www.forbes.com: The future of Hollywood changed forever in August 1997. Far from the glitz and glamour of Tinsel Town, two tech entrepreneurs sat in a café in the small Californian city of Santa Cruz and came up with an idea for a subscription-based mail-order DVD sale and rental business. It went on to become the world's most-valuable media company.
4 comments:
Streaming originally was meant to overcome the extremely high cost of cable. When the cable companies started to recognize their losses, they needed their own services. To prove the profitability of these services to increase the price and they have landed in the same pool that cable was in all before streaming. So really there has been a return to the status quo of cable but with being able to choose what to watch when you want with all the same costs and ads. Streaming is also not the reason that Hollywood will take its final bow. The high cost of living in the area drives the prices that companies need to pay their crews if they want to work in the area so that they are not impoverished while the companies make billions. The companies are also still making movies and shows so the work hasn't stopped. Hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing into high production movies and shows.
As someone who doesn’t like to leave my own home, streaming a movie or show is one of my favorite ways of finding entertainment from anywhere I am. I do however miss the DVD players no longer found in modern day laptops. While streaming services become more and more popular I have noticed a trend in my local library of less and less DVDs being taken out, and when they are taken out it is usually by the older generations looking for obscure films not yet available on these online platforms. Most households don’t even have DVD players anymore, I wonder when, like VCRs, the humble DVD player will no longer be manufactured. I don’t even have a DVD player, I’ve resorted to playing the occasional movie on my xbox when I can only find a hardcopy and not a steamed version.
I still remember when Netflix was DVDs and not streaming service. We would get them in the mail and each envelope envelope had different art on it and I was always so excited to see what the art was. Netflix definitely was a success, and there's no doubt that Netflix streaming service initially was a wonderful development in on-demand entertainment. It was incredible. And I remember when our Netflix subscription changed to the streaming service and not the DVD delivery. And it was amazing. I was a kid so I didn't understand how amazing it was, just that we had this new thing in the house. I'm a fascinated by Michael Eisner's comment to the daily mail, and saying that Netflix actually could've been bought by Disney so early on. A fascinating statement because now Disney has its own streaming service that is attempting to compete. And you know what, I do like streaming. The flexibility allows, plus the ability to find specific media is wonderful. I love being able to pause and play, go back, all the things. I do love on demand agreement. What I don't like, however, is that we're really just reverting back to cable TV. One of the perks of streaming services was no commercials. But now, we have ads that interrupts our movies and shows frequently. Often at volumes louder than what we are actually trying to watch. Additionally, One of the perks streaming services was to have one place to collect a lot of media so that you didn't have to go buy a bunch of different channels, Or rent a bunch of DVDs. But now, you have a bunch of different streaming services that collect a different library. So you still might only find a show on one streaming service, instead of multiple. Making a paywall to access new media.
Fascinating to see the detailed financial business going on behind this long term fluctuation and current crisis.
Disappointed in the anti-union rhetoric towards the end. That point of view blames labor for demanding too much when the executives are absolutely raking it in. Wish the journalist would have interviewed a labor/union rep to get another perspective. Strikes, and their duration, occur because management doesn’t negotiate reasonably. Vinciquerra seems to take no responsibility for being one of the decision makers behind seeking lower paid (and potentially underpaid) crew overseas. Pretending it’s all an outside force they have absolutely no participation in smh.
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