People Like Netflix’s Original Content More Than Its Other Content

https://www.allflicks.net/people-like-netflixs-original-content-more-than-its-other-content/

by artsandsci • 9 years ago

76 66 9 years ago

Zikes• 9 years ago

I don't see the value in comparing Netflix's original content against the exceptionally larger collection of syndicated content which mostly consists of whatever they can get their hands on regardless of quality. It only makes sense that in averaging those two groups the OC one would rate higher.

gibbitz• 9 years ago

Came here to say the same and as the back catalog slips further and further into the syndicated Sunday movie category the OC looks better and better because you haven't already seen it. When I first subscribed to Netflix it was a library of DVDs (literally), now its a slightly better TBS. (Hey Lethal Weapon's on... again)

One thing to note about the cost. There's one rather large difference between cable and multiple streaming services (at least where Netflix is concerned) and that is advertising. We may be paying more for this content, but at least we're only getting content and not having to wait through mis-targeted advertising... At least for now.

fusiongyro• 9 years ago

Agreed completely. Back in October someone blogged that only 31 of the IMDB top 250 movies are on Netflix.

https://www.streamingobserver.com/netflix-now-31-movies-imdb...

croon2• 9 years ago

I really like Netflix originals (the ones I've watched), but it also makes me fear for the future of consolidated streaming. I want to be able to keep up with, and watch good recommended shows.

If I want to watch shows like The Man in the High Castle (Amazon), Game of Thrones (HBO, duh), Difficult People (Hulu), HarmonQuest (Seeso), etc. Is it reasonable to have to subscribe to 5 different streaming services?

Don't get me wrong, $9,99 is likely too cheap to get mostly everything like you do with Spotify, but I'm willing to pay double or triple that, as long as I can keep it in one service, and that it's not five or six times as much, which is a bit steep.

Can we expect anything other than a fractured market, where each service has a lot of content, but not even half of what we want to see?

kartD• 9 years ago

What about a Spotify equivalent with everything, but you can only stream x amount of hours/shows/episodes per year?

I agree the market is too fractured and everyone subscribes for just a few shows on each service

fitchjo• 9 years ago

What is the equivalent for TV content producers that concerts are for musicians? Seems to me there can be some advantage to having your music available for streaming as you provide significantly more access to your music, which you can then monetize through concerts/apparel, but would think those producing the in-demand content would not want someone else to be able to capitalize on that.

gdulli• 9 years ago

It feels like this is a path they foresaw long ago and therefore worked out the cable TV infrastructure. Which may have flaws and got bloated but also has a lot of benefits compared to streaming.

rweichler• 9 years ago

It is pretty easy to circumvent censorship these days, thanks to BitTorrent.

loco5niner• 9 years ago

Censorship is the wrong term here. Plus, I want to pay for what I use. I just want the process to be somewhat simplified.

TylerE• 9 years ago

For like $2 extra a month you can get all the HBO stuff throguh Amazon Prime.

dawnerd• 9 years ago

Where do you get 2 dollars? From prime: $14.99/month after trial https://www.amazon.com/gp/channels/offers/signup/ref=atv_cha...

overcast• 9 years ago

It's definitely $15 a month, not $2. I just signed up for it.

manmal• 9 years ago

If you mean HBO go, it's $14,99 per month through Prime.

ascagnel_• 9 years ago

The way I see it, you have three choices:

- true a la carte; pay for exactly what you want (on disc or through some provider's store like iTunes, Amazon Video, Xbox Video, etc) - subscribe to a bunch of different services (the situation we're in now) - bundle them up

A la carte pricing will be more expensive than anything else, but you get some greater flexibility over the stuff you own. The situation we have now is annoying, but at least you can turn them on and off as needed (so you can pay for HBO only when Game of Thrones is airing). When you bundle them up, it's only a matter of time until you end up with the traditional cable bundle and all the customer abuses and fleecing that it entails.

