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The Wall Street Journal‘s astute Martin Peers warns tonight that Netflix ”stock-price bubble may be close to bursting” because Hollywood studios and networks don’t like the competition. 
The share price has doubled since November, “taking it to a rich valuation of 26 times estimated 2009 earnings — a loftier multiple than either Google or Apple.” But the DVD mail order business wasn’t what juiced investors: it was Netflix’s streaming service. And reports that rival Blockbuster could be facing bankruptcy didn’t hurt. But now “Hollywood studios appear to be waking up to the threat posed by Netflix’s instant-watch service, which the company says is being used by millions of its subscribers,” Peers writes. “That almost guarantees that studios will look to renegotiate Netflix’s content-supply deals on tougher terms. At the same time, some of the studios [like Disney] are pondering their own online movie- or TV-subscription services.” The WSJ also notes competition coming from Amazon’s IMDB, which is expanding a free ad-supported streaming service. Concludes Peers: “Netflix fans take note: A correction is looming.”
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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Dear studio idiots,
NOBODY is going to pay a subscription to watch only your studio movies on a service. We want them all under one company, like Blockbuster, Netflix, because it’s FUCKING EASY. It’s called CONVENIENCE.
This is the kind of dipshit move that led to the destruction of the record industry. If you take this away from me, I will move to BIT TORRENT. BECAUSE IT’S EASY.
Get it?
Fucking morons.
To be honest the whole IMDB thing puzzles me- they take ads for movies and then place the banners over message boards where random posters hate on the filmmakers and the film. If I were running a studio I would bar IMDB from ANY ad revenue which should make them respect their product a little bit more.
I think DA pretty much summed it all up.
New Media residuals for SAG or AFTRA from Net Flix? No way. AMPTP can go to hell.
This is one step towards the end for Netflix. Once dvd’s start to loose their momentum, which clearly has already started to happen as the recession has helped initiate, netflix will slowly die.
Netflix knows that streaming is the future, but honestly I dont think it will become a dominate force especially with new companies such as zillionTV in the forcast.
So DA, why do people pay HBO and Showtime for their service? They give you random movies from different studios that you don’t get to choose and maybe at best one hour a week of original programming that you enjoy.
Wouldn’t you rather shell out money to get an entire studios library at your disposal? For twenty-five bucks a month (five bucks to each let’s say) you get the five majors entire libraries at your command, and say goodbye to your cable movie channels and goodbye to Netflix who doesn’t own any of their own content (unlike the studios.) I’m not saying its better than Netflix, but I do see it happening and people paying for it once your TV and the net are fully hooked up.
*applause* for DA’s comment
Remember when things used to work as they should?
Studios produced and distributed movies. Video stores bought and rented the movies to us.
The stores offered us any type of movie we cared to see, from all over the world. And in local areas, they knew their market and catered to it.
The studios didn’t tell them what to stock, how to sell what they stocked, who to sell to and for how much. That would be Soviet.
Then along came “content”. Studio bosses, without the slightest clue as to what this “content” was, bought up “streams” of distribution, ridiculously promising shareholders untold fortunes in New Media revenues if only they could own AOL.
That way, they would get “content” through “new streams of distribution” to the 10 million housewives who used AOL, but which didn’t allow them to stay logged on for more than 43 minutes at a time.
What happened instead was that technology became available for everyone and users and techies WORKED HARD AND CREATED the software needed at actually stream content.
So while studio bosses still scratched their heads and wondered how to make this “content” actually “stream”, the rest of the world, not interested in waiting for blowhards, went head and began downloading.
The studios, instead of working out licensing and making a killing, spent millions shutting down the new streams of distribution.
And when they had won all the battles against the BitTorrents or whomever of the world, and had successfully set back the coming of new means of distribution about 5-7 years, they then REALLY set about dismantling the way things had that worked for them.
So, the studios control the raw material, they control means of production, they also control the content, and they control the means of distribution.
And now they also want to control an entire, pre-existing, formerly independent layer: ALL streams of distribution.
These people who sold the studios’ wares best — let’s call them the highest performing employees of the year — these are the people they want to shut down.
So now what? They make it harder and harder for us to get their products.
And what next? They set their eyes on someone else who has their grubby hands on their precious content? Exhibitors?
