Forum - View topicINTEREST: Tokyo Keizai: Anime Industry Insiders Share Reservations About Netflix Streaming Model
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3 Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Ushio
Posts: 630 |
|
|||
If Netflix is paying for the anime to be made rather than buying the rights to an anime already made then Netflix owns is permanently. That's the issue when Neflix pays for a show to be made they pay it all upfront because the point of Netflix is that the show stays on Netflix for streaming forever. Which is very different from how it traditionally was where a show aired once then had physical, rental and various licencing/syndication deals with other companies. So Netflix pays more at the beginning but if a show becomes a breakout hit (which is very rare) then you don't get the ancillary income because other sales opportunities are lost. Honestly I find the argument that Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba becoming a hit couldn't happen if it streamed to be bullshit. It grew from word of mouth because it's late night airing on it's own is a huge hindrance to gaining an audience (how many of the other 28 anime that aired in the same season can you name of the top of your head?) and the biggest money makers from that popularity the increased manga, music and merchandise sales would have happened. Plenty of Netflix shows have seen huge popularity in the USA and Europe and as Netflix grows in Japan and gets more quality Netflix funded anime it will get hits. |
||||
|
||||
|
Ushio
Posts: 630 |
|
|||
Well if Netflix wants to fund additional seasons it did well if they don't it didn't. As to royalties Netflix pays more upfront because they don't sell shows on like traditional TV where a show airs on ABC then gets sold to syndication for example to TNT and then to various other countries as time goes on. Which is why royalties came to be. |
||||
|
||||
zrnzle500
 Posts: 3767 |
|
|||
I'm not entirely convinced airing it weekly necessarily leaves a longer lasting impact vs streaming it all at once. The length of the discussion in time is longer, to be sure, but even with that, most shows are mostly just discussed while they are airing, and rarely brought up again until further seasons or end of year discussions, little different from Netflix shows streamed at once. A number of shows aired weekly barely elicit any discussion at all, during or after airing. I'm not certain what effect streaming all at once has isn't subsumed by other factors, like how much discussion a show warrants and how media is discussed in the age of social media and abundant new content. When there is dozens of new shows each season - or at least had been, before the current situation - the discussion moves onto the new stuff, as that generates more engagement than continuing to discuss stuff that has already ended. So I'm not sure people not actively talking about a Netflix show on social media and internet forums after a couple weeks is the result of its streaming model or just the outcome of how media is discussed nowadays and what audiences are most interested in discussing at a given moment. Unfortunately, without viewership numbers it will be hard to prove definitively whether Netflix shows as a whole are helped or hindered by its model. Though, frankly, given they have been streaming anime like this for 6 years (specifically talking about Netflix Originals), I think if streaming it weekly would have bumped their numbers significantly, they would have done it a long time ago. Certainly they have done so differently in Japan, where they have to compete with TV, but even that is changing, with Trigger's BNA streaming in two 6 episode chunks in Japan and The Great Pretender set to stream similarly. If the weekly model had generated much more traffic, they would have continued to stream shows weekly after Violet Evergarden did (outside the US), instead of sticking with the binge model. Rather, I think it's well past time for us seasonal anime fans to realize that this Netflix model isn't an experiment anymore (outside Japan), and that maybe the reason they refuse to submit to our demands for simulcasts is that we are not the majority of their audience, even when it comes to anime. |
||||
|
||||
Rentwo
 Posts: 184 |
|
|||
Netflix has a weird way of releasing seasons though. Some shows have 4 episode seasons, others 8, others 13, others 20. A lot of the time they're ordered in bulk and released in random batches. In cases like Stranger Things, where there's such a long pause between seasons, over a year, that they did probably order seasons and shoot them individually. So that's when we see reports of shows being cancelled and not renewed for another season. But for animation, a lot of the time they do it all at once and just release them in batches with only a few months between them, which indicates production was done being done continuously since it takes more than 3 months to do an episode of a show. Glitter Force released 70 episodes on Netflix, but more than likely they licensed and dubbed all 70 of those episodes at once in a batch order. But again, we'll never know unless they say something officially. The truth is we don't know if a series does well or bad on Netflix until they say it's not being renewed. There's no real other way to tell outside of maybe outside factors like merchandise lines not selling well and being cancelled very quickly, which has happened to a few kids shows on Netflix. |
||||
|
||||
kgw
 Posts: 1071 Location: Spain, EU |
|
|||
|
Well, let us remember that anime industry was the same who thought "Streaming? What's that? Releases in DVD, two episodes for disk and that's all!"
Are Netflix conditions fine and fair? Not, from what I've read. But then again we got Crunchyroll and (you in the US/Canada) Funimation, etc. |
||||
|
||||
Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
|
|||
|
I hate the binge model personally (nice to see other binge model haters here! Validation!) and I never liked Netflix not releasing their viewership numbers because I imagined it was frustrating for creators to never truly know how well their shows did. But I didn’t understand quite *why* they refuse to release viewership numbers—I assumed that they were just trying to protect reputations of shows that don’t perform as well as anticipated. The motive of not allowing studios/content creators to negotiate is far more nefarious. I guess business ethics hasn’t caught up with the streaming model, and we can only hope that some disgruntled employees release Netflix’s ratings to spite them and force their hand (or some sort of entertainment business legal regulation, but I think the former is more likely).
