Production of shows was at an unsustainable level before the virus. Each of the streamers was trying to buy market share, spending billions. That was good for everyone. But the black swan arrived. Will production return to its former levels? I'm thinking no. There's a good case for saying it will, as the stakeholders were just getting started with their battle to take market share with several streamers just getting started recently. They will have to take on debt or dig into cash reserves to get things back to where they were. Some may not come back. For companies like Netflix, who continue to get revenue whether they make new shows or not, it could be a boon to build up cash reserves. Let's see what happens to their subscription rate as people pare down expenses.
Coronavirus Impact
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ahalpert
Major Contributor
I think in a down economy, the relative affordability of a streaming service vs a movie ticket or a cable subscription is a huge advantage.
The coronavirus has put me out of work, but we'd starve before not subscribing to a single streamer since they're so cheap. Late last year, we canceled Netflix and began the "churn" of switching from one streamer to another every month or so to access their catalog. After my HBO subscription runs out this month, we'll give Disney+ a month or go back to Netflix to see the new season of Altered Carbon. You can't watch everything at once, after all.
Of course, I'm a millennial and I've never had a cable subscription. It's possible that people with a strong tie to cable would rather keep their TV subscription and ditch the streamers. But a streamer subscription is far cheaper.
Also, advertising revenue has plummeted. I know that many newspapers and journalists are on the chopping block now. It's a good time to be funded by subscription fees and not ad buys.
Run&Gun
Veteran
The relative "affordability"/"cheapness" of streaming subscriptions is definitely something they have going for them. It's like the Planet Fitness model, where they charge a fee that is so low that even if most people don't use it(the bulk of their income comes from people that DO NOT even use their membership), it's such a small amount of money that they keep it active "just in case" or because they deem it more of a hassle to cancel it than keep paying it(passive directly billed to a CC).
I've trimmed some fat from monthly bills over the last few weeks(almost $300/month) that I've been meaning to do for a long time now, and I'm heavily debating cutting my DirecTV plan down a level and just getting the 'streaming only' services from the premium channels(HBO, Showtime, Cinemax). Even paying for the streaming version of those channels, it would save me another $75-$100 month(at least the first year). That's between $4k to close to $5k/year. I could probably save even more if I dropped DirecTV and went with cable, because they give you a discount bundling it with internet. I don't know if I'll keep Apple TV+ after the free subscription ends in November. My free Disney+ subscription goes through next January, so I have a while to think about that. I am getting way more out of Disney+ than Apple TV+. Netflix and Amazon Prime are definitely worth it, to me. I do have one friend that hasn't had any cable or sat service in several years. He has internet and basically only watches what you can get on YouTube, the internet or over-the-air. I'm 99% sure he doesn't even have Netflix.
jerrygvizdek
New member
I did not have time to read through 31 pages. However in Vancouver BC area all the shows and film shoots are cancelled. The entire film and TV industry basically stopped working, with unknown timeline of resuming any work again.
There seems to be a paradox between the first two sentences.
jerrygvizdek
New member
I don't know if there is a paradox. I did not read 31 pages of posts, so I simply do not know if it was mentioned or not. But Vancouver BC TV/Film industry is shut down and nothing is being produced. Nobody knows when the production will resume, but most likely not before May or June the earliest. There are literally several thousands of jobs, that evaporated overnight. A lot of my friends are thinking, that deep recession will follow, and a lot of these jobs will not come back any time soon.
ahalpert
Major Contributor
He's making a bad joke that you should have time to read all the pages because all your work just got canceled.
I think it will within a year and a half or so but ... there's no schedule on who will spend what where and how. The TV network backed streamers (Disney/Hulu/Fox, Peacock, CBS All Access) basically have no choice. Apple and Netflix have a lot of money weighing down their pockets (Netflix has taken on $15B in debt but, with the Fed's zero prime, it's easy to refinance). In other words, the race may pause but it will resume shortly ... probably in Canada, much to the Vancouver's residents unbridled delight.
ahalpert
Major Contributor
This was an interesting article about the future of TV production and Hollywood. Mostly conjecture and not facts.
