[steveBK123]

We are going to see more of this across the entertainment industry. We had a 3-5 year window of VC funded profitless content explosion. Now we are slowly regressing to the trend of low production cost content that has been churned out by ABC/NBC/CBS/FOX/big cable channels for years.

It makes sense in a way as there was a brief moment where despite all the proliferation of streaming services, we were still paying less than peak cable days. So less dollars going on on the income side, against more dollars going out on the cost side.

We will likely see the streamers continue to raise prices, add ads, and also consolidate...

[oceanplexian]

You can make great TV shows on a budget, but the problem is they would actually have to focus on story writing and the plot instead spending millions to replicate the CGI generated trash content that passes for Hollywood movies these days

[steveBK123]

This is why I think maybe NFLX wins in the mid term .. they have perfected the art of churning out mid content with no name actors.

Meanwhile the newer streamers are all licensing expensive / paying big name actors / etc to try to create prestige content no one actually pays a premium to watch.

[brandall10]

Oof... I guess NFLX knows their business better than anybody, but I'm one of those that killed my sub a year back due to this.

It seems there are quite a few of us, but we may be less in number than those who are just looking for any random thing that 'fits' them according to an algorithm, quality be damned.

All this said... what did they pay Will Smith again for that horrible sci-fi schlock? I see it's $20M, and supposedly it was going to be $35M for the aborted sequel.

[steveBK123]

I think NFLX tried the big budget all-star thing and gave up on it earlier than the rest. That Will Smith sci-fi thing was 7 years ago.

None of the rest took note of that..

[brandall10]

As noted above though, the sequel was in the works and he was slated to be paid nearly double for that effort.

This is a fairly isolated case though.

[PKop]

I think there's a significant number of people cancelling

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38846097

[steveBK123]

Nonetheless, NFLX is the only streamer actually making money. The rest are losing money to the tune of Billions per year.

[nozzlegear]

I don't know if I'm the only one who finds it odd to see people use stock market identifiers instead of company names in normal conversation, but seeing NFLX instead of Netflix made me think the NFL [1] had expanded their own streaming game and was getting into content creation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Football_League

[skeeter2020]

...or small market "prestige" products with once-were actors

[jdksmdbtbdnmsm]

CGI is definitely not the problem. That is such a ridiculous claim.

[Auracle]

It can be.

It seems that everyone wanted to be Game of Thrones, with huge budgets on sets, CGI, etc. That also means less episodes per season.

Some of the best episodes of Star Trek (all of the series) were just the actors in the usual sets with minimal special effects. The new Star Trek shows are all big bombastic productions with large budgets. The writing on Discovery was poor. The writing on Strange New Worlds is pretty good, but the limited amount of episodes is a bummer. They could spend 40% as much per episode, set aside some extra for more writers, have more episodes, and everyone would love it even more - in my opinion.

All you need is good acting and writing. The rest is just support.

[skeeter2020]

>> It seems that everyone wanted to be Game of Thrones

When what they didn't realize is to be GoT you need to be HBO, and to be HBO you need to adopt a business model that will never match hockey stick VC-funded growth.

[seemaze]

Malthus' modern media