.

If you have done this I would suggest selling now because of possible anti-trust problems

Not sure how many of you have WBD shares with its rather tumultuous past (spin off from ATT, the Bill Hwang mess), but if you&#x27;ve picked up shares on the cheap in the past few years sub $10, congratulations.&quot;Under the terms of the agreement, each WBD shareholder will receive $23.25 in cash and $4.501 in shares of Netflix common stock for each share of WBD common stock outstanding at the closing of the transaction. &quot;

&gt; You&#x27;ll care when there will be no physical mediaPhysical media is on the way out for the most part, where it isn&#x27;t already gone, and Netflix &amp; co are the reason, not piracy.&gt; and you&#x27;re left with compressed shit shown down your throat.WRT “compressed shit”: the quality of ahem copies is often no worse than you&#x27;d get from an official streamed source. For those that have 4K-capable eyes it is often better as it JustWorks™ without quality dipping out due to bandwidth issues at the streamer, your ISP, or somewhere between, or for local playback needing a long fight to convince your Sony TV to accept that Sony media player connected via a Sony brand cable is legit.I actually pay for a couple of streaming services (though Prime largely begrudgingly as it got rolled into the delivery service I use), but still get media from ahem other sources because the playback UX is often preferable.Or if by “compressed shit” you are referring to the intellectual quality of the content not the technical merits of the medium, if it all turns to mush I&#x27;ll just watch even less than I already do the same way I practically never game these days (though that is due to both content quality and technical matters). I&#x27;ve got other hobbies competing for my attention, I can just live without TV if TV quality falls further.

You&#x27;ll care when there will be no physical media and you&#x27;re left with compressed shit shown down your throat.

That doesn&#x27;t stop an entire studio&#x27;s worth of output becoming dumbed down to second screen content like Stranger Things.

Couldn&#x27;t care less, sailing the high sea is peaceful!

Exclusively consuming social media like HN for your media sounds way worse than Game of Thrones, The Other Two, Emily in Paris or even Love is Blind

Placidly uncaring since long ago as I stopped consuming media full stop.

If someone wants &quot;film school&quot; you can do a lot worse than ticking off the film from the &quot;1001 Movies to See Before You Die&quot; [1].It may take you the next decade to complete. There are some real oddballs in there that lean toward &quot;art film&quot; (but what do you expect from Andy Warhol). A lot of &quot;foreign&quot; films (foreign for this U.S. viewer). In short a lot of surprises.Definitely feel like a student of film now (for whatever that&#x27;s worth).[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;1001films.fandom.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_List" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;1001films.fandom.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_List</a>

Placidly uncaring since long ago I stopped consuming media from either party.

There are a whole bunch of choice quotes from 1984 that apply to this situation, but my favorite is still this one: “The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”

&gt; I can hardly blame a company for not supporting a product almost nobody wants to go back to.But that logic we should keep only insta, tiktok and youtube shorts.

I can hardly blame a company for not supporting a product almost nobody wants to go back to.

&gt; When you&#x27;re just unwinding in front of a 65-inch screen, you might not notice the quality loss from compression.this has little to do with the resolution, though. maybe 4k just gets the benefit of being compressed with better codecs.for me at least, watching shows&#x2F;movies at typical viewing distance, a well-encoded 4k-&gt;1080p mkv is only very slightly less sharp and is vastly smaller to store on the media server.

&gt; What&#x27;s the attraction to the physical media given the availability of these versions online?Where do you think they&#x27;ve got the version that circulates the net?

Pirating doesn&#x27;t help sustain the very thing being pirated, if you want a tangible rather than moralistic reason.4K (Ultra HD) Blu-Ray is likely the last physical home video media generation to be produced. Disney has pulled physical out of the Asian market, Best Buy stopped releasing any physical media beside games, Target stopped selling them beside certain DVDs.If you want any chance of actually having high quality releases continue it needs to be supported. An issue though is certain less mainstream releases in Ultra HD Blu-Ray can be rather pricey (if they get a release at all). However I still buy those I&#x27;m interested in since I don&#x27;t want lower quality streaming-tier video to be the only option available in the future, apart from concerns about the volatile nature of online-only libraries (various of which have been wholly removed in the past when licensing&#x2F;ownership changes).

