The only VOD services with healthy profits are actually content creators themselves. All of the services I just mentioned in the other paragraph have their own original content, and at least Hulu & Netflix are pretty successful at that. This original content keeps people on their service, generating more ad revenue, which is how they make money. Basically, if you're a major studio and have billions of dollars to throw away, VOD is pretty easy ;-)
Source: I worked for a failing VOD/broadcast video company for a couple years.
How did Viki make it ?
Spotify provides access to a huge back catalogue and although it probably reduces the value of some content it monetises other old content that was basically dead.
Currently Netflix has a tiny library, when you take into account 50 years of film ripe for rediscovery.
Anyone know what the blocker is?
What about giving away shares for content? I mean, if Afrostream gave away X% of the shares, in return for the rights to content outside the home country, the cost of content reduces to close to zero, and the money spent on operations and marketing starts to approach 100%.
This is a far less than ideal model, to be sure, but then, the company closing is a lot worse! Shares are worth nothing until there is a liquidation event, so maybe the play is to get the content providers to become shareholders?
I could see a play where content providers that have content worth essentially nothing (unless there is a marketplace for streaming Nollywood in the west I am unaware of {which is indeed extremely possible}) but for which they may be able to grow a market that, over time, has value. That seems like a win-win, or at least a no-lose-no-lose, situation.
Is that not worth pursuing?
No it's not, few people care about what skin colour the characters in a work of entertainment have, unless it is fundamental to the plot or an aspect of the source material. At very least, they do not care enough to self-segregate and bear separately the cost of producing an entirely different set of works of entertainment which are of competitive quality.
No untainted mind watches Game of Thrones and thinks "You know, it's weird that this fiction styled after old Europe is full of white people.". Nobody watches Narcos and thinks "You know, it's weird that this fiction set in Colombia is full of Mestizos and white latins". Nobody watches Big Brother Africa and thinks "You know, it's weird that this reality game show set in sub-Saharan Africa is full of sub-Saharan Africans".
Do you have any evidence to support this ridiculous claim? Two of the largest movies of the year (Get Out and Girls Trip) are predominantly black produced. The issue is getting Hollywood to fund such ventures, not demand for them.
> No untainted mind watches Game of Thrones and thinks "You know, it's weird that this fiction styled after old Europe is full of white people.".
Actually, people do say this. It's a completely fictional universe, and even if it wasn't written into the source material, the show creators could have made an effort to ensure that it wasn't so eurocentric, at least by casting. No such luck. The main representations of people of color that I remember—the sand vipers—were hands down the worst part of the entire show so far. You think people don't notice this shit? What kind of bubble do you live in? People care that they see people who look and talk like them on TV. Everyone else in game of thrones speaks with out of place ethnic accents; way to screw over everyone but the danes and the brits.
Finally, I'd just like to point out that diversity increases the strength of TV shows. If you watch Friends, it's like they were living in this tiny bubble that only existed in NYC coffee shops. Their world is nearly unrecognizable to me despite having lived in the same city about the same age. Had they had any diversity on the show, maybe it would stand the test of time better. Now it just looks dated and white as fuck—way whiter than you'll ever find in NYC.
It's a bit silly to say that Get Out was successful because it was "black produced"; it was clearly well written and produced, it stands on its own merits.
> Had they had any diversity on the show, maybe it would stand the test of time better. Now it just looks dated and white as fuck—way whiter than you'll ever find in NYC.
Who cares? I live in Toronto, and my Panjabi, Mumbaikar, and southeast Chinese flatmates are thoroughly entertained when they put on Friends.
They're of clear mind, so they're not thinking "what's with all these white people?", they're thinking "LoL, that definitely wouldn't cure a hangover, so it's funny that they depict it as doing so; LoL, Joey is factually oblivious but really has his finger to the pulse when it comes to people, how charming!".
When I watch a Japanese or Korean drama with a friend, or a Hindi movie with my flatmates, I'm not thinking "what's with all these coloureds on my TV?".
Your comment is quite funny since Dorne is inspired by Spain :)
Do you have any proof he's wrong? I can't say I've ever given two thoughts to the race of the producer/writer/director of movies I've enjoyed. I assume there's a laundry list of independent blockbusters that simply didn't make it in mainstream hollywood due to the race of their producers that you can point to.
>Actually, people do say this.
I've literally never heard anyone say this in real life. Once.
I guess I'm one of the few, but I actively look for diversity in my entertainment. I'm not looking for diversity within a particular show, I'm looking for stories about other cultures, and entertainment from the perspective of other cultures than my own. So the point about race vs source material is irrelevant.
> At very least, they do not care enough to self-segregate and bear separately the cost of producing an entirely different set of works of entertainment which are of competitive quality.
They who? You are speaking for the Afrostream subscribers who did exactly that?
> Nobody watches Big Brother Africa and thinks "You know, it's weird that this reality game show set in sub-Saharan Africa is full of sub-Saharan Africans".
I think you're constructing a straw man argument here. The issue isn't that specific shows have an odd race balance. The issue is that our media as a whole is lacking stories of Africa and Asia and Latin America, among other places. We lack stories from the perspective of women and old people too. It's getting better, in part due to market demand, but there are still too many new shows being made that are mostly full of young male LA B-actors.
It would also be supremely easy to compete them out of existence for any establish VOD provider, because all they have to do is add some categories or a survey; and put some tags on their content. If they have a lot of customers in a demographic and they know they want stratified content, they can just commission it.
