As Amazon becomes the latest platform to push an ad-supported tier, TV writers greet this retro model with frustration and, in some cases, disdain: āI thought 'Nine Perfect Strangers' with commercials was horrible,ā says David E. Kelley of his Hulu show with breaks.
Where did yāall think the extra money to comply with SAG-AFTRA and the WGAās demandsā was gonna come from? Subscription revenue is not elastic relative to the content viewed, so that residual money has to come from somewhere.
Commercial tiers on streaming services predate the terms of the new SAG-AFTRA and WGA deals but nice try blaming unions for corporate greed.
Yep! Never said they didnāt.
Then maybe you should stop trying to blame corporate greed on union workers.
I never did in the first place. This is 50% the fault of corporate greed and 50% the fault of a business model that isnāt designed to reap funds in the same way that both broadcast and cable television did.
Anyone who thought that these companies would dig into their existing income and margins, especially when these streaming platforms were already mostly in the red, rather than find an income stream that more linearly aligned with the residuals they now must pay was optimistically naive.
Yes, you did. YOU brought up the cost of the SAG-AFTRA and WGA deals in an attempt to justify the need for commercial plans.
Right there. You said it. So stop this poor attempt at gaslighting. Nobody here is as stupid as you seem to think we are.
At this point Iām starting to think you just donāt understand revenue streams and business models so discussing this with you further doesnāt sound like something that will be productive, unfortunately.
This from the guy who canāt remember what he wrote, nor can he scroll up.
You fell off the high horse a ways back. Pay attention.
Yeah, this isnāt my first run in with that person and itās become obvious that they never argue in good-faith so donāt expect that. Hell, last week they were pushing far right, racist, culture war nonsense in this community. Frankly, they shouldāve been shown the door then and there.
yea, its not like Netflix made $33.7 billion U.S. dollars, with $5.5 billion of pure profit in 2023 aloneā¦
If ten million more people stream The Crown tomorrow using ad-free Netflix plans, where is the residual money for those ten million additional streams supposed to come from?
iā¦ honestly donāt know what you mean? If 10 million people stream the crown tomorrow, every one of them is already paying for a membership, so i suggest you take the money from the monthly fee they already pay.
Maybe Netflix brings home only $5b of profitā¦ poor poor billionaires.
Thatās not profit, but income.
But in any case, this is still a problem, as if any show gets popular enough, Netflix could theoretically owe more in residuals than theyāre making in monthly subscriptions. Ads are the only way to ensure that the people working on the projects can get paid what theyāre owed when we watch the media they made.
Look I donāt like ads as much as the next guy, but when it comes to making revenue for people working on the shows and movies I watch, there are only two ways to guarantee that those workers get paid: if advertisers cover the residual fees with ads, as theyāve done for decades now, or through margins of either physical or digital media sales. I love physical media but Iāll happily watch ads on shows because it means that the people who made them are getting paid.
TL;DR for any of this to truly work and for the actors, writers, and others to get paid their due, the money needs to come from an income source that generates more revenue when more people consume to media; otherwise, the companies offering these services could theoretically run out of money to pay residual fees.
i agree that everone needs to get paid, but we could say the same thing about an ad supported model, until its 6 hours ads for every hour of show ābut what ifā.
In the end, they are making $5b of net profit (and $12.93b of gross profit), so their profit/liabilities is an extremely healthy 40%!). the increased profits isnt about paying people more, its about increasing their net profit for their shareholders.
I agree to a point. While youāre right that the profit/liabilities margin is healthy, and that driving people into ad-supported tiers by raising the cost of ad-free viewing is mostly to keep these companies from having to pay out of existing income streams in order to keep profits as high as possible (even if theyāre still negative at the moment), I think itās still worth considering that there is a potential for ad free viewing to cause a company to owe more in residuals than they make in subscription revenue if, for example, a ridiculous amount of people stream something for whatever reason.
(BTW when Iām referring to net income being āstill negativeā Iām talking about the streaming services, not the companies that own them)
Bullshiiiiiiiiiiiiit
ahaha