On Fri, Oct 23, 2020 at 1:41 AM Doug Eastick <east...@mcd.on.ca> wrote:
> ok.... so I understand now that Peak TV means quantity.... or a large pile > with a peak -- ok, got it. I've been wondering about this crazy volume > of productions for a few years now (basically once the streamers like > Netflix started winning Emmys). The crazy volume of shows, I don't think, > can be sustained from an economical basis. Sure all these streaming > studios/channels will disrupt the TV economy/landscape, but is this not > like the DotCom boom? So much money out there based on vacuous or hopeful > eyeballs and unproven models. > I think it's widely thought that there *is* also a new golden age of TV, because there are definitely a lot of high quality series out there. You still have to hunt though. Netflix may have hit it out of the park with House of Cards and Orange Is The New Black when it started. But now we get Emily in Paris... but also The Crown. I'm certain that the model isn't economical any more. In the old days, there were massive syndication revenues to be achieved (and for some perhaps there still are), but now you have Netflix spending more than they earn, and attempting to make TV shows not just for the US, but the world. The UK is now their number three production base, but Netflix is making TV in pretty much every European country, as well as places like India, Australia and dozens of other places. And they're making movies - they want to win Oscars. And they're making reality TV. And then there's the vast volume of kids stuff that I suspect few of us here are watching. They need to sign up a hell of lot of people to make their business model work. Meanwhile Amazon and Apple can essentially subsidise their TV services while they play their game (Amazon can amortise their spend against other Amazon revenues, but I reckon Apple will be out of TV production in a few years' time). But the spending is just a rounding error on their spreadsheets. If you're HBO Max or Peacock, you have to build an offering that's equal to that of Netflix. Viewers expect it. It's all got to be unsustainable. And where it leaves traditional networks I have no idea. I would really LOVE to see some of the inside metrics of Netflix and their > "renewal" decisions (prior to Covid-19). > >From what I've read, there's a whole bunch of stuff. They're looking at 28 day views from launch, as well as overall views. But they also really need stuff that brings in new viewers. So if a show has settled down with a viewership base after a couple of seasons, and isn't still growing, or bringing in new viewers, then it's more likely to be cancelled. There's also the production model and the costs. In traditional TV, the production company can do things with the show after it's been on network TV. They can put it in syndication, sell it globally, licence it to streaming services or whatever. That's where the profit for the studio who makes it comes from. But Netflix doesn't really do most of those things. So they have to overpay on production costs for their originals because they want *all* the rights upfront. So the only revenues the producing studios can get are the fees from Netflix. So these tend to be stepped upwards - the show gets more expensive the longer it's on air. While that's often true for network TV too - casts of hit shows getting massive pay bumps - there's those down the road deals to mitigate the increases. For Netflix, they just see costs increasing season or season. There does seem to be a lot of "cancelled after two seasons" on Netflix, and these are some of the reasons. The downside for viewers is shows that don't wrap up properly or get left on unresolved cliffhangers. Will viewers start to get fed up with Netflix if they continue that? Maybe in due course. Now you can factor in the Covid costs too. Personally I can't see the Netflix model ever making enormous sense. The scale they have to work at to entertain the world is too much. While Americans might watch the odd British show and certainly vice versa, the same isn't always true of, say French viewers or Indian viewers. They'll watch a bit, but they like things in their own language featuring their own cultures. So Netflix has to make local language stuff in pretty much every territory they operate in. Netflix *has* done a decent job with this to an extent - the Spanish series Money Heist is truly popular globally for example - but that's an exception. Netflix needs those global viewers to all be spending their $5-15 a month to make the numbers add up. Adam -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAD_sJGANOXEtdvJm%2BSAqpqxaA-t67zcVAr39d4_YFC-PTqQDRg%40mail.gmail.com.
