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from the pray-I-do-not-alter-it-any-further dept.
It's difficult to imagine that Friends, a show that ended 15 years ago, could be of any real importance to a modern streaming giant like Netflix.
In fact the sitcom, which features a bunch of 20-somethings living together in a time before streaming was even invented, is US Netflix's second-most watched show.
Today, Netflix announced that it's poised to lose its rights to broadcast the series to its original parent company, Warner, which plans to launch its own streaming service, HBO Max in the first quarter of 2020.
The blow follows another announcement in June that Netflix's number one series, the US version of The Office, is also being snatched back by its creators, NBCUniversal, to be broadcast exclusively in the US on its own yet-to-be-launched streaming service.
Old media, analysts are noting with no small amount of surprise, is suddenly bringing the fight to Netflix, and it looks like Netflix could be the one that gets knocked out, or at least very knocked around.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ShadowSystems on Saturday July 13 2019, @02:54PM (4 children)
Back when I could still see to enjoy such things, I tried a little experiment.
I turned the TV to channel 40, watched an episode of StarTrek, then turned it off.
Except for DVD movies & being used as an occaisional secondary computer monitor, I didn't turn the TV back on again to watch any TV shows.
For. A. Year.
At the one year mark I turned the TV back on again to see if the quality of shows had improved any.
I stood there in disgust & dismay as *the same episode of StarTrek* commenced to play across the screen.
Same damned channel, same damned show, a year later.
I promptly unplugged the set from the antenna & didn't bother with broadcast TV ever again.
I'd kind of keep up to date on what others were watching, just enough to know that "Friends" was a situational comedy that they thought amusing, but when I'd go over to someone's house & watch it with them, I couldn't get past the artificial laugh track.
If a show has to prompt you to laugh, it wasn't funny in the first place.
That was over a decade ago.
I have since moved to reading about what others watch on services like Netflix, Hulu, & Amazon.
And once again it all sounds like crap.
Why do people bother with TV/streaming at all?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 13 2019, @03:19PM (1 child)
You could have tried a different channel or a different time. Star Trek tends to be one of those shows that gets a time slot for a very long time. It's sort of like MASH where I could count on it being on the same channel at the same time consistently for years at a time. I could practically set my watch to it.
Anyways, it sounds like you're not the target audience for this form of entertainment if you're being this judgmental. OTA TV has never been as good as what's available on cable, once they got to the point where they weren't just repeating broadcast TV. Similarly, subscription TV is usually better than the regular cable TV. It has to do with the market and the restrictions put in place by the FCC.
(Score: 1) by ShadowSystems on Saturday July 13 2019, @05:56PM
So your cure for crap tv is to watch more crap tv?
No thanks, I think I'll go rot my brain playing D&D & ShadowRun 4th edition.
=-)P
*Shakes a palsied fist*
Now get off my laaaawwwwwn!
Danged whippersnappers anyer newfangled leck trickity.
*Flings my hearing aid at you & hopes the giant tuba-bell-cone sticks over your head*
=-D
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday July 13 2019, @05:42PM (1 child)
They don't anymore.
Talk to "old people" like genx and older and its a statistical fact that something like a third of the population watched the last episode of MASH, TV had immense cultural influence.
Today about two minutes with google and wikipedia will show that one of the top rated shows in the country "the good doctor" which is a stereotypical hospital drama with a twist that the doc is a super high functioning autistic, has something like 7 million viewers out of a population of 328 million people or about 2% of the population.
TV lead American Western culture by being universally watched up to the 90s or so. Its an also-ran now, nobody watches anymore.
In the 80s, lets say, you get six people in a room and the odds are excellent a conversation can break out about MASH and its cultural effects, or any other show of that era. In the late 2020s, if you want a conversation to spontaneously break out about the cultural impact of "The Good Doctor" you need to stuff the room with about one hundred people, and the other ninety eight are gonna talk about something other than TV so likely a TV related conversation will never break out.
TV is dead as a cultural influence. It still makes money, just like telegrams and newspapers, although it no longer matters.
(Score: 2) by legont on Sunday July 14 2019, @12:26AM
If true, that's really cool! That means there is still hope.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.