Let's See How a 13-year Old Post (On Netflix Streaming) Aged, Shall We?

For reasons I cannot begin to fathom, this 2011 post that featured me shrugging off the modest rise in cost of Netflix's streaming service has been getting views on this here internet website.  I have no idea why, but I suspect I'm probably getting canceled somewhere by teens with unicorn anime icons.  So everyone buckle up for that to hit.

In the post, I marvel at the possibilities of streaming, and how *cheap* this really is, when you consider the value in comparison/ contrast to rentals, going to the movies, etc...  

The first thing of note is that I didn't bat an eye at using a Louis CK clip.  Hoo-boy.  Time marches on.  And, I kind of forgot, CK was actually really funny until, uh, things came to light...  I think his point in the clip holds fine if you forget his relationship to shrubbery.   

A quick recap:  what I was excited about was that, in 2011, Netflix had worked out deals with the studios to get a lot of their back library.  And for someone interested in movies from all eras, this was a gold mine.  To me, then and now, the *obvious* thing to do was/is put the entire catalog of studios onto a service.  

That has, in no way, happened anywhere.  Not even Max, which *should* have access to the entire WB catalog and parts of the MGM catalog and has a TCM hub, which makes me think clearances are already had, but they don't know what they're doing.

the mysterious, stochastic popularity of this post began in May

I should add, it was almost immediately after this post that I started to notice those back catalogs disappearing.  Maybe Warner Archive was moving into full swing.  Maybe Filmstruck (RIP) was launching.

In 2011, we were watching the world change in front of us, and, yet, people were whinging like we'd taken the bottle from a baby.  We'd had streaming for all of four years at this point, and any change to the (very experimental) service was seen as suspicious or threatening. 

Here in 2024, I think some/ most adults, who care how things work, are now more aware:

• that Netflix licensed content from studios and the implications of not owning their own content and how it was clearly a moving target for when media came on and off the service
• the studios were more or less letting Netflix @#$% this up on their own dime and watching how this worked
• why Netflix started making their own content in response as it became clear media conglomerates would launch their own services

Netflix in 2024 is obviously a vastly different beast than it was in 2011.  And, it's funny, I happened to just look at the network line-ups for Fall TV on the major networks in the US (NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox) - and it's a wasteland of events, reality TV and franchises.  Meanwhile, the Emmy winners and big franchise shows with dragons in them are on streaming services.  I watch movies made directly for Netflix, Max, Disney+, etc... all the time.  

And, in fact, streaming has largely become my default method for consuming movies, rather than in the theater as I'd done my entire life (thanks, COVID).

But in 2011, I guess Netflix was it as far as offerings went in 2011.  I don't mention Amazon Prime in the original post.  And if I look at my end-of-the-year movie recap for 2012, I'm still not mentioning Amazon as a format.  (In 2012, I did watch For Your Height Only.  I'm not proud.)  

That said, had my cell phone service not made Netflix one of three apps I get for free/ deep discount for being a member, I don't know if I'd still have it.  (The other two are Apple+ and MLB.tv.  Thanks, T-Mobile!)

Looking at the comments, folks were leery of the pricing change and mad about many things they saw happening.  In some ways, I don't blame them.  Paul mentioned that they should do more direct messaging about what they've added, and I think they did!  

My brother's comments, however, aged like yoghurt in the sun.  I am not sure he even got a membership to Vulcan when they re-opened a quarter mile from his house.  I'm also not sure he's seen a full movie in years since he had children.  I'm just wasn't in line with the anonymous commenter who complained "we're not getting the hits!", and as we've seen, the studios have found a formula for now.  Theater, pay-per-view and/ or buy the movie.  Then rental or flagship material on their service.

What none of us anticipated was the pairing of too many streaming services and the absolute glut of content coming our way.  8-13 episode shows - and movies - were coming out fast and hard, with large casts and what seemed like expensive budgets.  It seemed it was literally hundreds of them - enough that I can honestly say the first time I'd hear about *most* shows was when an entertainment news outlet would announce a show wasn't going to continue.  (And the tiny fanbase would go into a tizzy that we'd never learn the secret of the show's mystery or what happens with Character Z.)  

I was never sure *how* any of this was being funded, or what the streamers thought made up the economic model.  But I grew up in a world where there were a limited number of channels and even then, with millions watching, TV looked cheap and was often very bad.  Nothing in 2021 changed to make me think 2-3x more humans = we can handle 100x the content.