endymi0n• 9 years ago

At JustWatch, we've started aggregating the streaming market, and at the beginning the market looked like a lot of consolidation (harmonized prices for rent/buy offers, Netflix/Amazon Prime going for global deals...) - but by now, it looks nothing like we'll be out of business anytime soon. Movie rights and distribution are still very strategically fragmented into various differently sized individual deals and packages - and none of the established movie studios and new digital players particularly like each other. All of it creates a situation that makes a universal legal streaming service with a broad offering and flatrate pricing (like Spotify) highly unlikely. Bad for the user, good for us.

grillvogel2• 9 years ago

if only there was a service that "bundled" all the "channels" you like into some sort of "package" and provided a unified interface to stream them all into your TV through a "cable" like device

TheRealPomax• 9 years ago

That'd be pretty amazing. I hope when someone does make that service, they don't then "inject ads every five minutes" like youtube does, don't turn streaming into "only at prespecified times" like those "theaters" and "cinemas" we hear about in history class, and don't start exploiting the fact that there is no real competition by doing things like charging for "bundled content" that you never opted in for while also not being able to opt out of.

fullshark2• 9 years ago

It is amusing that people have been complaining about not having a la carte cable for years, and suddenly the opposite complaint is surfacing about these streaming services.

freddyc2• 9 years ago

It's not legal, but per my comment above Kodi offers a pretty good solution via a Mi Box, Roku, Fire TV etc. Exodus has pretty much every show you could wish to watch on demand, and then there's (paid) IPTV services that you can access if you have to watch live TV. Again, it's not legal but it beats torrenting as you're never uploading any content, only consuming.

jstelly• 9 years ago

tivo+cable card is pretty close to this now - especially since they added the button to skip ads in recorded shows. It definitely could be better, but if your primary sources of video content are mostly cable/TV channels it is probably the best experience. Also it integrates netflix, hulu, vudu, amazon, and cable's on-demand into a single search (at least it seems to, I have not used hulu or vudu through my tivo). You tube is still a separate search though.

stcredzero• 9 years ago

Yes, if everyone is charging a fair amount. Add YouTube Red. 6 x $10 = $60/month. That strikes me as a better bargain than most cable packages.

mark_l_watson2• 9 years ago

I agree. Once I can get Turner Classic Movies legally on the web, then no more cable. For myself, Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube Red are all I need. As to the main topic, the original content is great, but then so is having a large number of tv shows and movies.

tornadoboy55• 9 years ago

Almost everyone I know pays for Netflix and just torrents the rest. And it will stay that way as long as the market stays fractured. Spotify succeeded in dropping music piracy by ~80% because they have almost everything. Remember when Kanye said his album would only be on Tidal? Or Taylor Swift her new album only on Apple music (I know I know, shitty artists).. people didn't subscribe to those services just for that album, they just torrented it. TV production is more expensive than music production, so a $20-30 would be a more reasonable pricepoint, but anything above that, and again: people will just pirate.

amorphid• 9 years ago

One thing Netflix does right is being everywhere. Most any device that has streaming has Netflix.

The availability of Amazon Instant Video sucks. It's not available on a Chromecast. It's not on Apple TV. It's not on a lot of devices that I wanted to buy. I don't want to be forced into buying a crappier device just so I can stream Amazon programming. They went a step further, and stopped selling the Chromecast on Amazon.com. I want a Chromecast. I don't want your stupid Fire TV Stick. If you have to maintain a list of devices compatible with your service like this one...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/ontv/devices

...I don't want to use your streaming video service.

freddyc2• 9 years ago

We pay for Netflix and have access to all of the Amazon content via our Prime subscription and then we just use Exodus on Kodi for everything else. I'd love to see a legal Exodus emerge one day but I think it's unlikely in the foreseeable future.

stone-monkey• 9 years ago

It's hard to imagine consolidation in a winner take all market like we currently have. If content producers license their shows to Netflix, they're only going to get a fraction of that 9.99 a month subscription fee, with Netflix itself getting the lion's share of the money. They also become more beholden to Netflix' demands if they're the only major player in the video streaming market. Also, with Netflix now producing content, they're helping to prop up their competitor if they hand over their content libraries. This is pretty similar to how mind geek killed the porn production market, except instead of outright pirating content, Netflix gives producers a fraction of what they're previously making through TV. Basically, consolidation will only happen if Netflix can kill and absorb traditional TV media.

