No one stays in this without money coming in - for youtube its selling ads primarily. You think apple or amazon are going to escape the scrutiny disney is feeling now? No - their time is coming too.
I think AppleTV+ is a rounding error for Apple.
I don't expect they'll be feeling and pressure to do anything with AppleTV+ unless other parts of the company go seriously into the crapper for an extended period.
That could of course happen, but I think they're more worried about the potential loss of their margins in the app store as a result of the attention the Epic Games' lawsuit got them in Washington.
I think Amazon could try to spin their PrimeTV into it's own thing but it started and continues to be just another throw-in to the most disparate bundle the world has ever seen, all as a scheme to make their free-but-not-really shipping look like a better deal.
I think they're also using it as a loss-leader to promote pay-for content on their platform the same way they do with no-rush shipping credits but I'm not going to pretend I have any insight into how well they think that's all working out for them.
I think if Bezos has had his fill of corporate-liability-free fun going to space and decides to come back, the company could go back to growth with razor thin returns or something closer to it the way they somehow managed to get away with for most of his tenure the first time without wallstreet batting an eye.
The world seems to hate him but best I can tell, he's not letting that get him down so who knows?
Out of advertisers. The part that actually matters in the ‘everything’/free universe that you think is going to be so hard for big disney to compete with.
Why do you keep saying this? How many times do I have to say, it isn't just about the everything/free?
It's about the everything that isn't Disney.
This is a problem of Disney's creation.
They're the traditional media company that built Disney+ on unsustainable business practices and have done nothing to show a road to clear profitability other than to tell everyone "trust us - we got this!".
They're the ones who have to win by getting to the top so they can, as you've alluded yourself, start employing monopoly-like tactics (you know, like the cable companies did in the good old days) to raise their revenue to profitability.
Don’t carr about how much the creator pays - what matters in this conversation is how much the platform is able to monetize it - and in the case of youtube that is advertising.
The revenue is what defines the long term potential.
Why is that the only thing that matters? Who anointed you the conversation-overloard?
I think cost absolutely matters.
Apparently Disney does, too or they wouldn't be discussing the need to cut back on their content spending, right?
Oh you mean like other content creators and influencers? ZOMG… see you can understand the ecosystem without giving a f about just one example.
Yeah, that's
exactly what I mean - "ZOMG"! Glad
something, I'm trying to say is getting through.
And no, I absolutely do not think this guy is a "unicorn" and
that is my point.
That non-unicorn has an estimated net worth of around $100 million and there are articles discussing his efforts to take his business public with an initial value of $1.5 billion. Even if all of those numbers end up being off by 4x higher than reality, what does that mean for the world we are living in?
How far behind him is #2 right now? How far is #3?
You trying to say he’s some unicorn?
To reiterate, I don't think he's a unicorn at all.
I think there are a
lot more people on that platform with the same potential to come behind him.
Do you agree with the above or are
you the one who thinks he's a unicorn?
Costs you can control by your own decision- revenues you have to try to earn. That’s why you focus on the revenue and just deal with costs.
So why is Disney talking about the need to cut costs while raising revenue? Is it just because you aren't the one in charge over there?
Because it makes sense to focus on the big fish and market setters. Youtube is the interesting one because of how it sources and the market it has. Apple will fight the same issues disney is… as will amazon. Amazon just uses extreme bundling but is already facing huge scrutiny about the amounts dumped into alexa/echo trying to force this economy.
Things like tiktok are about the format and less about the competitor itself. Twitch is still niche in the grand scheme.
How do we go from you saying "Your argument basically boils down to 'big corp can't compete with free!' -- with you pointing out how the free content folks are getting eyeballs that is too expensive for the big corps to chase."
To me saying "I supposes if you want to continue to willfully ignore me repeatedly mentioning things like Apple, Amazon, Audible (yes owned by Amazon), the gaming industry, sure, why not?"
To you then saying the inline quote above?
Did you stop for a bathroom break in the middle of your reply and forget where we were in this no-stakes debate?
If not, how is your "Because it makes sense to focus on the big fish and market setters" any kind of a rebuttal to me calling you out for conveniently ignoring things I said that run entirely counter to the the straw man you keep trying to build for some reason?
When did i bring up cost? You are saying these other avenues are competing for eyeballs making it more difficult for disney. I am saying its not mutually exclusive… disney and others are pumping in those enviroments to help support their interests. They are leveraging those content providers and platforms to get dirt cheap promotion of their own stuff.
You are dead set on costs above all else — costs are a choice. They are in your control. You decide the scale.
Yeah, I brought up costs -
it was me.
I'm saying these other avenues are competing for eyeballs and magically are making more money than they're spending in the process.
Maybe I'm crazy but I think Disney should look into finding a way to do that without scaring off their subscribers, somehow. I don't know what the fool-proof strategy is there and that's exactly why I should get paid the big bucks.
After all, if
this guy can get $20 million for being bad at his job, why can't I?
Anyway, I see what you're saying - Disney's getting dirt cheap promotion by slyly leveraging the same platforms any dude with a cell phone has access to.
How devious.
Who cares?
They're probably monetized on Youtube with that crap, too. Clearly they're not a big earner on the platform but if you'd try to at least suggest they were using it to both advertise
AND monetize, I'd have tossed a touché your way.
But you didn't and I'm the one who had to suggest it for you so I'm keeping my touché, thank you very much.
That said, how many Disney+ subs you think they've gotten from those sly underground marketing efforts?
Just wondering what your rough estimate is.
And now you know why they are getting into content besides movie tent poles. And why i was talking about all the providers needing to get away from the adhoc monthy subs.
Ah, you didn't say they needed to, you said it was inevitable.
A lot of people need new hearts and kidneys. That doesn't mean they all get them.
What companies like Disney and Warner need isn't necessarily what they'll get, either.
Are consumers dumb enough to fall into the same trap again in the numbers they'd need to make it work?
Maybe.
But there are a lot of youngish adults out in the world now who've never had to pay for cable and who've had unlimited high-speed internet their whole lives and who saw metered cellphone data go to unlimited usage for reasonable prices (with no required commitments) who are going to be hard pressed to understand why they have to sing a long-term contract for, of all things, a friggin' streaming service.
Even I would say, at least with cable, they're sending a guy out to your house with a drill and a ladder and entrusting you with a hundred dollars worth of equipment which would make a contract seem... sort of more okay but around here, competition has forced even cable companies to drop any length of time commitment.
Instead, they're guaranteeing not to raise prices for a period of a year if you don't cancel on them before that.
People watch more than new shows
Of course they do!
Want to list all the old stuff you re-watched or that was new-to-you on Disney+ last month?
If it's too much to list all of, I'll take just your top five.
I'll give you that touché I teased you with earlier if you can put them in chronological release date order without looking that info up.
I trust you so we'll go by the honor system that you didn't look up the dates but you understand, I'll probably need to to verify if you got it right, right?
Unfortunately i think the access to content from a browsing/recommendation side is one of disney+’s weaker points. Imagine when the streamers start getting good vault UIs and effective recommendation engines.
I'm sure kids will love watching old episodes of "That's So Raven" between movies like "That Darn Cat" and "Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo".
Nobody's having any trouble finding things like the Little Mermaid, the animated Beauty and the Beast or Lion King on Disney+ today.
In all seriousness, I'm sure a recommendation would actually help getting people (both kids AND adults) started looking at old stuff they've never seen before but I wonder what the average time to abandon is going to be on most of those hidden gems after people press play.
That will be another angle they will help their retention in the future. But as i said awhile back — they’re been aiming for the ‘own all the things’ first… and less about their feature set.
I think it's pretty clear we're not going to see eye-to-eye on all of this.
I've had fun poking at you and I hope you've had fun poking at me but regrettably, I have responsibilities in life that go beyond doing my darnedest to completely derail the 291 page "Bob Iger is back! Chapek is out!!" thread.
I'm guessing you still do to but if you want to respond to any of this, I'll read it and be happy to let you have the last word as long as you don't try to say I think MrBeast is a unicorn again (he's an American Quarter Horse, at
best) an you don't try to continue to say I think free content is the problem for Disney - I think it's A problem but I think there are a
lot of other problems, too.
And lastly, I'm not a fan of most of that free crap you may think i seem enamored with. I don't like what platforms like Snapchat, Tik-Tok and the like with their 30 second to a minute or so of content seem to be doing in pandering mostly to society's most base levels of entertainment. It makes me wonder how far we are away from the breakout hit "
ow my balls!" but I also can't deny the number of kids and young adults I see choosing to watch stuff like that, even in leu of longer-form and higher quality free crap.
Also lastly (for real this time), for what it's worth, I watched "That Darn Cat" on Christmas of 2019 with my then seven year old son and seventy-something year old aunt.
Everyone enjoyed it but I'm pretty sure "That's So Raven" and "Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo" would still be a hard pass, no matter how much Disney's algorithm tied to force them on us.
