Netflix expected to spend over $6B on original and acquired programming in 2017

I&#x27;m amazed how many people on HN complain about the content on Netflix. Especially compared to any other streaming service, such as Amazon or Hulu, they continue to provide much higher-end content for my dollar, as well as a (far) superior UI experience.<p>For me, the stand-up specials like Dave Chapelle and Louis CK alone are huge and welcome additions, never mind the many, very good lesser known comedy specials on there.<p>Their agreement with Dreamworks has only helped, allowing me to enjoy surprisingly good films like Zootopia.<p>Even great cable channels like FX (The Americans, Legion) and AMC (Mad Men, Better Call Saul) are not available for any reasonable price as standalone cable packages, so I&#x27;m not sure what the comparison is in terms of quality. HBO at 15&#x2F;month?<p>But even HBO shows are hit-or-miss. And while their movie selection is generally pretty great, I still find myself not watching it all that much.<p>It seems to me that Netflix provides a pretty high level of content at their price point.

I really hope they don&#x27;t lose focus on the quality of their original content.<p>I understand that not everything Netflix does is tailored to me, particularly due to Netflix&#x27; growing, increasingly mainstream audience, diverse and varying preferences, more ground to cover, etc.<p>However lately Netflix&#x27; content simply seems to lack substance to me. It feels as if it&#x27;s just the superficial result of throwing a promising combination of those very specific tags&#x2F;categories the services is famous for onto the assembly line and ending up with a show or film that, while ticking all the boxes and not being bad at all, is still pretty far off the masterpieces of the medium. I&#x27;m not sure if classics like The Wire, The Sopranos or Mad Men could have been created with such a formulaic approach and I&#x27;m missing shows of that caliber on Netflix. Maybe the service should offer brillant content creators the freedom and opportunity to do the shows they want to do, instead of dictating the theme and framework.

To me, it seems like Hollywood is betting everything on 3D movies in the fantasy&#x2F;superhero&#x2F;werewolf&#x2F;supernatural abilities&#x2F;animated&#x2F;zombie genre(s).<p>That&#x27;s roughly 3&#x2F;4 of what the three cinema chains in my city show. That leaves some 25 percent to the remotely realistic movies - the ones with characters and stories that could be true, at least in a distant future. There are nights where the only movies the cinemas show, are fantastic ones. Where the only cinema experience would involve wearing 3D glasses and watching childish characters save the world.<p>Personally, I am fine with the establishment taking some beating. But I sure hope there will be more than just a handful of providers of content. Hollywood, HBO, Netflix, Amazon. That&#x27;s not nearly enough.

I&#x27;ve liked some of netflix&#x27;s original content - house of cards was the first - but a LOT of it is trash too. I don&#x27;t doubt they have numbers that lead them to create these shows... but i question the scale of it sometimes. Of the netflix originals, i&#x27;ve only enjoyed a handful.<p>Meanwhile, I&#x27;ve enjoyed a number of &quot;low-budget&quot; shows they&#x27;ve had (like ice pilots) and a number of the kung-fu movies they have available. But to be fair, a LOT of the low-budget stuff they have is trash too.<p>It&#x27;s clear (to me) that there is some effort to pad their content, to seem like they have a fuller collection, even if it&#x27;s only a collection a raccoon would love. This, taken with the idea they tote of &quot;having only the best performing people&quot; displays a mismatch in cultural ideas and actual output.<p>For me, I want netflix to succeed because another content producer is a welcome addition to the scene, and i hope they stay independent and don&#x27;t get bought up by disney. I know in a few years they&#x27;ll have a collection of original content to rival the older players.

Netflix was forced into this. For a while (I no longer look at the data) content costs were increasing at 8-10% per year which is unsustainable for distributors. The CEO of DISH once suggested on an earnings call that there should be anti trust inquiries into content pricing.<p>Additionally, Netflix&#x27;s international growth was hampered by their inability to efficiently negotiate international distribution rights.

When you see that the content holder make it harder and harder for Netflix to license their content, it makes senses to invest so much money on creating their own content.<p>It seems in the end, we&#x27;re really returning to the cable era.<p>Be ready for packages giving you access to Netflix, Amazon, and channels...

I thought this number seemed absolutely nuts to begin with, but actually, given their ~100 million subscribers, it&#x27;s pretty much inline with what the BBC might spend in the same sort of set up.<p>As an observer, what still seems odd to me is the low number of shows or movies they are producing with that massive budget - last year &quot;The Get Down&quot; apparently cost $16 million per episode while the entire, huge hit, first season of &quot;Stranger Things&quot; cost $13 million.<p>I would have thought that would inspire them to look for more of these low budget, low risk, big payoff shows, especially when you run a subscription service - surely a series that people binge over 2 weeks, with the potential for more seasons to keep people subscribing is better for you than a one time film? Nope, $100 Million on a single film this year.