I&#x27;m curious, because I&#x27;ve had an interest in physical media, especially videogames, but what I keep coming back to is, &quot;why would I bother when I can just pirate it?&quot;What&#x27;s the attraction to the physical media given the availability of these versions online?

don&#x27;t be discouraged. 4k&#x2F;UHD BR is still alive and well, even though it never can beat price of comparatively worse streaming versions. I just bought a relatively expensive UHD player and there are a lot of movies, and what I&#x27;ve noticed there are also boutique offerings and remasters going on in the market which I haven&#x27;t noticed before. Going forward though, I&#x27;m not sure if there will be future for releases of new movies outside of big productions.

As someone who has recently begun exploring physical media, I find this quite disappointing. The volume on 4K Blu-Rays is often low, prices are high, and Netflix isn&#x27;t doing much to support physical media.When you&#x27;re just unwinding in front of a 65-inch screen, you might not notice the quality loss from compression. However, if you&#x27;re actively watching on a 110-inch projector with an excellent sound system, every little detail becomes clear.And that doesn&#x27;t even address the most frustrating part: owning less and less.I mean, no one needs to become a physical distributor, but it&#x27;s disheartening that we lack consumer-friendly ownership of entertainment media when it comes to movies. I would love to see something like Bandcamp, but specifically for studios to release their movies to.

I wonder what the US administration will demand from Netflix for approving this.

&quot;Priced in&quot; I guess. I mean look at Warner Bros stock, steadily climbing the last couple months until it hit basically exactly the price shareholders will get in exchange for their shares as part of this deal.Whenever one of my friends says they&#x27;re thinking about getting into daytrading, all I can think is good luck beating the funds... they either can predict the future or just write it themselves.

It’s interesting that the stock market has no reaction to this news, after hours.As of writing this, Netflix is -0.6%

Ah. That makes sense.Thanks for the elucidation.If that&#x27;s the case, then we&#x27;ll probably lose another app or two.:&#x27;(

And quite rightly so. Why would Netflix let Apple list all their content in an Apple branded interface as if it were their own?

Oh you think Apple is treating Netflix bad? No no no.Netflix refuses to play game, because they want to keep their data to themselves. Apple would LOVE Netflix to integrate into the app.

Yep. The APIs have always been publicly available for streaming services to use, Netflix just refuses to use them.The reason is pretty obvious. Netflix would rather have users open their app directly so there’s opportunity to shove things in their faces, collect data from their browsing, and ideally become positioned as the user’s “main” streaming app. The user having a hub app and treating Netflix as one of several services directly opposes their aims.The situation shares a lot of similarities with Spotify, which also refuses to take advantage of native APIs for the same reasons. Though in their case, there’s an added layer of irony with how they make all a big ruckus about how Apple needs to open their platforms up only for them to pretend APIs don’t exist after Apple adds them. As an example Apple had to hardcode a hack into HomePods to enable Spotify to work with them; where most services (Pandora, Tidal, etc) hook the official HomePod streaming APIs which pull directly from the service to the device, for Spotify Apple has to automatically AirPlay Spotify playing on the user’s phone to the HomePod. It’s ridiculous.

that is _purely_ netflix&#x27;s decision; they have decided not to integrate. in fact, earlier this year netflix accidentally rolled out their internal version which has full integration with the APIs and then said &quot;oopsie&quot; and removed it again.

Wow that is quite anti-consumer! Surely a monopoly on streaming will help them realize this. &#x2F;s

This is on Netflix not Apple. They enabled it this by accident and reverted it back <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;613307&#x2F;netflix-apple-tv-app-support-mistake" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;613307&#x2F;netflix-apple-tv-app-su...</a>

I hope that this means that the Netflix app on AppleTV will finally become a “first class citizen.”The Netflix app has always been treated badly by Apple. No idea why, but it means that I can’t have Netflix content in the “What’s Next” queue (among other things, like Netflix actors’ work not showing up in show information).