Another issue: if you wanted to see Star Trek, that's an app.  Stranger Things?  That's a different streamer.  And it hit our pocketbooks, basically making the supposed lower cost equal out (or cost more!) as having cable. 

And that's if the agreements hold.  Content shuffles around on a single app vis-a-vis availability, cost, etc... and will disappear only to re-appear elsewhere three months later.  You're constantly digging.

What *should* have been an amazing resource in Max - which could have been the model as they owned so much content going back to the silent age, and put up intuitive hubs for finding content - only really succeeded with putting a lot of, but still not all of, their DC superhero content.  Their TCM hub is more or less a copy+paste of a sub-section of the Criterion Channel plus a smattering of "we'll get dragged if we don't offer this" movies.  HBO hub is unintuitive and offerings Blockbuster-like, which is hilarious considering that HBO's big draw that made it prestige-HBO was being better than network TV and regular movies.  

And, of course, the numbskulls from Discovery bought WB and came in assuming what we all wanted was the straight trash that Discovery network programming has become over the past decade.  I would like to see the Venn-Diagram of Studio Ghibli fans and Ice Road Truckers aficionados.  So, like back when I was a Spectrum Cable subscriber, I'm paying for tons of content/ channels I do not care about nor use.  And I am seriously considering ending Max as a subscription.  Hacks won't be back for a year.

Ironically, streaming has been a financial debacle for many who delved in.  Paramount's foray into streaming has been a massive loser, inching closer and closer to a billion dollar loss while insisting it'll be profitable soon at the end of every quarter - which led to the sale of Paramount to Skydance.  I don't know what's happening at Discovery and Disney, but the two rival companies are now offering a Disney+/ Hulu/ Max package for $18 a month - or $6 per service.  That is b-a-n-a-anas.

In many ways, I do think we're better off than we were during the days of linear-time-line cable broadcasts, purchasing VHS tapes at Walmart or picking a movie at Hollywood Video.  We, technically, have the capacity to have access to any movie that has been put on a server.  That the studios do not want to do this is *mind-boggling*.

The biggest flaw in the whole concept to me is findability.  Sure, it's become incredibly hard to find what you're looking for without pulling out a third app - and that's if you're specifically looking for a movie or show.  But my focus was and will be:  there's no *finding* new shows or movies.

In ye olden days of cable, we'd see something called "Hot Dog Mechanics" and we'd watch two minutes of it and we'd now be in for an hour, or we'd tap out.  With streaming clicking on "Hot Dog Mechanics" is actually risky.  You could easily find the system is *thrilled* you clicked on that show and you're getting nothing but meat-related shows about blue collar people fixing meat and cars (YouTube: you're the biggest assclown of them all when it comes to this problem).  

Or, if you're Netflix, you bury someone's favorite show to insist we all watch your newest offerings, which are 95% trash.  (if I didn't get Netflix through T-Mobile, it would have been gone long ago.)

The problem, to me, of almost all of the current mode of streaming is that the people making decisions are business people and technology people.  They are not information management people or folks who love movies and/ or television.  Those MBA's and lawyers can figure out they'll make more money not releasing a movie and taking a tax write-off than if they did release the movie, but they don't know why anyone shows up for a film.  And the people managing their content for distribution are a bunch of basic-ass bitches.

Look, you can live in Nowhere, USA and go to the strip mall to Beijing Palace and order the Hot and Sour soup and say you love Chinese Food, but that doesn't mean you actually know anything about China, China's history, modern China, or Chinese cuisine.  Movies and TV are no different.  Watching all of the Despicable Me movies and both Friends and The Office does not make you qualified to curate, program or manage what people get to see. In libraries, we have subject matter librarians.  We don't ask the Physics librarian to decide what is happening in Medieval Lit, how it's framed, or expect the physics librarian to communicate with Medieval Lit scholars.  Why HBO and other services think they should take a local library branch's approach to services hitting millions of subscribers is mind-boggling.

I mean, right now on Max, I can point to multiple miscategorized movies in their few categories on Max's TCM hub.  What intern is in charge of this?  You're a multi-billion-dollar company.

On top of the cost, players like Amazon are now forcing/ tricking you into watching ads, even if you have Prime.  And that, friendos, is not a great sign.  And it's a whole other problem for sports-oriented services like Peacock, who want to force you to watch 120 seconds of ads as the cost for hitting ffwd (this was awful during the Olympics when I was scrubbing 3.5 hours of something looking for something in particular).

Anyway, I choose to be happy about streaming.  It's amazing.

But I'm also still occasionally buying physical media, because I don't trust these jerks.