That&#x27;s about $65&#x2F;member per year at most current count of ~92m members.<p>(1) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.nytimes.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;01&#x2F;18&#x2F;business&#x2F;netflix-profit-rises-56-percent-to-67-million.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.nytimes.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;01&#x2F;18&#x2F;business&#x2F;netflix-profi...</a>

Well, the sane way to distribute content when the only thing that has non-negligible costs is production, not distribution, [1] is to have some kind of infrastructure provider that provides distribution and billing and finances production. However having a monopoly has ugly economic effects and having a single entity that dictates media production has ugly social effects.<p>I guess both Amazon and Netflix try to capture precisely that role, in that case they could charge almost whatever they want while they are not forced by competition to have high quality (and therefore expensive) content. Plus I am afraid that the market tends to produce a monopoly, because a individual subscriber will look for the service that has more content.<p>[1] Hetzner currently charges EUR 1.40 &#x2F; TB of additional traffic, so marginal distribution costs are in the range of EUR 10^-3 &#x2F; Movie.

Re:paywall, the story is also syndicated on Business Standard. Here are the AMP<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;amp&#x2F;wap.business-standard.com&#x2F;article-amp&#x2F;international&#x2F;netflix-the-monster-that-s-eating-hollywood-117032600023_1.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;amp&#x2F;wap.business-standard.com&#x2F;article...</a><p>and non-AMP versions<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wap.business-standard.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;international&#x2F;netflix-the-monster-that-s-eating-hollywood-117032600023_1.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wap.business-standard.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;international&#x2F;netfl...</a>

&gt; TV stars are demanding “movie star” salaries of some $250,000 per episode when they previously were content with half that<p>One major result of Netflix&#x27;s rise is that the TV format for entertainment is starting to be seen as on par with or better than the feature film format.<p>There&#x27;s something obvious about this from a viewer&#x27;s standpoint. People are naturally drawn to abundance and regularity. Rather than having 100 discussions about which movie to watch together with my wife over the course of a year, then find that only 20 or so of them are on Netflix, and maybe 5 of them turn out to be stinkers, we can simply pick a show we both know is about a B+, and watch 100 episodes, not ever being disappointed. Also, if I watch the pilot of a great show, then I know I have a whole season to go through, with days of entertainment. If I watch a great movie, then welp, I&#x27;ve just watched a great movie and maybe in a few years there will be a sequel.<p>From an artistic standpoint, there are freedoms that open up due to having established characters, routine plot conventions, etc. There was an article on HN a while back where Conan O&#x27;Brien mentioned that this is why he did exactly the same walk to the stage every single night, or something of that nature.

I love Netflix, but they really need to invest in some more depth for the UI.<p>Let me curate my own lists and my own history per profile, including removing stuff from dynamic lists. I don&#x27;t want to have to go into my account settings (something only the account owner can do) to remove recently watched items from my account history <i>and then have to wait 24 hours for it to actually happen</i>.<p>Let me build new lists and manually dump a tv show or movie into them.<p>Let me search all offerings, sortable <i>and</i> filterable alphabetically and&#x2F;or by release date.<p>Let me view my profile&#x27;s total viewing history if I&#x27;m interested. Even for titles that are no longer viewable on Netflix. A neat feature would be to group these by title. So you can show just &quot;The Office&quot; or &quot;Game of Thrones&quot; or &quot;The West Wing&quot;, which can be expanded to a list of seasons, each of which can be expanded to a list of episodes, showing which ones I&#x27;ve watched and which ones I haven&#x27;t.<p>--- --- ---<p>As enjoyable and useful as Netflix is, the fact that it still remains essentially a completely non-customizable list of &quot;what&#x27;s popular&quot; is just incredibly lazy on their part.

We&#x27;ve already hit &quot;peak content&quot; for Netflix, which I define as &quot;more hours of new content released that I&#x27;ll watch in a year.&quot;<p>I would estimate I watch about 200 hours a year, Netflix is releasing 1,000 hours of content this year[0]. This trend will only accelerate, especially considering all of the other providers pouring money into content.<p>I wish that video content licensing could be regulated similar to radio music, where the license holder receives a flat rate per play (this could be adjusted to be per-minute with modifiers for SD&#x2F;HD&#x2F;etc). That would open up a whole new market of streaming websites that could focus on cataloging and recommending content, instead of me having to pay for many websites full of content that I cannot physically spend the time to find the best of. Some streaming devices have cross-service search functionality built in, but it could be much better.<p>[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bgr.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;10&#x2F;19&#x2F;netflix-originals-1000-hours-programming&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bgr.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;10&#x2F;19&#x2F;netflix-originals-1000-hours-progr...</a>

I often find it a bit funny when the streaming providers advertise their exclusive content. As if it was a bonus for subscribers, when really it is part of their fight for becoming a monopoly and tying users to them.<p>Best for users would be to have all content available everywhere, not having to subscribe to multiple streaming providers.<p>That said, if that is the game they have to play, I am happy if at least it results in some worthwhile series.

I don&#x27;t want this. I just want them to make more good movies available. I don&#x27;t like Netflix originals and I hate series type shows. I know everyone doesn&#x27;t feel this way though.

As a writer, I want as much industry competition inflating screenwriting demand and prices accordingly. If it ever gets unsustainable, okay, I&#x27;m sure the market will react accordingly. For now though, I think it&#x27;s a great time to be in Content Creation and what Netflix is doing is, no doubt, certainly one definition of &quot;industry disruption&quot; that gets noted frequently. Messy business, that, and risky, but here we are and Netflix is still chugging along.

The Netflix version of A Series of Unfortunate Events was orders of magnitude better than theatrically released abomination starring Jim Carrey.

I got rid of sky last year. I was paying a multiple of what netflix costs and had to put up with what seemed like 5 minutes of ads for every 10 minutes of a show. It made GOT completely unwatchable.<p>I am under no illusions about how netflix might behave if they ever achieve a monolithic dominance but so far it&#x27;s great.

I find it hard to believe that NetFlix should be worth $60b on $8b of revenue when Time-Warner (which owns HBO) has a $75B market cap in $25b of revenue. NetFlix had higher EPS in 2014 so scale is not a great argument here.

The promise of Netflix was &quot;the long tail&quot;: an ultimate video library of all but perhaps the very latest content.<p>I&#x27;m not interested in &quot;Netflix originals&quot;. Focus on the core competency of archiving &amp; delivery; let others make the content.<p>I&#x27;ve worked at IBM, Smith Corona, Kodak, CNN, AT&amp;T, others - a major takeaway is: businesses which don&#x27;t stick to their core competency&#x2F;purpose die.

I&#x27;m happy about the prospect of Hollywood&#x27;s death, but I&#x27;m disappointed with Netflix&#x27;s current direction. Since House of Cards they have been creating fantastic quality work, but due to senseless DRM constraints, I can&#x27;t even watch any of it in 4k without spending ~$100 on specialized hardware, even though my PC is more than proficient enough at video playback.

Too bad the quality is pretty bad[1], even with the most expensive subscription. I&#x27;m surprised people don&#x27;t mind somehow. Perhaps most of their users are watching the content on laptops?<p>And since you can only watch it in the browser, you can&#x27;t use things like madVR or frame interpolation tools to get smoother panning scenes.<p>1 - Even a blu ray rip of around 3GB looks better. Think a 2 to 2.5 hour movie.

Looking at this list, I haven&#x27;t even heard of at least 1&#x2F;5 of the English language shows Netflix already has released <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_original_programs_distributed_by_Netflix#Acquisitions" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_original_programs_dist...</a>

Is there room for new challengers in this space, or are all of the media incumbents going to lock down the rest of the digital entertainment space?<p>I live in Atlanta, and the cost of production here is much cheaper than California. I&#x27;ve been mulling over the merits of someone here launching a streaming platform for some of the locally-produced content.

&gt; “You just can’t compete with someone coming in with fresh money, low overhead and a lot less baggage than you,” said Darrell Miller, an entertainment lawyer ...<p>That&#x27;s such a delicious juxtaposition of wistful observation, and observer&#x27;s job title (or &#x27;contribution to society&#x27; if you prefer).

For me the sweet spot is a season with around 10 episodes that tells a complete story.<p>Bosch over on Amazon was pretty good.

Hopefully they&#x27;ll green-light another season of MST3K.

Whatever you might think about their streaming listings, their DVD listings still contain virtually everything, and they stay there indefinitely. And yet I hear that their DVD business is hemorrhaging cash and has numbered days.<p>This DVD business is the only place I am aware of for renting a great many movies. RedBox has very limited offerings. If it ever does fold, consider that for movies that don&#x27;t appear in anyone&#x27;s streaming catalog or a catalog you subscribe to, the <i>only</i> other (legal) option you&#x27;ll have is to buy the DVD somewhere.<p>I don&#x27;t know what things will look like in 10 years technologically, but if the Netflix DVD business ever goes away, there will be movies that are permanently inaccessible for rental.