&gt; how did these companies drop the ball so badCompanies didn&#x27;t, leadership did. For a big, fat check. And they&#x27;re happily retired now, sitting in their expensive villas with millions on their balance.They couldn&#x27;t care less about your happy childhood memories that the content produced by their predecessors engraved in your mind.

&gt; Most notably Sony which produced TVs, Computers, DVD players, Media Centers. They owned a movie studio and record label. They also have in house expertise with cloud content distribution via PlayStation.I feel like some of those very diversified company tend to be the one who struggle to evolve and adapt because some part of their business are worried about being cannibalized by the new business opportunity (like how streaming “killed” physical media). I.e, if you are the director of the “DVD player division” you have an active interest in killing any potential streaming division. Reality is of course more complex than this, but this is the kind of story we sometimes hear off when &quot;too big to fail&quot; companies end up missing a major shift.

&gt; Most notably Sony which produced TVs, Computers, DVD players, Media Centers. They owned a movie studio and record label.They still do all those things? And they&#x27;re still successful in most of them? They haven&#x27;t &quot;failed&quot; or &quot;dropped the ball&quot; based on any metric I can think of. I&#x27;m not sure what you&#x27;re referring to here to be honest.

Sony has crunchyrollThey didn&#x27;t fumble around as much, also Sony still has leverage a lot on Japan Industry

&gt;They also have in house expertise with cloud content distribution via PlayStation.Maybe it&#x27;s better now, but looking at the PS3-era PSN, that expertise had negative value.

If everybody is dropping the ball, my first guess is that catching it is actually legitimately difficult.

It’s exactly the reason why. They focused on proprietary formats&#x2F;devices to lock consumers in

Hindsight is 20&#x2F;20 and the Innovator&#x27;s Dilemma is very real.

&gt; Most notably Sony which produced TVs, Computers, DVD players, Media Centers.The answer to that one is simple: they were bad at software.Apple and then Android killed the market for all those hardware devices and physical media.

I remember Sony.Sony Rootkit, Sony BetaMax, Sony MiniDisc, Sony ATRAC, Sony Memory Stick [Select &#x2F; PRO &#x2F; Duo &#x2F; PRO Duo &#x2F; PRO-HG Duo &#x2F; M2 &#x2F; XC &#x2F; PRO-HG Duo HX &#x2F; WTF], Sony UMD, Sony Elcaset, Sony SDDS, Sony VAIO, Sony Walkman, Sony Discman, [...]At least they had some lasting success with their Umatic video tape cartridge, and with the CD that they co-developed with Philips. Their Trinitron tubes were unique and generally quite good -- and they lasted as long in the market as any other CRT did, I suppose. And their various iterations of PlayStation console have all been popular despite being Sony products.

Sony still makes TV they get to sell to the highest bidder! They get to sell to Apple TV or Netflix.Not recurring revenue but they have their thing set up

Sony is still the 2nd largest music distributor and label in the world, behind Universal Music and ahead of Warner music.My 65&quot; Bravia is one of the best TV&#x27;s in its class and runs Google TV (IMO a major leg up over the junky Tizen&#x2F;WebOS offerings from competitors).They make some of the best noise cancelling headphones money can buy. They have the PS5 and own a bunch of game studios to provide exclusive content for it.They&#x27;re doing just fine!

More like how did these companies drop the ball so bad. Most notably Sony which produced TVs, Computers, DVD players, Media Centers. They owned a movie studio and record label. They also have in house expertise with cloud content distribution via PlayStation.Unfortunately for them around the time of Netflix&#x27;s ascent they were embroiled with all kinds of financial issues but still the mind boggles

&gt; Someday a new startup will piggy bank on Netflix and probably buy it later.Is that a financialised version of piggybacking?

&gt; Guess that is end of DVD now. Netflix has no interest in that formatand neither do consumers. video over the internet is the future that Netflix saw 20 years ago, when others didn&#x27;t, except YouTube.

Considering WB was once the champion of that format too.  Guess that is end of DVD now.  Netflix has no interest in that format.