But the takeaway is that the shift we'll see this year away from pilots and a fall TV season towards commissioning a whole series at once and year-round production may persist in the future. And that to protect itself from a similar shock in the future, Hollywood may decentralize and spread production to more locations and times of year.
https://nofilmschool.com/corona-changes-tv-writing
But the takeaway is that the shift we'll see this year away from pilots and a fall TV season towards commissioning a whole series at once and year-round production may persist in the future. And that to protect itself from a similar shock in the future, Hollywood may decentralize and spread production to more locations and times of year.
https://nofilmschool.com/corona-changes-tv-writing
ahalpert
Major Contributor
Lots of people are saying lockdowns will continue like this until we mass-produce a tested vaccine (18+ months) and I'm feeling hopeless and claustrophobic.
What do people think? Will we be able to ease restrictions before then? Will we maybe develop clinical treatments that help us fight the infection?
What do people think? Will we be able to ease restrictions before then? Will we maybe develop clinical treatments that help us fight the infection?
cyvideo
Veteran
To the best of my digging around the Germans are leading the "get back to work drive." So far they have a reasonable amount of cases but one of the lowest casualty rates because of their hard and fast lock down approach with mass testing to correlate results. They are talking about 'Immunity passports' which could speed up return to work after Covid-19. This sounds like a very sensible approach. If this approach works I can see other countries following suit. This will require a massive step up in bulk testing increasing on a week by week basis to enlarge the test pool. The UK said they should be testing 25,000 a week by now. They are not, they are way behind running at about 15,000 and reckon they will be at 25,000 in a fortnights time. Meanwhile the Germans are hammering through 100,000 tests per week and have been doing so for the last couple of weeks. Even then the Germans reckon this needs to go up considerably. The study, which is yet to finalise funding, would involve testing the blood of more than 100,000 volunteers for coronavirus antibodies from mid-April. The test would then be repeated at regular intervals on an accumulatively larger sample of the population, to track the pandemic’s progress. That study is due to start mid April so I guess that is going to take a month or so to generate results. I did read somewhere else in the German press that if this all goes to plan they are talking about early June to start lifting the lid. Remember though that their recently introduced legislation allows for strict controls to be maintained for twenty four months if required should things start to escalate.
What concerns me is the news filtering into Aussie from Aussies correspondents on the ground in China is that the Chinese may have grossly under reported the spread of this CoV-2 virus. By a factor of possibly ten times. Analysts in the UK and Europe are saying that if this is correct it could quite drastically alter their recent projection modeling as it has been based to a large degree on Chinese data. Questions are being asked in Spain and Italy as to why the blow out in infections is not following anywhere close to the projections based on the Asian pandemic modeling figures. If those Chinese figures are way off then the European projection figures could be way off. Word also has it that the States should toss out any Chinese based modeling figures and remodel their forecasting based of what is currently being logged in Europe. This is possibly why some of the NY figures are rising faster and looking way worse than expected. Like Europe is discovering that they are possibly based on wildly inaccurate statistics originating from China.
Again I keep seeing references to the fact that until there is an effective antivirus vaccine we could be in for a bit long haul before true normalcy has returned. Then on Bloomberg some of their analysts were saying that may only apply to the developed countries with reasonably robust economies and health systems. One of them said he felt the really poor third world countries with poor health systems and poor economies could really struggle to achieve a high rate of immunisation. So much so that those countries could become reservoirs of this virus for years to come until herd immunity started to protect them.
For those of us who have traveled and worked in the States this is a hard thing to witness. To see the US get hit this hard is quite mortifying. Do we have a problem here in Aussie? Yes we do but not anywhere close to the scale that you guys will be experiencing in the coming days, weeks or whatever. I think I can speak for most of us down here when I say whoever the gods are we hope they grant you protection with all possible help in the days ahead.
Hang in there folks. Stay distant, stay safe, stay well!
