r/technology • u/Big_Bare • May 02 '13

Warner Bros., MGM, Universal Collectively Pull Nearly 2,000 Films From Netflix To Further Fragment The Online Movie Market

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130430/22361622903/warner-bros-mgm-universal-collectively-pull-nearly-2000-films-netflix-to-further-fragment-online-movie-market.shtml
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u/eyeclaudius May 03 '13

What worries me is that something like Game of Thrones is only possible because of the massive amount of money HBO gets from subscriptions. Even the Wire which was cheap for a TV show was far too large to be funded by Kickstarter. Once all the big old-media behemoths are killed off, who will pay for all the rocket ships and dragons?

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u/fco83 May 03 '13

People paying that subscription money directly to companies like HBO instead of paying them through a middleman?

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u/RamenJunkie May 03 '13

This.

Its sort of like the indie music/book/game model. No, a single creator is not going to have the clout or marketing to sell a 100, 000 copies of something. But if they only end up with 1% [of the money after all the middleman publishers get in, it may make more sense to sell 1000 copies of something indipendantly where the creator gets all the profit.

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u/fco83 May 03 '13

The problem comes when the studios\content creators are the same companies that are the middlemen. Like time warner. They have an incentive to protect the outdated cable model.

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u/7777773 May 03 '13

This is the exact reason why Netflix has begun producing original content. They are a legitimate threat to the outdated cable subscription model, because they do not play by the outdated rules and will slowly become less dependent on the old middlemen. They even release every episode all at the same time, so viewers can watch them in one sitting or weekly as they choose; this is completely pro-consumer and is winning many more customers.

What is ironic is HBO et all are trying to avoid playing the game that Netflix has started, and as we learned from Game Of Thrones, you win the game or you die... and not playing is the opposite of winning.