Well, AOL did ship 1 billion CDs over its heyday and they acquired Warner Brothers in 2000…

People said that a generation ago as well, and the one before that. Yeah monopolies make it hard, but every one of them eventually crumbles to the next wave of innovation.

&gt; Someday a new startup will piggy bank on Netflix and probably buy it later.I think what history shows us is that the modern monopolies managed to destroy antitrust to the point where nobody will ever do to them what they did to others.

They have to as a stop gap before going on generating full feature film on demand. Those streaming service are all struggling to have an attractive enough catalog for an extended period of time for a lot of folks with their shitty pricing policies.

If I had a nickel for every time a company that sends out optical disks bought Warner Brothers, I&#x27;d have $0.10, which is not a lot, but strange that it happened twice.

&gt; Someday a new startup will piggy bank on Netflix and probably buy it later.Netflix got it&#x27;s start shipping CDs, which was only possible due to the first-sale doctrine. The rights landscape hasn&#x27;t adjusted for the new technologies. How could an new player disrupt a streaming world when everything is so locked down?

It&#x27;s less &quot;innovation and focus&quot; and more &quot;wealth consolidation and monopolization&quot;.

I never imagined that a service that ships DVD via mail would one day buy Warner Brothers. It is amazing how innovation and focus can change the game. Someday a new startup will piggy bank on Netflix and probably buy it later.

Exactly. Netflix is doing a total opposite of HBO content. Also HBO has been great at localization for european regions (subs, local content) unlike Netflix which cannot be bothered to even make subtitles for markets they sell to.IMO,Netflix wants to acquire their main competitor in europe.

Aaah the race to the bottom accelerates.I haven&#x27;t been a Netflix user for years, the quality of their stuff went past a level I was no longer comfortable supporting. It became a platform that is designed to keep you watching (literally anything) as opposed to a platform to find interesting&#x2F;relevant entertainment. So much low quality, low effort content. Wonder which of AI wrong-but-instant answers or Netflix&#x27; empty entertainment will contribute more to genpop enshitification.

Oh cool, knock-on price hikes across not just the streaming industry, but all the other industries that decided they needed to bundle streaming subscriptions with their products.Can&#x27;t wait to pay even more for my cell bill because they give me &quot;free&quot; Netflix!

&quot;Who acquires Warner Bros. Wtf&quot; - comments heard over my shoulder as I mention the title of this post.

All TV series on Netflix end in S01. Even if they don&#x27;t, it&#x27;s a new show with same characters but lousy writing.
Looking at* The CIA laywer who doesn&#x27;t know about green passport* FUBAR* The Diplomat

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?

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.

What you&#x27;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.

You&#x27;re describing the entertainment business.

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

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.

Honestly speaking Netflix has good catalog, much more comparable to Hollywood. Take the latest Frankenstein for example.Don&#x27;t look at only series. They also have recipes repurposed. But they acquire good titles and also produce some good ones.

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.

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.

I don&#x27;t want you to think I&#x27;m picking on you; but, I&#x27;ve been thinking about the MBA-bullshittism &quot;consolidation&quot; for a while. It&#x27;s really a euphemism for &quot;trust formation&quot;, 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 &quot;consolidated&quot;. What&#x27;s going on in health and seed and cars makes me seethe.

Is it actually worse than the status quo though? I&#x27;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.

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

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.

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

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.

&gt; I don’t like thisplease stop them.

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.

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&#x2F;Meta cash cow movie).

It&#x27;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 &quot;Even a blind hen sometimes finds a grain of corn&quot;.

In parallel, they&#x27;re also starting to downgrade their quality. In the latest season of Stranger Things there&#x27;s a wild amount of in-scene exposition, where the characters explain what&#x27;s happening while it&#x27;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&#x27;t know what&#x27;s going on.See here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;tv-and-radio&#x2F;2025&#x2F;jan&#x2F;17&#x2F;not-second-screen-enough-is-netflix-deliberately-dumbing-down-tv-so-people-can-watch-while-scrolling" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;tv-and-radio&#x2F;2025&#x2F;jan&#x2F;17&#x2F;not-sec...</a>Edit: I did really enjoy Frankenstein.

