Lord of the Rings TV Series Purchased by Amazon

[Triceron]

Nielsen introduced consumer tracking for all digital platforms a few years ago. The Nielsen app tracks all user data whether they watch shows on a set top, phone, PC, et cetera.

Other apps like OTS (over the shoulder), IMDB, Trakit, and a few others also introduced customer tracking software that is account wide regradless of where they watch.

They are pretty slick. Anyone can sign up to be a tester for OTS and Nielsen now.

The real issue with Nielsen starting to cover streaming platforms is that they did it super sloppy. Also slow as hell.

Initially, Nielsen was missing a lot of markets and services. They added them over time but it took like a year to do so. Though Nielsen is still about 2 weeks behind in reportage week to week. Unlike the nationals for OTA which are basically the next day barring quarters.

And fast nationals, of course. Which isn't relevant here but it is an exception nonetheless.

My issue with it is most companies don't use nielsen as a measure of success. It's very useful data for certain things, but even when we're talking about something like Amazon touting ROP as a success, it's not based on Nielsen ratings metrics. They have their own system of considering internal success based on first-show watched metrics.

Nielsen ratings was more relevant when counting minutes watched of shows and seeing where people are spending most of their time. The result of that is knowing that people are prioritizing long series of 'comfort food' over most original new content, and that tends to go against how companies are prioritizing building their original lineups to bring in bigger crowds. If Nielsen ratings were a bigger factor of measuring success, then what we should see is more companies learning towards liscensing old popular shows rather than spending on new content at all.

[jackofwind]

Sure there is. There are certain objective standards to art that if a piece doesn't meet that it would be objectively bad. There is a reason why categories exists. It really is odd how many people think there can't be objective standards when the word exists in the language.

People think Duchamp's 'Fountain' is a landmark art piece, and it's literally just a urinal placed on its side.

People can critique RoP for the shortcomings of the lackluster writing, the heavy-handed plot, and any number of other things. I don't think the show is without flaws, and I certainly don't have any desire to rewatch it.

The show might have objectively poor pacing. It might have objectively poor demonstration of the size of Middle Earth, with Galadriel hopping around Eregion like it's all the size of a neighborhood. It might have wooden acting. It might be boring for some, too exciting for others. It might have too many tropes and throwbacks. It might rely too much on what came before it. It can have all of that, but it still doesn't make the show objectively bad art.

Art is not immune to critique - far from it - art invites critique by its very nature. But art itself cannot be objectively "bad".

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If you have a bad story, told in a bad way, with bad actors with bad lines, that fuck over the author work it is objectively bad, no matter how you and Fencers want to pass up as "objective"

This statement by itself is contradictory, if there is no objective truth how in the ass do you say, "there is no objectivity in media"? Do you confirm what you said is a lie - cause there is no objective truth on it - and therefore there is objectively good and bad art?

So what do you consider "objectively good art", and why do you consider it so? Because I guarantee you there will be people, or have been people, who completely and vehemently disagree with you. The same goes for "bad" art.

There is no bad art. Art cannot be bad. People can dislike it, they can critique it, they can think it pedantic or puerile or pompous or anything else that starts with a P and sounds arrogant. They can think all of that, and it still doesn't make it "bad art".

Objectivity in media is a silly comparison. There are objective truths in life, such as the objective truth that I am sitting writing these words now at 10:07PM PST. But art doesn't give a shit about truth. Art is about portrayal, and portrayal is inherently subjective. Portrayal is an opinion, not a fact.

Brushstrokes seen as pathetic and amateur are lauded as a master's work now. Novels whose abject failures drove their authors to suicide went on to win Pulitzers.

Art wants to be criticized, it wants to be critiqued. It feeds on the energy people give it - the energy that can turn an off-kilter urinal into a modern masterpiece. Art can't be "objectively bad" because neither of those words hold any meaning to the manifestations of human creative expression.

Art can't even be objective, so why would you think that it can be objectively bad?

[Varitok]

RoP wasn't very good. The writing wasn't good, Gialdriel was terribly written. On top of her acting like a moody teen despite being a decorated commander at this point, they want to force some YA level romance subplot that is just..awful. Durin was fun and I think Eldrond was good to. Those two were the only things I enjoyed really about the show.

The Hobbits storyline was all over the place. Going back and forth constantly about trust with Not Gandalf, on top of them being borderline evil with wanting to take the families wheels and leave them for dead in the middle of nowhere. Ar Pharazon I enjoyed a bit, not a lot of him in the show to really judge. Elendil was servicable, I hope we get more solo stories with him soon but that whole "going to the southlands to fight" plotline was awful. They just load up their fleet (Of like 6 ships only) and are suddenly in the Southlands after what feels like a few days and Sauron gets declared King of the Southlands which seems to be about 6 thatch huts on near a hill.

On top of Celebrimbor just being..meh as a smith (apparently he's never heard of alloying metal before). This show just has a profound disrespect for the material it's representing and the audience in which it's telling it too. It's honestly depressing that with this much money spent into it, THIS was the result. A bunch of amateur writers and show runners that have literally done NOTHING before this project.

At least, despite it's changes from the source material, Lord of the Rings respected the work in which it was adapting. Jackson knew how to approach it. Respect for the world in which you're adapting was all I was hoping for, changing it to fit some storylines isn't a deal breaker. If they delivered something that had those same vibes as the books and movies, I would have been a diehard supporter. Instead, we got whatever this was. I am not mad, just disappointed.

[Syegfryed]

People think Duchamp's 'Fountain' is a landmark art piece, and it's literally just a urinal placed on its side.

So? it just mean its bad art.

Just because people like it, or think they like it, doesn't mean its good, same way, even if no one like something, or something bomb, people can recognize something have quality.

People can critique RoP for the shortcomings of the lackluster writing, the heavy-handed plot, and any number of other things. I don't think the show is without flaws, and I certainly don't have any desire to rewatch it.

The show might have objectively poor pacing. It might have objectively poor demonstration of the size of Middle Earth, with Galadriel hopping around Eregion like it's all the size of a neighborhood. It might have wooden acting. It might be boring for some, too exciting for others. It might have too many tropes and throwbacks. It might rely too much on what came before it. It can have all of that, but it still doesn't make the show objectively bad art.

"the show have all this bad shit, but isn't bad because"

So what do you consider "objectively good art", and why do you consider it so? Because I guarantee you there will be people, or have been people, who completely and vehemently disagree with you. The same goes for "bad" art.

People can dislike good art, good products, good food, same way they can like bad art, bad food etc. You are just confusing and mingling the definition of TASTE with QUALITY.

You know a good director or a good writer, you know how to differentiate a good actor from a bad actor, you can objectively verify this shit, so the work that have this can be verified as well. RoP had bad writing, bad acting(and bad casting), bad pacing even goddamn bad cinematography, with one shot not aligning witht he previous one, and you are trying to pass this as "subjective", lmao.

Its not like they TRIED to be bad, if THEIR INTENT, is to be fucking awful, like, to rly play on the satire, that is a different kind of thing, which isn't the case with RoP

Art can't even be objective, so why would you think that it can be objectively bad?

Art can be objective

If you take someone who study guitar for decades and do a song, you know its good. You take a random person who never touched an instrument and ask to play a song, you know it will be, objectively, bad

Unless you wanna argue music isn't art.

[Surfd]

Im not talking which is bigger, but you are out of your mind to say lotr isn't as big as those other stuff, knowing how much the books are sold and how well the first trilogy went

Umm, we LITERALLY have the numbers which allow us to say otherwise.......

LoTR simply isn't even in the same ballpark as the other media franchise titans.
It's 56th on that list, which tracks GLOBAL performance.
It's TIED with the Shrek franchise. Shrek....
Sailor Moon and Sponge Bob Square pants are pulling DOUBLE it's numbers.
The Titans? The real BIG players? anywhere from 6x (the MCU, which has only been around for like 15 years at this point) to 12x (freaking Winnie the Pooh, who apparently just curb stomps everybody).

Like, sorry, but you can't just bust out "it's wrong to say LoTR isn't as big as this other stuff". when it is objectively being stomped by Manga IPs, Saturday Morning Cartoons, and Young Adult Fantasy IPs that have existed for less than half as long. And those aren't even the major players, to boot.

[Syegfryed]

Umm, we LITERALLY have the numbers which allow us to say otherwise.......t.

i mean, what numbers are those? what metrics are we using? what are talking about?

Cause if search for most sold books of all time, as an example, lor of the rings come up in third. If you take movie money, they did as much or more than some marvel movies and are from 20 years ago

[rhorle]

Art is not immune to critique - far from it - art invites critique by its very nature. But art itself cannot be objectively "bad".

Yes it can. There are categories of Art that have specific requirements. If you claim something is photo realism when it is not then it is objectively bad. It really is that simple. Art, like many other things, can be judged by objective standards. How do schools offer art degrees if everything is subjective? They would never be able to fail a student because they would be nothing to determine if it is bad or good.

[loras]

The long and short of all this is simply that S1 of Rings of Power was a success for Amazon. No amount of denial, goalpost moving, or "feels before reals" will change that. Its just a fact that S1 was successful. People will eventually just have to accept that fact because that is the reality.

Whether a S2 will be as successful is an entirely different matter.

I have not heard much that indicates what you're saying is any more "reals before feels" than those that you indicate as "feels before reals".

Now i've not watched it nor do i plan to due to Amazon's involvement, so in this case the whole woke-or-whatever-it-is-this-time is secondary to me.

So i'm kinda curious as to how it was, in any way, a succes?
Last i heard they were planning to sack the directors, but admittedly that was a while ago during the fan hysteria. Still, the report seemed genuine and such a thing does not exactly scream "Job well done.".

[Syegfryed]

So i'm kinda curious as to how it was, in any way, a succes?

What it gatters here is apparently a 15th place, if you count only the originals, is rly a big deal, and nothing else matters.

It doesn't matter it get zero engagement online, it doesn't matter if everyone say is trash, it doesn't matter if not even half the people who had amazon watched, it doesn't matter if from 9.4 millions "minutes watched" 8 millions was from the episode one and two alone, showing an massive drop of people watching.

What matters is that they somehow got to 15th place in a top 15th, on US metrics, so it means huge success.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I have not heard much that indicates what you're saying is any more "reals before feels" than those that you indicate as "feels before reals".

Now i've not watched it nor do i plan to due to Amazon's involvement, so in this case the whole woke-or-whatever-it-is-this-time is secondary to me.

So i'm kinda curious as to how it was, in any way, a succes?
Last i heard they were planning to sack the directors, but admittedly that was a while ago during the fan hysteria. Still, the report seemed genuine and such a thing does not exactly scream "Job well done.".

On the reals side, It had the most viewers of any premiere, it drove a spike in book sales through Amazon, Amazon came out and said it was worth the investment, independent show trackers have ranked it the only non Netflix show to break the top list other then the boys.

On the feels side, we have had people say any number they put out that doesn’t show that it failed is a lie, people lying about other shows getting a higher % of total Amazon accounts viewing them, and alot of calls that the metrics the industry have used for years must be bad unreliable or miss information just because the show ranked high.

[rhorle]

So i'm kinda curious as to how it was, in any way, a succes?
Last i heard they were planning to sack the directors, but admittedly that was a while ago during the fan hysteria. Still, the report seemed genuine and such a thing does not exactly scream "Job well done.".

The firing of the show runners is an unconfirmed rumor. They replaced two of three directors. Staffing change doesn't mean a failure otherwise House of the Dragon would be a failure as well. The show broke some records for Amazon and has been stated to have more then paid off the investment. Why is that not a success?

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It doesn't matter it get zero engagement online, it doesn't matter if everyone say is trash, it doesn't matter if not even half the people who had amazon watched, it doesn't matter if from 9.4 millions "minutes watched" 8 millions was from the episode one and two alone, showing an massive drop of people watching.

Why do you constantly lie and exaggerate? Episodes one and two had 1.2 million minutes watched and not 8 million. The week of Episode 8 had around 95 difference between the first and last week.

[shane brannigan]

Bro like matters if anything's good anymore 80% of the actual audience are high as fuck while watching this shit.
Velma's shit, was rings of power but when you're on ketamine you don't care.
Look at the UK from what I can tell the post popular TV show is a YouTube react channel.

[Shadowferal]

Art is not immune to critique - far from it - art invites critique by its very nature. But art itself cannot be objectively "bad".

Uwe Boll approves of your post.

[loras]

The firing of the show runners is an unconfirmed rumor. They replaced two of three directors. Staffing change doesn't mean a failure otherwise House of the Dragon would be a failure as well. The show broke some records for Amazon and has been stated to have more then paid off the investment. Why is that not a success?

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Why do you constantly lie and exaggerate? Episodes one and two had 1.2 million minutes watched and not 8 million. The week of Episode 8 had around 95 difference between the first and last week.

I simply said i had heard nothing about it being a succes.
Honestly i have also heard little about HoD being a succes, so that's perhaps not an inaccurate metric.

Honestly i've just been apathetic to the whole thing, just got sorta curious by the thread popping up again.

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Read the last bunch of pages for the entire conversation, and context of my post, starting from here. I'm too lazy to reiterate everything contained within them.

Neh, sorry.
If i weren't lazy too i wouldn't be asking for a summary.

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What it gatters here is apparently a 15th place, if you count only the originals, is rly a big deal, and nothing else matters.

It doesn't matter it get zero engagement online, it doesn't matter if everyone say is trash, it doesn't matter if not even half the people who had amazon watched, it doesn't matter if from 9.4 millions "minutes watched" 8 millions was from the episode one and two alone, showing an massive drop of people watching.

What matters is that they somehow got to 15th place in a top 15th, on US metrics, so it means huge success.

Ah.
Sounds pretty standard practice for online tribalism nowadays. Especially poor little statistics, being abused like some crackhouse whore.

Still doesn't give me clarity though, from either side honestly.

Eh, back to apathy i guess.

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On the reals side, It had the most viewers of any premiere, it drove a spike in book sales through Amazon, Amazon came out and said it was worth the investment, independent show trackers have ranked it the only non Netflix show to break the top list other then the boys.

On the feels side, we have had people say any number they put out that doesn’t show that it failed is a lie, people lying about other shows getting a higher % of total Amazon accounts viewing them, and alot of calls that the metrics the industry have used for years must be bad unreliable or miss information just because the show ranked high.

To be fair premieres don't say much for series, book sales are hardly indicative of quality either and more of an advertisement effect ("Oh hey remember those famous books?") and i kinda don't put much weight in whatever Amazon says.

So eh, sounds kinda vapid on either side for me.

Anyhow thanks for the responses, now back to apathy regarding this latest bout of online tribalism.

[Triceron]

Now i've not watched it nor do i plan to due to Amazon's involvement, so in this case the whole woke-or-whatever-it-is-this-time is secondary to me.

The woke stuff is a non-issue. Its problems are in its production and execution, simple as that. Poor pacing, poor script, poor planning in general.

So i'm kinda curious as to how it was, in any way, a succes?
Last i heard they were planning to sack the directors, but admittedly that was a while ago during the fan hysteria. Still, the report seemed genuine and such a thing does not exactly scream "Job well done.".

Amazon has an internal method of defining what a successful show looks like to them. From what little we know of the subject, their internal gauges involve tracking the first show that new Prime Video subscribers watch. This is what they attribute the subs towards; they correlate the new user to 'subbing' to watch that show. This is unique to Amazon, and there's articles out there that try and analyze why they use this method over other known metrics. So if the Amazon exec says it's successful, it's probably going to be in context of the show being one of their top first-watched shows. If they're touting millions/billions of minutes watched, then I could see that being true too, since they already have plenty of Prime subscribers who would be interested in a 'new Lord of the Rings' series and give it a go. It banked on being a highly anticipated sequel to a movie franchise that has high demand.