From what I understood, Hollywood is complaining about positive competition. The prices are higher because there are few actors and scarcity of good staff, and this is a normal supply and demand reaction. So basically, they are complaining that there is a business model that works better than theirs.

That&#x27;s 1.3 shows a week. 15 hours. Podcasts and tv blogs will have work for quite some time.

I&#x27;m very much looking forward to when they finally release the second season of &quot;The Expanse&quot; and &quot;Sense8&quot;.<p>I don&#x27;t understand why the Expanse series two is being held back from Europe. Is it already available on Netflix in the US?

I wonder if their focus on original content will open the door for a Blockbuster-like revival. It was nice growing up knowing there was always a reliable place filled with the latest movie releases as well as all of the classics.

I&#x27;d settle for fewer shows with earlier release dates. It&#x27;s crazy waiting over a year to watch the next season of a show.<p>I guess I&#x27;m a dinosaur from the olden days of TV where once per week you watched a show. Then a break for summer and the new season started in the fall.<p>These days it&#x27;s binge watch an entire show and wait 18 months for the next season. I can&#x27;t stand that who can sit still for that long?<p>I bet Netflix would prefer a slower production and release schedule rather than a blast of a dozen episodes. Even the actors must hate that they must also have to wait until production starts again.<p>Production quality is suffering too which may indicate shows are being made too fast. On Iron Fist I noticed in each episode a red laser dot and grid shining on the actors. And in one episode you could see water dripping off the camera lens housing.

At $2-3m (double on the high end and established) production cost per episode of anything, we&#x27;re looking at a massive amount of TV content. Unless they opt for films - if so, good luck.

So what differentiates them from HBO? I am confused. With HBO Go it&#x27;s Cable going Internet and with Netflix it&#x27;s Internet going Cable. Just that both distribute over the Web

IMO, the best sort of series are miniseries. Tell your story and be done with it. I&#x27;d rather remember something for how great it was than how great its decline was.

As the HBO CEO once said, (and I paraphrase) &#x27;It&#x27;s a race between whether HBO can become Netflix faster [1] or Netflix can become HBO faster[2]&#x27;<p>[1] distribution<p>[2] original content

Happy Netflix user but the quality especially of old-ish series is beyond infuriating.<p>I have untouched-DVD rips from Star Trek Voyager. Single episodes run around 2 GB of data, while the same Netflix episodes are ~200MB.<p>Not only does Netflix not carry the bonus stuff, but the quality is seriously braindead - weird moire effects in the intro, for example, and it just looks pixelated.<p>In fact, the &quot;scene rips&quot; tend to look better than what Netflix offers! And it&#x27;s certainly not due to low network quality, I&#x27;ve got a 100&#x2F;20 connection and stuff like Shadowhunters is clear HD.

They also supposedly are becoming more paranoid and legacy media like (piracy!! and the like). Influence and size corrupts.

I wonder what bump in revenue streams they are expecting to justify billions in programming every year.

great - because their originals are the only thing worth watching because their choice of non-netflix content is rubbish

Too bad most of their original &amp; acquired programming is terrible.

But I still can&#x27;t stream Goonies.

Long shot, but if anyone from Netflix sees this, I&#x27;m looking for finishing funds to complete one of Sir Christopher Lee&#x27;s last films, The Hunting of the Snark, based on the Lewis Carroll story and I would be happy to exclusively license it to Netflix.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt1887901&#x2F;?ref_=nv_sr_1" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt1887901&#x2F;?ref_=nv_sr_1</a>

I think Netflix is diluting the quality of their original content in the race of creating more and more minutes. Initial Netflix offerings like House of Cards were awesome, it has gone downhill since then. The Marvel offerings are awfully slow paced and boring (except maybe season one of Daredevil). I&#x27;ve been on the verge of cancelling my Netflix subscription recently and will probably do unless they significantly improve their original content.

&gt;Netflix expected to spend over $6B on original and acquired programming in 2017<p>...yet all I watched was Columbo, Poirot, Midsomer Murders and Murder She Wrote.<p>If only some of this &quot;original content&quot; was original in being upbeat or uplifting.

The self-pitying language from Hollywood is hilarious.<p>How DARE people want to work for Netflix intead of us, just because it pays better, is sexier and cooler, is technologically cutting edge, and allows much greater freedom from executive meddling?<p>NOT COOL GUYS.

looked interesting, shame it&#x27;s paywalled

Dear Netflix: New Game of Thrones series, pleaze!