&gt; Frankenstein and Death by Lightning were two standout successes recently.IMHO Frankenstein&quot; was pretty terrible. The makeup was awful, the effects were cheap, the monster... wasn&#x27;t a monster! The entire premise depends on him being a monster, not some sort of misunderstood, sympathetic EMO.

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&#x27;t look great.

They&#x27;re starting to up their quality. Frankenstein and Death by Lightning were two standout successes recently.That said, I&#x27;m more uncomfortable with the continued consolidation of media ownership and more outsize influence of FAANG tech over media.

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

By design. That&#x27;s why they are ready to sell to Netflix.

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

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

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

a lot of these projects were cancelled though.imo, that&#x27;s the worst thing about Netflix. its not that they don&#x27;t produce good series, its that when they do they have a high peobability of getting cancelled.

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&#x27;t own the content they eventually lose the ability to stream it, especially as the content owners have entered the streaming space too.

The majority of that list is quite old. Have you seen what they&#x27;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.

The first season of Altered Carbon was great.  It&#x27;s a shame that they never made a second season.  ;-)

I watched half of those and I haven&#x27;t had Netflix in 5 years. it&#x27;s not worth it anymore.

I got netflix a looooong time ago when they still had good movies on there and weren&#x27;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&#x27;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 remakes2. An hour and a half movie where they try to inject The Message into as many frames as possible3. 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.

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&#x27;s Gambit, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.And that&#x27;s just what I can remember off the top of my head. And that&#x27;s my taste, there&#x27;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.

&gt; Scavenger&#x27;s ReignOddly enough, this was originally an HBO Max production.

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

Some foreign series gems also like The Asset, Mercy for None.And some newer ones, American Primeval and the Beast in Me.

IMO their only truly noteworthy production is BoJack Horseman.

Lots of good lesser-known stuff on Netflix if you wade through the crap:* The Devil&#x27;s Plan* Alice in Borderlands* Extraordinary Attorney Woo* Brassic* Back to Life* Intelligence* Black Doves* Top Boy* Mo* The Breakthrough* Borgen* Love Death &amp; Robots* Scavenger&#x27;s ReignAs 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]

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

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.

&gt;it frequently produces mediocre or worse content. Will the same happen for Warner?HBO hasn&#x27;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&#x27;t even really have that much prestige.

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

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)

They&#x27;re fourth now. Video games are first, then books, streaming, then cinema, and music after that. If I&#x27;m not mistaken.

the kind of person who watches a LOT of television and movies likes slop, it&#x27;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&#x27;T pay.you could say, &quot;engagement is the wrong metric,&quot; but if that were really true, tech jobs would contract like 50%. the alternative becomes, &quot;would you like fries with that?&quot;

&gt; 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&#x27;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.

&gt; 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&#x2F;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.

There is nothing original in Dept Q. It&#x27;s British adaptation of Danish book and TV show.

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.

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.

Maybe it&#x27;s different for me in the heart of LA, but I still need to plan around a movie if it&#x27;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?

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.

&gt; Netflix rarely creates excellent content; instead, it frequently produces mediocre or worse content.I&#x27;m really concerned about them ruining the Magic Mike franchise.

I just checked and I&#x27;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&#x27;s not in the same category as HBO&#x2F;WB. Most (not all) of their series feel cheap, shallow, unoriginal. The quality and hit rate just aren&#x27;t the same.

I think you are true to a point. But great movies get almost universal praise with scores of 9&#x2F;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.

Well we have over a century of media and it should be diverse enough to serve everyone. The issue is we&#x27;re shifting towards a future full of McDonalds and Dennys instead of culture. Safe, inoffensive slop that you grab because you&#x27;re hungry, not curious.It&#x27;s also almost like we shouldn&#x27;t have one restaurant serve 300m people. Aka a monopoly.it&#x27;ll collapse overtime anyways, because of you&#x27;re competing on slop you can&#x27;t beat the social media model of a bunch of low cost addictive TikToks for &quot;free&quot;. The race to the bottom was already won and ot doesn&#x27;t cost $25&#x2F;month.