As for how Prime Video actually operates, they don't really care much about 'winning' against other streaming platforms either. Nielsen ratings are what people are touting here to compare the series to other shows and use as a metric for success (or failure), Amazon generally doesn't care. It's fairly well acknowledged that Prime Video is a loss-leader. Prime Video exists to promote people staying subbed to Prime, which in turn builds more incentive to buy more stuff online. That's where the real money comes from. Come for the free shipping, stay for the free streaming.

[Dhrizzle]

I simply said i had heard nothing about it being a succes.
Honestly i have also heard little about HoD being a succes, so that's perhaps not an inaccurate metric.

Amazon said they were happy with its performance which is the main thing really, though people are taking that to mean it was really a failure and they're only carrying on with it because huge corporations love throwing away profits.

[Quote)Ah.
Sounds pretty standard practice for online tribalism nowadays. Especially poor little statistics, being abused like some crackhouse whore.

Still doesn't give me clarity though, from either side honestly.

Eh, back to apathy i guess.[/quote]

To add context only two shows in the top 15 were non-Neflix. @Fencers who actually works in the industry says that's something Amazon should be very happy about.

[Shadowferal]

"Amazon said" means little.

[Fabinas]

I didn't claim lotr was more valauble, i said they were as valuable, those two can have new shit, because authors are alive, and they can create enw stuff foward, you can't do that with tolkien.


What bothers me, is how "minutes watched" and making to top 15 of just original shows is a shit metric and should not be used as an signal of "success", its arbitrary, boderline manipulating information

is like if i said they were top 5 in the medieval fantasy shows, taking second place behind lost kingdom, waaaaow, they took 2nd place!!! huge sucess!!! < this is what looks like.



18? people didn't gave two shits about it after 2 months, thei strategy is put the show in 2024 so people can indeed forget how bad it was, let the dust set, then they can grab people who forgot about season 1.

We already saw the HUGE drop from episode 1 to the rest of the season, "huge success" of a show that los that many viewers, if they made season 2 in 2023 people would just say fuck off.

Remember MAU's instead of sub numbers in WoW?

Same shit.

Still, the game companies report MAU numbers, Nielsen reports minutes viewed (even if that mean s only the first episode) and those are their respective industry standards.

You don't like it? I don't either. IT DOESN'T MATTER TO THEM.

Denying it doesn't do any good. It's a hill you gonna die on for nothing.

Better stick to topics that can be discussed. Like how BAD and not at all elf like was Morfydd Clark.

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"Amazon said" means little.

Amazon said something that has the Nielsen numbers backing it up.

Unfortunately for all of us who wanted this to crash and burn, it didn't.

[Triceron]

Still, the game companies report MAU numbers, Nielsen reports minutes viewed (even if that mean s only the first episode) and those are their respective industry standards.

You don't like it? I don't either. IT DOESN'T MATTER TO THEM..

The difference is game companies are reporting metrics that their own investors rely on. Nielsen ratings and reports are completely 3rd party, and aren't metrics used by Amazon to correlate 'success'. Nielsen ratings are based on minutes viewed, while the Amazon exec was talking about total viewers who have watched the show, regardless of what actual time investment was spent on the episodes. These are two different metrics, like comparing MAU to Subs. They're not the same thing.

You're right about one thing regarding Nielsen ratings; IT DOESN'T MATTER TO THEM..

[Fabinas]

The difference is game companies are reporting metrics that their own investors rely on. Nielsen ratings and reports are completely 3rd party, and aren't metrics used by Amazon to correlate 'success'. Nielsen ratings are based on minutes viewed, while the Amazon exec was talking about total viewers who have watched the show, regardless of what actual time investment was spent on the episodes. These are two different metrics, like comparing MAU to Subs. They're not the same thing.

You're right about one thing regarding Nielsen ratings; IT DOESN'T MATTER TO THEM..

I was not comparing the two metrics. I merely stated that us liking or disliking the metrics because arbitrary, statistics (that can be truthful and deceiving at the same time), nonsensical etc, has no bearing at the industry, because that's what they have decided to use.

Our opinions on the matter are irrelevant to the people who use those metrics to capitalise on the media market.

As for the Amazon exec, we have a saying where i come from. "The priest always blesses his own beard first"