Studio bosses, if you are listening: Stop behaving like psychotic children. TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF THE THROAT OF YOUR CONSUMERS.
These guys are only rich & arrogant because we made them that way.
My only advice is vote with your money.
Hollywood is about to get seriously reamed. It will start in about 3 months, and be even worse than what people imagine today.
Hollywood over the last 12 years has created a financial model that, basically, says that this industry will not invest its own money in its own product.
Hollywood has been financing itself though huge distribution fees and massive markups on marketing costs – over 140% of actual costs charged against films, based on what I have seen.
That is why Hollywood has gone around the world and though every large institution in order to get production funds. German, India, Ireland, Canada, China, Japan, India… these are not markets for Hollywood product, they are targets for Hollywood goldminers.
And now that they have run out of institutional victims and international marks and the Powers That Be… can only turn on itself now.
So in desperation, they are going to attach of the ONE service and company that is working in a desperate attempt to not call attention to their woeful inadequacy.
I mean, if you can’t compete, then destroy those who are winning in hopes of a victory by attrition.
NO ONE in the entire world wakes up and says “I feel like watching a Paramount movie today” and then will go the Paramount section of a retail store. (If you forget, Blockbuster about 14 or 15 years ago was forced to organize their shelves that way, but it was very short-lived as rentals plummeted as no one could find anything or spent lots of time looking.)
The studios have more of a problem today by charging MORE for downloaded movies – purchase or retail – than they do for hard copies. Part of this is the scam of how they get to charge production costs against the Guilds and tax process (It costs about 45 cents to produce a retail DVD, yet they charge/deduct $1.97.)
The thing is, it costs about 7 cents to deliver a streamed movie, and the copy protection quotient is MUCH higher. Yet they price it so make it a niche and most people will not participate. As I write this, I can buy TWILIGHT for as little 8.99 delivered from a first-run retail site, but it’s 14.99 from iTunes and Amazon downloads…. and there is a 30-day blackout from renting from most
There is not another industry on earth that is actually trying to suppress cheaper, higher margin and more convenient distribution methods… besides Hollywood.
And why? Well, digital distribution gives the studios the one thing they have feared for seven generations now… absolute, accurate and crystal-clear accounting. The digital distribution, everyone knows to the second and to the penny how much money is coming in, and that threatens the very foundation that Hollywood has built itself on. The “distribution fee” scam would end and Hollywood has no backup.
Was going to post my thoughts, but DA beat me to it.
Oh btw, I found this new thing, I think it’s called “book”. I like book, book good. I can do whatever the fuck I want with it.
DA is completely right. Why would the studios strangle the only successful model for streaming movies to TVs? Anyone who’s used Netflix streaming knows that this is the future, but it is the only future I’ve seen that you’d happily pay for.
The studios are so scared, they’re like Cheney and terrorism. They see every opportunity as a threat and would rather shoot their allies than risk an attack that they admit they cannot stop. Meanwhile, they torture us with crappy movies. They want to make sure that you feel their pain.
I like book, book good
And it comes in high resolution, that book does, and you can pace it yourself, and it has a chapter skip menu, which I believe is called “pages”. And you can cuddle up in bed with it.
But seriously, though. The DVD crash is simply due to the fact that pretty much everybody bought all the GOOD stuff they previously had owned on VHS, and that means – just as with the financial bubble – that bubble HAD to burst at some point, rather sooner than later.
But wait! Do not despair! The saviour is here! BLU-RAY! Remember all the shit you paid for ONCE on VHS and then AGAIN ON DVD (to see all the “deleted” scenes, listen to mostly, with a few exceptions, moronic director commentaries… my personal favourite was Tim Burton acknowledging at the end of his PLANET OF THE MORONS version that, uh, no, I don’t know what this ending is supposed to mean, either. No shit, Sherlock)?
Now buy them AGAIN!
Because we now give you, uh, what exactly? Yes, the video feed is better, big whoop-de-doo, IF you own a LCD Flat, a 7.1 surround system , the well-designed home theatre room around those, and the HOUSE that goes around this all, oh, wait, forget about that thing with the house, that really doesn’t work too well in the current economy, now, does it?
Yes, now you can get THE END OF DAYS and, uh, TWILIGHT in FULL SHIT-O-SURROUND, with ZOOM-IN-FEATURES! Never before was a vampire’s sparkle in higher definition! Never before beat Arnie the devil in bigger booms!
Never mind that most movies are not that good to begin with. A decent movie is a decent movie, as could be evidenced by the success of TAKEN. A great movie? Naw. But a decent one, and all those evil chain, smoking, bit torrenting slacker students, if they hadn’t taken away all that major business, the movie would have made at least 120 M domestic…
… oh, wait. Oooops.
Thing is, kids, if you build it, we will come, to paraphrase The Costner. But first you have to build it, and you’re not doing that.
Can you say anti-trust suit?
There’s no way today’s Hollywood could survive another 1948. Too bad (or good) that no one can remember history.
To DA and supporters: there already is one spot to go – your computer. Incorporate a little push media, and badda bing, badda boom Disney or Lifetime or HBO or AMC delivers movies to your computer as you want – from the source not some middle man. That’s so 20th Century.
A new round of trust busting needs to come back and now. These studios don’t have much of a grasp of history it seems or they would recall that they were slapped out of the exhibition business back in the day precisely because of this kind of behavior.
When Big Media controls not just the content (and by extension the eventual exclusion of content from other providers) and in many cases also your access and speed/ease of access there WILL be claw back and it will be in the form of government regulation.
Either that or some studios are going to find out in a big big hurry just how much brand equity their banners actually have if they persist on each having their own individual streaming services. Anyone care to wager how many subscribers in Peoria will happily get a Disney sub for their kids but scratch their heads wondering why they should pay almost any other studio (or each of them individually) some what is sure to be a godawful fee for narrow library access?
Work WITH companies like Netflix you fools. These barons are so damn jealous of someone making money, any money, that they’d rather spite themselves than see a penny go to someone that is actually making a product that people actually want and like. So instead they seek to crush it and introduce their own and inferior version of it.
Why give Martin Peers any more attention than he deserves? The guy is a lemon squeezer. Every silver lining has a cloud. It must be just awful for that guy to walk around with all the “world is going to end” thoughts going on in his head. Notice you never see a Martin Peers story saying things are going to get better, or here’s something that works well. When Peers is at his gloomiest (is it possible this guy’s depression has a bottom), chances are it’s time to start buying stocks again.
Good point, Economic Dude. It’s funny to me that those at the top fight the guilds on an increase in residuals, when they don’t pay the existing residuals anyway– they just get creative with their accounting and claim the movie didn’t make a profit.
I had the same thought that Joe did above.
The studios were forced by law to divest themselves of their theatres. I can fully see something similar happening if they try and stranglehold content streaming.
@FilmBuffRich
Yes, I’m sure that the Senate and Congress will pass laws that restrict the growing monopoly the studios hold over the distribution chain.
And I’m certain that courts will find for the plaintiffs, over the studios, in any anti-trust suit.
I mean, it’s not like judges, politicians, the DNC and GOP get any financial support from the media conglomerates that could influence their decision.
And it’s not like the studios have massive legal departments and extremely deep pockets, that could keep anti-trust suits running for years without a ruling; and basically out-spend anyone suing them.
Oh. Hang on, I may have seen a flaw in my reasoning…
Jack Warner is farting in his grave at these children-in-suits!
BIT TORRENT is also super illegal, DA…
If you’re not concerned for the little guy who’s creating the content and getting ass reamed, then you’re just as bad as all those SUPER SOAKERS the AMPTP reps.
The record industry got ass raped by thieves… you, me — everyone else who took a song here or there… it’s not their fault it happened. You’d grab your lawyers and sue too if someone published your dead Granny’s diary and didn’t pay for it. Admit it! Dead Granny already did.
Hey, Danzig…
No one cares if it is “super-illegal”.
The fact is that the AMPTP is ripping off artists and consumers, bigtime.
At least with bot torrent, the consumers can rip off artists directly, no need for AMPTP middle men.
The advancement of digital distribution hinges on one thing: convenience and simplicity. iTunes saved the record labels, believe it or not, because it is simple to use and has a great inventory… and the labels to this day HATE Apple for it.
The problem is, the labels created the underground Napster economy.
Now it is the studios’ turn. And they will fail.
Elia, it is not communist for a studio to dictate whom they sell their product to. They’re a business, not a government. Not everything goddamn thing is communist.
@Kevin
I have no problem with communism.