I'm not sure if this merits a thread, but it's something I wanted to say and I wasn't sure any existing thread was the right place:
When I heard Netflix was going to start spending billions to create its own content, I couldn't imagine them ever amassing enough decent programming (at least, not for awhile) that I would consider maintaining a subscription just for their stuff, which seems like a necessary bar to clear for the entire enterprise to be worthwhile.
Really feels like they hit a big tipping point over the last year, though. There's been plenty of crap (inevitable, given the sheer output), and the movies in particular have been mostly bad or mediocre...but there's a few gems in the last wave of shows, and I think that's enough to put it over the top. Before, there were maybe 4-5 shows that I was definitely interested in, but that number has probably doubled over the last year. It used to be that most of what I watched on Netflix was the licensed stuff, and then every few months one of the Netflix shows I actually liked would come out. Now, it seems like, as soon as I finish one, another one's no more than a couple weeks away.
When I actually sit down and list the ones I would, for example, definitely watch at least another season of if and when it comes out, I realized the list had gotten pretty long:
Some are longer than others, to be sure, but we're probably talking ~200 hours there. Even if you assume I should be paying, like, $1/hour to watch something (seems low, if anything), that comes out to about $16/month, and the actual streaming subscription costs just over half that. And that assumes I won't like any more new shows, and totally ignores the licensed content that's still there.
Anyway, I mention this because the gradual reduction of their licensed content was an annoyance to a lot of people, my self included. But in retrospect, I think it was probably inevitable that there would be a year or two in there where the original content wasn't plentiful of matured/developed enough, collectively, to offset the licensed content they were losing, but that after a couple of years, it's mostly balanced out. At least, for people like me who are fine with it skewing more towards episodic programming relative to movies.
When I heard Netflix was going to start spending billions to create its own content, I couldn't imagine them ever amassing enough decent programming (at least, not for awhile) that I would consider maintaining a subscription just for their stuff, which seems like a necessary bar to clear for the entire enterprise to be worthwhile.
Really feels like they hit a big tipping point over the last year, though. There's been plenty of crap (inevitable, given the sheer output), and the movies in particular have been mostly bad or mediocre...but there's a few gems in the last wave of shows, and I think that's enough to put it over the top. Before, there were maybe 4-5 shows that I was definitely interested in, but that number has probably doubled over the last year. It used to be that most of what I watched on Netflix was the licensed stuff, and then every few months one of the Netflix shows I actually liked would come out. Now, it seems like, as soon as I finish one, another one's no more than a couple weeks away.
When I actually sit down and list the ones I would, for example, definitely watch at least another season of if and when it comes out, I realized the list had gotten pretty long:
- House of Cards
- Santa Clarita Diet
- Ozark
- BoJack Horseman
- Stranger Things
- Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
- Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return
- Black Mirror
- Daredevil
- Dark
- Altered Carbon
- A Series of Unfortunate Events
- GLOW
- Mindhunter
- The Joel McHale Show with Joel McHale
- The Standups
- Tabula Rasa
- Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee
- The Keepers
- Making a Murderer
Some are longer than others, to be sure, but we're probably talking ~200 hours there. Even if you assume I should be paying, like, $1/hour to watch something (seems low, if anything), that comes out to about $16/month, and the actual streaming subscription costs just over half that. And that assumes I won't like any more new shows, and totally ignores the licensed content that's still there.
Anyway, I mention this because the gradual reduction of their licensed content was an annoyance to a lot of people, my self included. But in retrospect, I think it was probably inevitable that there would be a year or two in there where the original content wasn't plentiful of matured/developed enough, collectively, to offset the licensed content they were losing, but that after a couple of years, it's mostly balanced out. At least, for people like me who are fine with it skewing more towards episodic programming relative to movies.