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&#x27;s small subject are different.It&#x27;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.

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.

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?

I think Netflix&#x27;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&#x2F;or seen as prestige TV, like &quot;The Crown,&quot; &quot;Mindhunter,&quot; &quot;Bridgerton,&quot; &quot;Stranger Things&quot; etc.- &quot;Crown Jewel&quot; 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&#x27;ll be out of the loop when the new season of a &#x27;zeitgeisty&#x27; show drops. You don&#x27;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.

Major studios haven&#x27;t made excellent content for a while, so them acquiring WB doesn&#x27;t matter much. If you want to see the &quot;excellent&quot; films (i.e. I&#x27;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&#x27;ve lost nothing with WB except more Joker: Foile a Deux and Wonka garbage.

Cinema used to be a really good shared experience. I don&#x27;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&#x27;t know exactly what&#x27;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&#x27;t think cinema will get its magic back.A few years ago I did go to a &quot;Stranger Things&quot; experience and I think that might be the future of shared experiences&#x2F;narratives. It was essentially a week-long pop-up event, you&#x27;d get tickets, and it was basically a &quot;walking simulator&quot; that took you through a narrative within the Stranger Things universe. This wasn&#x27;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 &quot;Experience&quot; 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.

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?

&gt;I know I&#x27;m going to get downvoted to oblivion but I don&#x27;t care.I wasn&#x27;t going to downvote you till this part.Anyways, I disagree. But it really comes down to what you value in a story. You&#x27;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&#x27;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&#x27;s not what the show is about. It&#x27;s showing the long term effects of aku&#x27; 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&#x27;t why Jack is thought of as a great hero. It&#x27;s the influences he had and seeds of hope he sowed among the dystopia(And yes, now Netflix owns that).

&gt; it frequently produces mediocre or worse contentI agree, and I go one step beyond:Any &quot;series&quot; is BY DEFINITION, bad. If to tell a good story you need +4 episodes, you&#x27;re doing a poor job. Or, what&#x27;s real, you&#x27;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 &lt;3hs, I&#x27;m sure any other of these &quot;originals&quot; 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&#x27;s productions are just: explicit dialog &gt; cut scene nature &gt; explicit dialog &gt; cut scene nature &gt; etc.Some stories might need longer runtimes, like Lord of the Rings or whatever &quot;bigger universe&quot; 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&#x27;re explicitly made to be &quot;bloated&quot; (in terms of length span).&gt; Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take awayPS: I know I&#x27;m going to get downvoted to oblivion but I don&#x27;t care.

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?

I don&#x27;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.

The &quot;Max&quot; fiasco was pretty much the strangest branding mistake ever. Not just an obvious mistake but it was honestly kind of a mystery that anyone would even be tempted to do that.

After that complete fumble of HBO becoming &quot;Max&quot; they were at their last legs

As I was reading the announcement, that quote popped into my head. I came here to say exactly that.

I don&#x27;t think the Netflix vs HBO comparison is fair.HBO was always one channel in a home. They produced a limited amount of high-quality content. You watch it a few times a week and network TV reality shows or whatever other trash the rest of the week.Netflix wanted&#x2F;wants to be the only channel in cord-cutting and cord-never homes. When that&#x27;s your goal you have to produce mostly crap and some good stuff.

I&#x27;m not sure how you quantify &quot;premium cable content&quot; but Netflix has certainly made great strides in that market.

Thing is that Netflix didn&#x27;t really succeed at that goal. HBO was and still is the gold standard for premium cable content. Netflix instead decided to go for the bottom 70% of the market, and the quality of their shows reflects that.In fact the very reason for this purchase is that they desperately need help on the creative side.Netflix is what it is today because all the studios trying to compete with their tech was an even bigger disaster than Netflix competing on content.

The rewards aren’t necessarily monetary.

Why would anyone want to be old HBO? Writing good scripts is hard and not rewarded.

“The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us.” - Ted Sarandos in 2013Seems Netflix won that race.

