#I don't have a netflix subscription :(

[corvid-language-library]

My senpai and I are very different people lmao she just suggested we take the 100¥ bus to save us less than 15 minutes walking and I'm like GIRL I am NOT paying ANY amount of money if I can reasonably walk there

[godesscall]

Looking forward to play this game one day :)

[miasanmuller]

I miss sense8

[just-an-enby-lemon]

I think the thing about creatives moving for their own subscription based plataform for me is that: it is a gringo issue. Not in a bad way but more like my favorite brazilian youtubers are not going to do that or if they ever do it'll take a while!

This means I'm mostly just losing my favorite foreing channels. Said channels are of course for english speakers wich means subscrition fees are dollar based. So the acessible 5 to 6 bucks becames 25 to 30 bucks for me (not even conting the conversion fees) and I just have no way of paying that much.

[niofo]

rewatching absolution rn. i wanted to do it before dav comes out at some point and i think now is a good moment.

[tomwambsmilk]

This is such a long post that nobody asked for but I've been seeing Discourse again...

I feel like something that’s missing in most of the discussions I’ve seen on Tumblr about how streaming companies like Netflix have changed TV production for the worse is the profit motive. Or at least, it’s misunderstood. For example, I see a lot of people complaining about how Netflix only considers a show worthwhile if a bunch of people binge it as soon as it comes in, which is true - but I don’t know that everyone understands why, and it's lead to a skewed perception of what's actually going on, and why various studios and platforms make the decisions that they do.

The thing about Netflix is that it’s a public company that's currently unprofitable - so, every single thing it does is oriented toward "growth" (gaining new subscribers). Every show they decide to invest in, they do so because they think it’ll make people who don’t have Netflix want to get Netflix. And if they launch a show, and a whole bunch of new people join the platform, AND their viewer data shows that this show received disproportionate viewership in the same month all those people joined the platform - then it was a good investment. The further out you go from the release, the less correlation there is between the viewership of a show and new subscribers, so the less those viewer numbers matter to them.

Additionally, people talking about the show is more valuable to them than people actually watching it, because people talking about the show gives them free word-of-mouth marketing. Once your friend has bought a Netflix subscription, Netflix doesn't care what they watch, or at what pace. So obviously, if you can make everyone feel like they need to watch the entire show RIGHT NOW because everyone is talking about it and they can't avoid spoilers, that's a much stronger marketing strategy than letting people watch at their own pace.

And that’s why seasons are so short - a longer season costs more money and won’t bring in any extra subscribers, so it's a bad investment. It’s also why Netflix shows tend to be cancelled after only a couple of seasons - if a show hasn’t brought in many new subscribers after the first two seasons, it’s not likely to do so in the future, and so it becomes a poor investment, regardless of how many people already on the platform love it. And even beloved shows like Stranger Things eventually reach a point where everyone who loves it is already on the platform, and even though it's still massively popular it's no longer profitable on the same scale.

All of this is to contrast with network TV, where the revenue comes from advertisers. The more eyeballs are on a show, the more money a network can charge for ad space during that show. So the more beloved a TV show is, the more episodes you want in a season; even if the quality of some of those episodes is poor because the creative team is overworked and underpaid (ie exploited), people will still tune in and you’ll still make money. And that’s also how you end up with shows of 10-15 seasons, even if the show starts to suck around season 8 or 10; as long as enough devoted fans are still watching the show, they can still charge mega ad dollars and make a lot of money. A long-running show with name recognition will make more money, even when it sucks, than an excellent brand-new show with no name recognition. It also means that shows that are self-contained “plot of the week” type shows do a LOT better than stories with season-long arcs, because those shows are more likely to attract casual viewers in addition to regular ones, and people are less likely to abandon the whole show if they miss an episode or two. Plus, if you don't need to worry about the order a season airs in, you can make a lot more money off of rerun adspace outside of the regular season.

And finally, growth looks different for a network. On Netflix, a single person can only provide a single unit of growth, because you're only going to purchase one subscription, so there's very little incentive for Netflix to cater to existing subscribers so long as the platform is 'good enough' for them to avoid cancelling. On the other hand, network growth is calculated based on viewership. So, let's say I watch "The Office" on NBC every week, and nothing else. And then one day, a friend tells me how much they love this other NBC show, "30 Rock", that's halfway through its second season, so I start watching that. That's growth for NBC! They can now charge a little bit more for ad space on 30 Rock than they could before - and it's happened without a whole new person needing to be introduced to their network. So there's a strong incentive to pay attention to what existing viewers want, rather than just focusing on what brings in new viewers. After all, not watching one specific show is a much easier decision than cancelling an entire platform subscription. (The downside of this is that network TV creators are far more beholden to the demands of the audience than a show on a platform like Netflix or HBO, and that can lead to sacrificing some creative integrity).

Overall my point is that the entire structure and shape of TV shows has ALWAYS been motivated by profit. That doesn’t mean the complaints about Netflix are invalid - they are VERY valid and I agree with most of them - but I think it’s important to diagnose the problem correctly: the people with the money to make a tv show are also usually the people who would like to make as much money as possible off your tv show, and will manipulate it accordingly. What’s the solution? I’m not sure, but pretending that these studios are making decisions based on “bad data” or “not understanding what people want” or just pure caprice is simply naive. Its not that they don't know what you want - they just don't care.

[pinkieroy]

Dragon prince season 5 is out????

[gie-gie-gie-gie]

maria clara at ibarra

started watching from the beginning again since the series premiered on netflix. also following the tumblr tag mehehehe. how to fight the urge not to type in taglish? 

[oceanatydes]

dude you need a netflix subscription to play too hot to handle. what the hell

[psychotantei]

It's even more powerful to say "I don't have Netflix"

the ability to say "i dont have a tiktok" in social situations makes me feel so powerful. like the general reaction is "shock, confusion, then this weird 'thats probably a good thing' response" its so fun

[franciya]

Today Adam Sandler's releasing a movie that's being marketed as "this one is not supposed to be funny*

I thought that was already what all the others were about

[lonelyneuronaboard]

Hi, I'm Prime and I'm contacting you to inform you that from April onwards we'll be introducing ads too, without changing the price of the subscription obvs! But like, for your information, just in case! If you don't want to see the ads it will costs €1.99 more per month. Bye!

[joemerl]

So, I said that I wasn't going to watch Disenchantment season five. But now that it's officially ending, the completionist in me is wondering if I really can't slog through just ten more episodes?

Weirdly enough, though, I feel like the trailer made me less enthused. It's trying so hard to hype this up, but instead it reminds me of how much I don't care.

[probably-an-alien]

piracy for the win

yarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr you greedy fucks

[guardianspirits13]

I think one of the most overlooked factors in Netflix's cutthroat approach to deciding wether to renew a show is that they wholly underestimate the power of fandoms.

They seem to think that unless a show is record-breaking or award-winning it will not be profitable to renew but they fail to recognize that most people don't give a shit about the accolades as long as a show is good.

And even then, it is normal to take more than one eight-episode season to pick up real cultural traction. Plenty of now-beloved shows did not reach mainstream popularity until they were multiple seasons deep.

Netflix fails to consider the longevity of their IPs over the initial peak of interest, and have thus cultivated a self-fulfilling prophecy as people avoid starting new shows because they don't want to become invested in something that is more likely than not to be cancelled, and thus these new shows don't reach the ludicrous viewership standard they have set to justify a renewal.

Sure, they get new subscribers for new shows but what keeps them there? Maybe they'd actually stay subscribed if a new season of something they are invested in is on the way (barring the cost itself, which is a whole different can of worms).

Plenty of people subscribe only for one or two shows- I remember people cancelling their subscriptions when they took The Office off because that show alone was keeping them on the platform.

Supernatural did not get 15 seasons because of its exceptional writing or cinematography (ha), they got 15 seasons because of devoted fans who wanted more. Who kept rewatching and buying merchandise and paying for con tickets.

Daredevil is one of the best shows I have ever seen, and that was at the time where the "early" cancellation was common after three seasons (with 12+ episodes). Inside Job is one of the only adult animated series that I have ever thoroughly enjoyed, and it was lucky to have two seasons. Shadow and Bone had the potential to be a franchise based in the extended Grishaverse, and yet it also ended after two seasons.

Finally- not everyone watches shows the day they release! We don't all have that sort of time, and it's ok to discover a new show a week, a month, a year after it releases! Word of mouth and fan culture/communities have been the rock upon which lasing series are created, from Star Trek to Game of Thrones.

All this to say, @netflix yall get your act together and renew Dead Boy Detectives before you lose your captive audience 🫠

[roguepen]

I’ve spent the last week watching documentaries about small town crimes on Hulu and the algorithm keeps giving me more. I also watched a couple of episodes about the Million Dollar Princesses to cleanse my pallet. Jennie Jerome Churchill was apparently more then a bit of a cougar- her second husband was only two weeks older than her son, Winston. Her third husband was three years younger than the aforementioned son. This was not knowledge I needed, but it is knowledge I now have. 

Now I’m watching a Netflix documentary about a volcanic eruption on an island off the New Zealand coast called Whakaari in 2019.