|
||||
|
||||
chronium
 Posts: 289 Location: Canada |
|
|||
|
It sounds to me that those anime companies need better negotiators. Sure having the viewership numbers makes it easier for them but there are enough alternative ways to gauge popularity that they can rely on.
|
||||
|
||||
|
Scion Drake
Posts: 941 |
|
|||
I’m curious, how or where do you check for that exactly? |
||||
|
||||
Beatdigga
 Posts: 4380 Location: New York |
|
|||
The Baki thing was reported by Netflix themselves - https://collider.com/top-10-netflix-tv-shows-list/ The report about Netflix wanting to upend the production committee system was from their tech blog. They cite anime as a big growth sector. https://netflixtechblog.com/bringing-4k-and-hdr-to-anime-at-netflix-with-sol-levante-fa68105067cd Netflix is far from perfect, but the alternative of two episodes per disk releases and airings edited once a week, personally curated by a guy whose taste is from the late 90’s on Adult Swim is way worse. |
||||
|
||||
|
AtoMan
Posts: 161 |
|
|||
Of course it didn't. Glitter Force was two shows dubbed at least one year apart, released in two batches each. Even then, the first season was in a can for a while due to licensing issues.
What we do know, for a fact, is that the piracy numbers of the shows that Netflix is essentially taking hostage skyrocketed to the levels unseen since the simulcast model was adopted. |
||||
|
||||
|
Ushio
Posts: 630 |
|
|||
No company releases viewership numbers they get leaked by third parties who are used because they need an impartial company when selling to there actual customer advertisers. Netflix doesn't deal with advertisers so no need to use a third party to sell viewership figures. Not that viewership figures are worth much it's breaking down that viewership figure into various demographic groups. Netflix also does share viewership figures with those they want to continue working with. So if you sell a show to Netflix and they aren't interested in sharing their viewership figures, well then it did so badly they don't care about working with you anymore. The majority of all TV/streaming shows flop it's just the way it is and it has nothing to do with quality. |
||||
|
||||
Greed1914
 Posts: 4441 |
|
|||
I've been trying to make sense of this for a while. Goodness knows there are several Netflix shows that I would gladly buy on disc, but can't. My best guess is that it comes down to cost. Even though Netflix has shown no interest in producing blu-rays, I think they still view at as a certain amount of competition with its streaming platform. I know my Ajin discs have a Netflix logo right next to Sentai's, so on some level I think they still have to approve it and probably don't want such a deal to be competitive with their streaming service so they, at the very least, make interested parties wait, and probably make it pricey, at least for the English version. Like the article said, Netflix doesn't share its viewership data, not even with its production partners, so I could easily see where Funimation, Sentai, etc. decided that Netflix shows are too much of an unknown quantity for the price. Sentai's situation with Amazon is a bit different. During the time that Amazon was trying to make Anime Strike a thing, it was the streaming platform for several shows that were actually licensed by Sentai. That arrangement, and Sentai's seemingly sudden spending spree certainly suggested that Amazon was footing the bill in large part, but legally, Sentai had the physical rights. Throw in that Amazon has basically thrown in the towel on doing its own thing with anime, and I doubt if they have much concern about those discs. Plus, they would likely see a bit of those sales coming their way in the end when people buy discs through Amazon. As a big physical media collector, the situation bugs me a lot. I suppose there isn't as much risk of a show outright disappearing when Netflix produced it, but you're still stuck using it anytime you want to rewatch something. I've seen enough shows go by the wayside because a streaming service didn't want to retain rights, or switch to a different one because the owners decided they no longer wanted to share, so streaming-only is never a satisfactory status in my opinion. |
||||
|
||||
|
minakichan
|
|
|||
That is for *Netflix*. Other services/distributors provide this information and pay royalties. The thing to note (and why the comment was made 'If the anime is a hit, it's a win for Netflix. But if it's a loss, it's our win') is that 50-70 million yen per episode is a LOT. That's more than double, on average, what it costs to make the episode. Aside from Netflix most license deals are a fee paid upfront + royalties later if the series is successful. If the series was going to be a big hit and another distributor would be paying royalties out the wazoo, then the production company "loses" because they could have made way more money from like a Crunchyroll or Funimation non-Netflix deal. But if the series was kind of a flop, the production company has literally made back 200-300% what it cost to make the anime up front, whereas a non-Netflix deal could have gotten them a smaller upfront fee and no royalties. This is why the tone of the article is so mixed--we can't say "Netflix is good or bad" because it depends. It might have been bad for Kimetsu no Yaiba, but like... ID-0? B: The Beginning? Probably making bank from this Netflix deal.
Not getting a license isn't the same as not being interested; for example, if such rights are not available. |
||||
TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5839 Location: Virginia, United States |
|
|||
It is not about ethics, but what both parties contracted out. It's a dog eat dog world out there, and you don't just give out your business secrets. You can't really complain about things you didn't contract out for. |
||||
|
||||
yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
|
|||
It certainly appeared that a lot of people were watching Carole & Tuesday way before it was released by Netflix. I have no qualms about torrenting shows in cases like this. I'm a Netflix subscriber so they've gotten their money. Yes, in a narrow legalistic sense, I didn't pay for the rights to watch episodes weekly, but frankly, I don't care. Netflix and the production committees earn the same amount of money from me whether I wait for the show to be released or not. |
||||
|
||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group