Teen shows with 30 year olds by the fourth season... so that Steve Buscemi bit in 30 Rock will now be the norm.

I was in one seminar, and someone asked a question about future to Harish Mehta (one of the founder of NASSCOM), and he said that big companies will become bigger for at least next 10 years.

The value of the back catalog is still substantial for years to come. But you are right about the landscape changing dramatically for new productions.Hollywood was premised on economies of scale. Concentrate a lot of talent in one place and then put infrastructure in place for block buster productions to happen (studios, tech, money).That&#x27;s being disrupted by several things:- LA and the US are no longer cheap places to be. A lot of blockbuster content is filmed outside the US at this point. Canada, Europe, and elsewhere. LA and Hollywood are still important but mainly because that&#x27;s where the money is. It&#x27;s not necessarily where the money is being spent.- Independent content producers self publishing content on platforms like Youtube and growing audiences rivaling those of popular TV shows.- AI is starting to drive down the cost of special effects, digital processing, etc. And it&#x27;s probably also going to erode the value of needing actors at all for especially a lot of the less glamorous roles (think all the extras in big movie productions). This is a sensitive topic in particularly Hollywood. But not enough to delay the inevitable by very long.All this is driving down the cost of creating decent quality things that people still want to pay for. That&#x27;s a critical distinction. There&#x27;s a lot of ad sponsored stuff that people don&#x27;t really pay for as well. To make money, you need quality. AI is working its way up the chain here, with increasingly better stuff. But most of it is still pretty low value.But things like soap operas, third rate series that Netflix bulk purchases from places like South Korea, etc. are all fair game for AI.Netflix adding the WB back catalog is a great move for them. Their own back catalog isn&#x27;t strong enough to keep people and expanding with newly created production it is a very slow and expensive process. And they&#x27;ve had some flops and cost control issues. There just isn&#x27;t enough there to keep me permanently. I tend to sign up for just a few months and then cancel. I&#x27;m probably going to cancel soon again. HBO did not actually offer their streaming services in Germany until recently. And I was considering trying that for a while. Now I might not have to.

You know that meme of Jack Sparrow riding a sinking ship to shore?That&#x27;s how I imagined WBD. David Zaslav gets to transition from the leader of a reality show slophouse to one of the biggest power players in Hollywood, and all be has to do is let the slophouse sink and declare himself captain of the next ship.

Heard of one production needing to do a one day reshoot on something. Something that could easily have been done in LA. It was cheaper to fly everyone out to some European country for 3 days and do the pickups.The business side of Hollywood has been imploding for the past few years. It just costs too much to film there vs other places. Tariffs will not change that. The tax incentives are gone and the must have on set is too high.Not sure how netflix is going to digest that pill they just swallowed. 83 billion is a lot. Is is about 3x their total gross per year. I do not think they can raise prices too much with out shedding subscribers. WB has already taken out AOL, ATT (recovering), and Discovery. Netflix could be next.The deal also spins out the linear TV into a different company. Can that company survive? Its going to be tough going. Havent looked but I would bet a good portion of the debt they took on to do the divestiture from AT&amp;T is being pumped into that company.

Hollywood was dying long before the strike.

Remember when a company that started out making car bumpers bought Paramount? Those were wild times.

Even NYC is having a soundstage boom. It&#x27;s not just about cutting costs, it&#x27;s also about being free to go where the talent and resources are, instead of being chained to LA.

This deal is an indicator of huge changes in global film &amp; TV production.Hollywood&#x27;s struggles amplified after the writer&#x27;s strike with a perfect storm of issues around unionisation, technology, fragmenting audiences, new formats, asset liabilities and enormous competition to the east.Now LA soundstages are empty while production centres in Europe, UK, India, China, Nigeria are booming and vast new studios cropping up in the Middle East.Proposed tariffs will do little to stem this tide as the money has moved on already.In addition, traditional production methods are unsustainable and decision-making is opaque in an era where sustainability, transparency and democratisation are taking over.The main benefit to Netflix is of course the IP, but the traditional studio assets of WB have their days numbered.

Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros