[two years ago] Netflix had 49 of the Top 250 movies on the IMDB list. That's just under 20 percent, which isn't terrible.
But we wondered how that number has held up over the last two years in the face of a quickly shrinking library. So we reran the analysis. How many of the top 250 movies does Netflix now have?
As of September 2016, that number has dropped to 31, or about 12 percent.
...
Earlier this year, David Wells, the streaming company's chief financial officer, said Netflix wants half of its content to be original productions over the next few years."We've been on a multiyear transition and evolution toward more of our own content," Wells said in a conference call in September, as reported by Variety.
Does carrying old movies and TV series really matter in a world that has already seen all of them dozens of times?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @08:59AM
New stuff is generally shit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by WizardFusion on Thursday October 13 2016, @09:15AM
+1 agree
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @09:33AM
Sharks! Lazers! Ludicrous speed!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @10:03AM
No.
While I also would prefer to have ALL content, old and new and even some non-mainstream, cult content, the new stuff is what makes the world go around, and some of it is what your kids will be calling old and great in a few years. It is not a possibility, it is a reality there is good stuff coming out right now and if someone doesn't notice it they're being hypocritical (harsh word but it's not as offensive as some might think). Old stuff was new stuff back in the day and seems cool to us millennials, but without financial incentives back in the day (which Netflix now also is a part of), they would have never come to be. If you force yourself to only like old stuff (because that's just fake feelings - actual non-hipster people can see beauty in any and all art because art is timeless, even though it is sometimes classified with periods of time).
Netflix and Amazon are producing great (tv-)shows but they have yet to produce big "blockbusters", at least in what IMDB-scores respects. But I guess that might be part of the problem: if a movie doesn't get theatrical release it won't get critical acclaim. And, newsflash, that is exactly why Netflix is moving on to releasing self-produced short and feature film in actual theaters.
(Score: 2) by everdred on Friday October 14 2016, @05:02AM
You're right, but waiting a little while after release, to let other people do the work of separating the truly good stuff from the merely hyped, is a legitimate strategy.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @11:14AM
New stuff is generally shit.
As is old stuff. The golden age of When You Were Young is an illusion.
The only things that past stuff has going in its favor over the present stuff is that there is so much more of it, and it's usually pre-filtered.
"Only sick music makes money today." -- Friedrich Nietzsche
"Ninety percent of everything is crap." -- Sturgeon's law
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @06:43PM
Its called survivor bias. Take the top movie Shawshank Redemption released in 1994. The same year that gave us this http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109376/?ref_=adv_li_tt [imdb.com]
Or one of the classic western movies The good the bad the ugly. Same year as manos hands of fate.
For every 1 'classic' movie there are a hundred or so that will not be classic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2016, @04:26AM
It's not that old times made better movies, but hindsight lets us collect all the best movies that stand the test of time. You can check the critical acclaim on new movies, but often as not you'll get a flavor of the month that's forgotten about a year later.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @01:32PM
(Score: 4, Funny) by jcross on Thursday October 13 2016, @01:53PM
I don't disagree with your point, but it's a little disingenuous to post a link sorting them by ascending star ratings. Reverse the order and you can see that a few other famous movies like Cabaret and Deliverance were also released that year. On the other hand, who could pass up a gem like "Terror at Orgy Castle"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @06:45PM
Every Saturday night from the mid 1980s into the 1990s, the local public television station had a feature called "Movie City Showcase".[1] [archive.li]
They would broadcast classic movies, uninterrupted and unedited. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [latimes.com]
...and 1972?? Feh. Try 1939.[1] [archive.li] Seriously. [wikipedia.org]
[1] The S/N comment engine is still broken for e.g. %22 in hyperlinks.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]