Kaizyn• 9 years ago

Even if your 5 on-demand subscriptions come in cheaper than basic cable would cost, you would not be willing to accept that?

osmala• 9 years ago

I would say that the issue is more like you like certain kinds of content and streaming services are not split among content types but among who makes the shows. And that you want to watch all the exclusive top shows that are made for dragging people to their streaming platform. I'm in Finland and I would be happy if could select 2-3 streaming services from American selection. But only real options HBO and Netflix with 38% of what they show in USA and a third option which was so terrible for me that I wouldn't even consider it.

kirykl• 9 years ago

I find watching the Netflix back-library to be slightly depressing. Generally watching older movies is great but when nearly every 'you might be interested in' has a cast that's 50% deceased it gets depressing

magic_beans• 9 years ago

But... many, many movies have deceased cast. Do you only watch movies released after 1960..?

r00fus• 9 years ago

I personally don't find Back to the Future less entertaining now that I know that Michael J Fox has Parkinsons disorder.

Life happens, and people get old and die. I appreciate their older works for what they are.

mrfusion• 9 years ago

Which shows do you guys like?

svachalek• 9 years ago

Stranger Things and the Marvel Hell's Kitchen series (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage so far) should appeal to most of the nerd crowd and have a lot of mainstream popularity too. I also enjoyed Marco Polo, Sense 8, and The Get Down personally.

wwwhatcrack• 9 years ago

It's sad they couldn't license any real super heroes. Those guys are lame.

fullshark2• 9 years ago

Black Mirror and BoJack Horseman is the only Netflix original content that I think is phenomenal. The other stuff is fine to mediocre.

Liuser• 9 years ago

House of Cards started it all highly recommend watching it if you have not.

Chewing Gum is a recent favorite of mine.

bennylope• 9 years ago

This should be retitled, "People Like Netflix’s Original Content More Than Its Other Sparse and Geographically Restricted Content"

nottorp• 9 years ago

Or "besides Netflix's own shows, there's nothing worth watching on Netflix any more". Except in some places where Netflix doesn't even have all their original content lol.

dlandis• 9 years ago

That means that user ratings for Netflix originals are 11% higher, on average, than user ratings for syndicated content.

You can't really draw any conclusions from that stat though since part of the issue is some of the non-original content they add is so bad. I looked up some of the ratings for their recently added movies and some had basically 1 star (on imdb, etc). Why even add it in that case? I think concentrating on original content is great, but I think they should be the go-to place for something else as well...I remember years ago people were amazed at how many quality, little-known, niche independent films they had. Why not get back to that in addition to original content?

dragonwriter• 9 years ago

Why even add it in that case?

Because entertainment is highly subjective, so some people are bound to like it, and stuff which isn't broadly popular is cheap to pick up. Plus, its a cheap way to give the catalog the casual illusion of depth.

I remember years ago people were amazed at how many quality, little-known, niche independent films they had. Why not get back to that in addition to original content?

The same reason they don't have lots of the other high-quality non-profit all content they used to have -- once they proved the market, plenty of other players jumped in (including, in many cases, the content producers), so much of the content isn't available to them and what is has more people bidding for it, often seeking exclusivity and willing to pay for it.

The same thing happened to HBO when other companies got into the "cable premium movie channel" business, and that's why HBO, for a long time, has also been driven by original programming.

If you don't own the content, and you aren't the only channel in a space, the content owners are going to extract all the value through competition among distribution channels. So, you either have to be essentially a monopoly channel (which usually isn't maintainable), or you have to rely on compelling original content as your main draw.

tyingq• 9 years ago

Agree...of course the user ratings are lower for the non-original content.

The Netflix catalog of non-original content does have some bright spots. But there's also a ton of really obscure documentaries, miniscule budget action movies, crappy Adam Sandler movies, reality TV garbage, etc.