Chris Young
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-could-speed-up-return-to-work-after-covid-19
What concerns me is the news filtering into Aussie from Aussies correspondents on the ground in China is that the Chinese may have grossly under reported the spread of this CoV-2 virus. By a factor of possibly ten times. Analysts in the UK and Europe are saying that if this is correct it could quite drastically alter their recent projection modeling as it has been based to a large degree on Chinese data. Questions are being asked in Spain and Italy as to why the blow out in infections is not following anywhere close to the projections based on the Asian pandemic modeling figures. If those Chinese figures are way off then the European projection figures could be way off. Word also has it that the States should toss out any Chinese based modeling figures and remodel their forecasting based of what is currently being logged in Europe. This is possibly why some of the NY figures are rising faster and looking way worse than expected. Like Europe is discovering that they are possibly based on wildly inaccurate statistics originating from China.
Again I keep seeing references to the fact that until there is an effective antivirus vaccine we could be in for a bit long haul before true normalcy has returned. Then on Bloomberg some of their analysts were saying that may only apply to the developed countries with reasonably robust economies and health systems. One of them said he felt the really poor third world countries with poor health systems and poor economies could really struggle to achieve a high rate of immunisation. So much so that those countries could become reservoirs of this virus for years to come until herd immunity started to protect them.
For those of us who have traveled and worked in the States this is a hard thing to witness. To see the US get hit this hard is quite mortifying. Do we have a problem here in Aussie? Yes we do but not anywhere close to the scale that you guys will be experiencing in the coming days, weeks or whatever. I think I can speak for most of us down here when I say whoever the gods are we hope they grant you protection with all possible help in the days ahead.
Hang in there folks. Stay distant, stay safe, stay well!
Chris Young
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-could-speed-up-return-to-work-after-covid-19
ahalpert
Major Contributor
I've read as well that the Chinese data may be cooked. But they also took draconian measures to lock down the population (temperature checks at supermarket entrances that sent feverish people rightaway to get tested, and then sent them to a central quarantine if they tested positive).
The US has relied on voluntary adherence to a variety of looser guidelines in different states. I think some rural states have no restrictions at all, yet. I thought maybe our approach made all the difference, but maybe the virus is worse than we thought...
The odd thing in the US (and perhaps everywhere) is that the sickness is all contained in the hospitals (the "front lines"), so in the outside world, aside from the reporting you read and the people you know getting sick, everything looks normal...
The US has relied on voluntary adherence to a variety of looser guidelines in different states. I think some rural states have no restrictions at all, yet. I thought maybe our approach made all the difference, but maybe the virus is worse than we thought...
The odd thing in the US (and perhaps everywhere) is that the sickness is all contained in the hospitals (the "front lines"), so in the outside world, aside from the reporting you read and the people you know getting sick, everything looks normal...
Batutta
Major Contributor
Even though the question hasn't been definitively answered, it is still more likely than not that people do get immunity to this virus after the infection runs its course. If they do, and a test can be produced that checks if you have virus antibodies in your bloodstream, things can probably be loosened up a bit earlier.
Cary Knoop
Veteran
cpreston
Veteran
My hunch is that this "immunity passport" idea would lead to riots in the US. Basically, you couldn't go back to work until you proved that you had already had the virus. It would also give the government a reason to increase stay at home restrictions unless you could prove (papers?, armband?, tattoo?) that you had tested positive on a serological test for antibodies. Supposedly, the government increased unemployment benefits to include those of us who work freelance and as contractors, but it has yet to be determined how many people will still not be covered for the government shutting down businesses. It will not take long before some people start to get desperate. Telling desperate people they still can't work because they haven't yet gotten the virus would be very bad.
Batutta
Major Contributor
This test detects for the presence of the virus itself. I was referring to a test for the virus antibodies your immune system produces, that shows a degree of immunity even if the virus is no longer present.
Cary Knoop
Veteran
You are correct, I was mistaken, this device tests for the virus.
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ahalpert
Major Contributor
I know that China has licensed serological antibody tests. They are developing them in the US as well. I have no idea when they'll be available for the masses. We can't even test everyone who needs to be tested for the virus itself at this point.
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