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Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

(about.netflix.com)
1741 points meetpateltech | 6 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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mihaic ◴[] No.46160934[source]
It's always great to read about how the people the own the means of distribution aquire also the means of production, trying to create a meta-monopoly. /sarcasm

I'm rooting for someone on the regulary side disliking all the crap that Netflix produces, and just shuts the whole thing down. Those 5 billion they'd have to pay for a breakup fee in that case would have me feeling better that I couldn't cancel their service, since my family pesters me to keep it.

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raw_anon_1111 ◴[] No.46161057[source]
There is no “monopoly” on either content distribution or creation. Amazon and Apple are both trillion dollar companies that have streaming services.

Then there is Disney, Comcast (Peacock), Paramount, STARZ (standalone company), and AMC

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1. mihaic ◴[] No.46161626[source]
Technically, you're right. I feel like there needs to be new terms to describe though the staleness of the industry. "Oligopoly" just doesn't have the same ring to it.
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2. raw_anon_1111 ◴[] No.46161853[source]
How many competitors do you need? Apple, Disney, Netflix, Comcast, and Paramount are five major competitors.

If you as a hypothetical video content creator want to get your content distributed to a wide audience, you have five companies to go to, you can publish it to any of the video on demand services, try to monetize it through ads on YouTube, etc.

We aren’t in the 30s anymore where the only way you could see content was by going to the movie theater.

Before HBO Max was a thing, they were already selling distribution rights of content to Netflix. No one said that was a monopoly.

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3. mihaic ◴[] No.46162548[source]
> How many competitors do you need? Apple, Disney, Netflix, Comcast, and Paramount are five major competitors.

I actually already agree that the number is not the problem. I can't articulate better, but somehow these don't actually feel like "competitors" in the classical market sense, but rather as stars orbiting the same center, as they're all moving in the same direction, and from time to time merging with one another.

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4. purpleflame1257 ◴[] No.46162793{3}[source]
That was more or less the case from the advent of TV onwards, though.
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5. thfuran ◴[] No.46164808[source]
Monopoly is that word. "Pure Monopoly" is the term for the platonic ideal that people like to insist companies don't live up to and so aren't at all monopolistic.
6. mihaic ◴[] No.46172130{4}[source]
Not really. At that point TV was competing with cinema for attention, and each needed to provide something different. Now the mediums have merged as well.