yea, its not like Netflix made $33.7 billion U.S. dollars, with $5.5 billion of pure profit in 2023 alone…
Comment on Commercials Are Streaming’s New Norm, and Creators Aren’t Happy: “It’s Almost Worse Than Broadcast”
realcaseyrollins@narwhal.city 8 months ago
Where did y'all think the extra money to comply with SAG-AFTRA and the WGA's demands' was gonna come from? Subscription revenue is not elastic relative to the content viewed, so that residual money has to come from somewhere.
CanadianCorhen@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
realcaseyrollins@narwhal.city 8 months ago
If ten million more people stream The Crown tomorrow using ad-free Netflix plans, where is the residual money for those ten million additional streams supposed to come from?
CanadianCorhen@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
i… honestly don’t know what you mean? If 10 million people stream the crown tomorrow, every one of them is already paying for a membership, so i suggest you take the money from the monthly fee they already pay.
Maybe Netflix brings home only $5b of profit… poor poor billionaires.
realcaseyrollins@narwhal.city 8 months ago
That's not profit, but income.
But in any case, this is still a problem, as if any show gets popular enough, Netflix could theoretically owe more in residuals than they're making in monthly subscriptions. Ads are the only way to ensure that the people working on the projects can get paid what they're owed when we watch the media they made.
Look I don't like ads as much as the next guy, but when it comes to making revenue for people working on the shows and movies I watch, there are only two ways to guarantee that those workers get paid: if advertisers cover the residual fees with ads, as they've done for decades now, or through margins of either physical or digital media sales. I love physical media but I'll happily watch ads on shows because it means that the people who made them are getting paid.
TL;DR for any of this to truly work and for the actors, writers, and others to get paid their due, the money needs to come from an income source that generates more revenue when more people consume to media; otherwise, the companies offering these services could theoretically run out of money to pay residual fees.
Taleya@aussie.zone 8 months ago
Bullshiiiiiiiiiiiiit
realcaseyrollins@narwhal.city 8 months ago
ahaha
ZeroCool@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
Commercial tiers on streaming services predate the terms of the new SAG-AFTRA and WGA deals.
realcaseyrollins@narwhal.city 8 months ago
Yep! Never said they didn't.
ZeroCool@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
Then maybe you should stop blaming corporate greed on union workers.
realcaseyrollins@narwhal.city 8 months ago
I never did in the first place. This is 50% the fault of corporate greed and 50% the fault of a business model that isn't designed to reap funds in the same way that both broadcast and cable television did.
Anyone who thought that these companies would dig into their existing income and margins, especially when these streaming platforms were already mostly in the red, rather than find an income stream that more linearly aligned with the residuals they now must pay was optimistically naive.