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AliasHandler t1_j5z8z1u wrote

Reply to comment by Ennion in NBCUniversal’s Peacock Tops 20M Paid Subs, Streamer’s Loss Hits $978M in Fourth Quarter by MarvelsGrantMan136

For real. I don’t get the fixation these content owners have with losing billions of dollars trying to get their own streaming services up and running. It’s capitalism gone wild. They could be earning free money just licensing the content to Netflix/Hulu or whoever is already established in the market. Peacock gave up almost half a billion dollars to bring JUST The Office home to their own service, which is losing them billions of dollars. If they just continued licensing JUST The Office out to Netflix, and shelved literally every other piece of content they own, they would be earning $100 million a year instead of losing nearly $3 billion a year.

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lord_pizzabird t1_j5zkl6k wrote

They do this because their core business, running a TV network with ads is being squeezed out. They can sell IP, but without a Network creating new IP (to license later) then they're effectively dying.

That's just their perspective though, a sort of battle for survival. Being honest, I personally think broadcast tv is massively underrated as a platform.

They should have spent this money lobbying to change FCC guidelines instead, allowing them to curse and show nudity. That would open the door to producing content that's more in-line with consumer demand.

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Isiddiqui t1_j60bsv4 wrote

>They do this because their core business, running a TV network with ads is being squeezed out.

Exactly right. It's somewhat incredible people don't realize this and say just go back to licensing shows. What happens when there is no profit to be made in airing shows on cable/broadcast TV? They won't be able to make any money in just being studios for other streamers.

This move is in order to keep their businesses alive as the market is in the middle of a shift from fully cable to fully streaming.

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lord_pizzabird t1_j60l79v wrote

I just straight up don't think the broadcast TV situation is as bleak as broadcasters think it is, more than anything.

To me, they just have the wrong mentality and weak IP (content). Both can be corrected.

Literally everyone with a $5 antenna has access to their network. There's just nothing that attracts consumers to them, other-than the NFL.

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Asiriya t1_j61ee9j wrote

Plus American ad breaks are obnoxiously frequent. Huge turn off.

Personally I’d like to understand their stats on frequency / duration of ads vs attention.

I’m sure that there’s something in blasting the audience with the same thing over and over to program them into wanting what’s advertised, but you’d also think that fewer ads would make people pay more attention when they are on, and be more impactful.

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_Meece_ t1_j61tfll wrote

The ad breaks are destroying anything that isn't live content.

Why watch a TV show chopped up with 4-5 ad breaks, when you can watch it via streaming with none?

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inkista t1_j630ivb wrote

>Why watch a TV show chopped up with 4-5 ad breaks, when you can watch it via streaming with none?

Because it's free with ads, and you have to pay a sub to get ad-free streaming? Also because you don't use any of your data if you're on cable. And you can FF through the ads if you DVRed the show?

Not to mention cable boxes all do VoD, much of which is ad-free, or where you can FF through the ads.

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jblanch3 t1_j63ssk2 wrote

That last part simply is not true, at least from my experience. My family and I had just recently cut the cord, it's been just under a year. Prior to that, I'd had cable as long as I'd been alive. When cable started providing VoD services, it was mostly ad-free and if there were ads, you could usually fast forward through them. Even for certain stations (like the networks), if there were ads and you couldn't fast forward through them, it was only one or two at most. Not ideal, but easily manageable. Over time, I really started seeing it shift. More and more networks that were featured on VoD made it so that you couldn't fast forward through commercials anymore. And that one or two commercials I mentioned a few sentences ago? Yeah, that was no more. Towards the end, it wasn't worth watching anything on demand because the commercials went on for at least five minutes, I might as well had been watching it live.

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inkista t1_j6ap5lo wrote

For me that's primarily only true if you're using VoD for broadcast network shows (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox). Cable-originals still tend to be either ff through the ads (e.g., SyFy, TNT, BBC America, Animal Planet, etc.) or ad-free (e.g., HBO, TCM)

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Tha620Hawk t1_j60vcgj wrote

Yeah the nfl still shows if you have something worth watching then people will tune in.

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BOEJlDEN t1_j618mb7 wrote

>”They won’t be able to make any money in just being studios for other streamers.”

Why not? They could just create higher quality content and sell it for more money

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Isiddiqui t1_j618wvw wrote

And when the streamers they are trying to sell it to balk on the price? (Esp in favor of their own original content)

There is a reason they are clinging to the cable model even though they all have their own studios.

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JuanJeanJohn t1_j61w6a0 wrote

You’re asking a studio and network to focus solely on just one of their business models, effectively killing off the company. Most companies that only produce content are significantly smaller companies than NBC is. They are a producer and a distributor.

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TheDeadlySinner t1_j67t6h2 wrote

Unless Netflix is going to pump their price way up or create different Netflix channels, that's not going to happen. NBC spends about $10 billion on non-sports content. If they license all of it to Netflix at cost (which means they make no profit,) then that would require Netflix to increase their content budget by 60%.

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BOEJlDEN t1_j67te8a wrote

bruh why tf nbc spendin that much on mediocre shows 😭

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AGVann t1_j67thrc wrote

I don't think the nature of the streaming market will allow all these corporations to survive the transition, especially with an ad revenue or subscription based model intact. My guess is that in 5 years, we'll see a few of these 'Tier 2' companies begin to collapse or significantly downsize, and they realize that licensing out their huge catalogue to other services and collecting a fee is better than trying to muscle into the streaming game.

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JQuilty t1_j60x6ke wrote

Hell, ATSC3.0 would be a decent way to do it. Have subchannels blocked by default that are exempt from FCC content regulations. You can even map them to different numbers higher than 100 for a clear separation.

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Coolman_Rosso t1_j5zek89 wrote

Not to mention that they had no other program to drive interest outside of wrestling to the point where they were marketing their price tiers based solely on how much Office you wanted to watch

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Jazz_Potatoes95 t1_j6074r4 wrote

If streaming gets reduced to one or two giant monopolistic services (ie, Netflix and Prime) then all the bargaining power for selling your show as a network goes out of the window. If Netflix hosts everything, then they're the ones dictating price to the content producers, and it becomes a case of which production company is most willing to undercut the competition

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Asiriya t1_j61emor wrote

Quality will pay a part too, HBO can sell their shows on name and I think Netflix would respect not pissing money up the wall for a 1 and done season before cancelling

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corporatemumbojumbo t1_j608i8w wrote

I think it's a combination of arrogance and FOMO with a dollop of greed. Some company CEO or CTO convince themselves they can do a better job than established players.

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