IshKebab• 9 years ago

What other content?

zitterbewegung• 9 years ago

Awhile ago Netflix decided to become HBO before HBO could become Netflix. This shows in two ways. One is that they have been investing a bunch in original content and striving for high quality original content for streaming. It also shows that content that isn't owned by them seems to be declining in quality or there is less emphasis or even ability to get non original content on Netflix and the quality appears to be declining IMHO.

CWuestefeld• 9 years ago

That's pretty much what I came here to say. I do like their original content, BUT...

I want that "last year's movies" that I used to be able to get from them, and now seems to be going to crap.

The quality of their original stuff is very good. And they've got good coverage of non-original TV, too (e.g., reruns of "Friends"). But when you get to movies-from-theatres, they're just not there at all anymore.

I think this is intentional on their part, but they need to be careful, because Amazon also seems to be doing well with a similar strategy (e.g., "Man in the High Castle"). Netflix's original mission of movies could be what sets them apart but it seems to be all but abandoned.

nikofeyn• 9 years ago

yea, and actually, the movies i get through the hbo go app are often far superior to netflix's offerings. they rotate, but they often include major releases. i have been thinking about canceling netflix's streaming and returning to the dvd option to get more access.

stephengillie• 9 years ago

Netflix might become HBO at the cost of being Netflix.

ecnahc515• 9 years ago

It's not a trade off, it's everyone else licensing them the content basically making Netflix have no choice but to produce its own content, everything else is too expensive now. Everyone wants tons of money from Netflix for their content, and Netflix is choosing to not pay the increased rate. I'm sure if that changed Netflix would continue to produce new content and use others as well.

frostirosti• 9 years ago

There has got to be a bias here. Of course people who've subscribed to netflix like their original content.

grondilu• 9 years ago

This. I'll totally confess that I'm very indulgent towards original Netflix programs. I'm paying for it so I want to believe I've made the right choice.

grillvogel2• 9 years ago

this is a bit misleading, netflix has continued to lose most of its good licensed content and what is left is mostly garbage compared to what used to be there.

Uhhrrr• 9 years ago

Of course they do. Netflix original content is specifically targeted towards its users.

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/how-netflix-uses-analytics/

Thaxll• 9 years ago

Netflix is sort of the new 2.0 cable company, at the begging it was great in term of global catalogue, ten years from now if will be Netflix shows only, back to square one.

the_watcher• 9 years ago

Netflix's original content has been extremely high-quality, on average. That said, the quality of the other content has also seemed to steadily decline, so this might be a skewed metric.

zeveb• 9 years ago

I think a lot of this is due to the fact that Netflix's other content is pretty terrible. I really miss the old Netflix DVD library: that had every movie or TV show I could ever hope to watch. Now I have a few popular movies from the last year, a few popular movies from a few years ago, a smattering of TV shows, and some (admittedly pretty good) original content.

I just want to pay a cheque and get access to every film & TV show from across the world.

helthanatos• 9 years ago

I don't like any of Netflix's original content and Netflix(US) is pretty annoying with not offering content (such as Tokyo ghoul and better call Saul) I wish they made another Dexter as original content but oh well. About to only use Kodi.

sfifs• 9 years ago

As a marketing guy, I see these trends of unique content focused websites beginning to win over the YouTube/Social Sharing model in many parts of the world. In China, made for internet shows and Korean/Japanese shows dubbed into Chinese are all the rage. In India, locally led content focused video companies have begun rapidly grabbing ad budget dollars from what was previously a YouTube/FB market primarily - especially given FBs issues with video viewability. In the US, there's Netflix and Amazon Prime.

The only difference is in the monetization model - primarily subscription in the US and Ads in China/India - though we're seeing some models of Subscription to do away with ads in China.

beters• 9 years ago

That's not saying much when there's very little good third-party content. Except for House of Cards S1, Netflix original content is B-grade at best.

When Netflix started instant streaming, they had a solid content repertoire from various places. Today, they have very few good third-party movies, and they try to fill the empty space with lousy Original Content.

Of course people will prefer Originals compared to very few crappy alternatives. I would rather see Netflix spend money on getting programming from other companies instead of throwing money at Adam Sandler.

People Like Netflix’s Original Content More Than Its Other Content

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