Lord of the Rings TV Series Purchased by Amazon

[Syegfryed]

Those dumb discussions still are more entertaining and nuanced than the rings of power show, so i see this as a win for the thread

[Dhrizzle]

5 "nots" in a single sentence. I love it. Good post.

And to the "that's just your subjective opinion" trope - I think it's really just a way to marginalize a post and claim one's own superiority, which is why it kinda triggers me. This entire website is about posting opinions - it'd get really boring if all we could do is post facts.

Poster 1: "It was 95 degrees in Dallas today"
Poster 2: "Wow, that's pretty hot" (Moderator note: infracted for posting opinion)

The thing is on the internet people often mistake their opinions for an objective truth.

Poster 1: "It was 95 degrees in Dallas today"
Poster 2: "Wow, that's pretty hot"
Poster 3: "That's not hot, it was over 100 where I live"
Poster 2: "Then you're clearly an idiot who doesn't understand what hot really is, what you're calling hot is just an outlier that can be ignored for the sake of my narrative"
Poster 1: "Ignore Poster 3, they're just a shill for big temperature"

[Kumorii]

The thing is on the internet people often mistake their opinions for an objective truth.

Poster 1: "It was 95 degrees in Dallas today"
Poster 2: "Wow, that's pretty hot"
Poster 3: "That's not hot, it was over 100 where I live"
Poster 2: "Then you're clearly an idiot who doesn't understand what hot really is, what you're calling hot is just an outlier that can be ignored for the sake of my narrative"
Poster 1: "Ignore Poster 3, they're just a shill for big temperature"

All I see are opinions.
Poster 3 can be taken as trying to make an objective claim. Since that poster tries to dismiss another persons opinion simply saying they are wrong because they don't find it hot. But considering context, it's an opinion. Same with posters 2 reply which can be taken as an objective claim but is also a response to someone saying they were wrong with their opinion.

They all behave poorly, but none of them can be taken as 100% making an objective claim. Think that's on your interpretation. I find it safer to go on the side of opinion(due to context and knowing how people talk)than guessing they make an objective claim until it's proven further.

[Soikona]

This is the most internety conversation ever.

Real world convo: “This coffee has an abnormal amount of sweetener”

Real World Response: Either “I know right” or “Eh sometimes I put that much in I don’t think it’s crazy”

Internet response: “Well without an objective test how do we know what is normal”

75 posts later on the internet: “You suck! No you suck!”

Don’t forget Godwin. Where the cup of coffee is now a nazi some how.

[Syegfryed]

I feel so sorry for then , but i guess you have to pay the bills somehow.

My bet is they gonna play elves

[Triceron]

I feel so sorry for then , but i guess you have to pay the bills somehow.

My bet is they gonna play elves

Nah, they're too white for that /s

[craigw]

This show was horrible.

most people who tried to watch it agree. 715 million season 1 costs with nearly 63% of viewers not even finishing the series...

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/bu...ws-1235364913/
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/...224828529.html

[rhorle]

most people who tried to watch it agree. 715 million season 1 costs with nearly 63% of viewers not even finishing the series...

Season 1 was only around $465 million. The rights shouldn't be lumped in with Season cost as it is an independent expenditure. I never see people include "licensing rights" in House of the Dragon for example. Those were only mid eight figures.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

most people who tried to watch it agree. 715 million season 1 costs with nearly 63% of viewers not even finishing the series...

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/bu...ws-1235364913/
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/...224828529.html

Are there any sites that actually track completion % for general comparisons?

[craigw]

Are there any sites that actually track completion % for general comparisons?

i couldnt find anything that breaks it down. but there is software that does it for you. for investors, advertising, marketing, etc... here is a link to get it. you can try a demo. but gotta pay for full features.

https://digital-i.com/

[rhorle]

I bet that 37% number is a lot worse than it seems - I think a lot of Tolkien fans probably hate watched the series to conclusion.

Hate watching is still watching. However it is an amusing thought that the people who hate the show the most were the largest contributor to its success.

[Orby]

Hate watching is still watching. However it is an amusing thought that the people who hate the show the most were the largest contributor to its success.

I do think maybe that's what the big execs know too. I wonder if shows and movies are specifically aimed at that in mind, they don't care if the show is rubbish or not, they care about the money, if people are talking about it and seeing it they'll capitalise on anything to keep that money coming in. A franchise as big as Lord of the Rings will make money beside itself. Look at that Velma show, loads of people tuned into watching it because of people hearing how bad it was. These crybabies on Youtube with their angry videos are just free advertisement, its genius. Even now they are still talking about rings of Power and talking about , now they are just a hype machine for season 2 lol

That's why I don't hate watch. Now with that said I had many, MANY issues with Rings of Power but unlike a show like Wheel of Time, I do wanna tune into season 2 because there was enough to like. I rated the whole show a 5/10 overall. So season 2 could verge in a worse direction or a better one, my score is a good indicator to whether I will continue to watch after season 2. I did think anytime Ringsof Power showed Dwarf stuff I was invested, any episode that didn't feature, Durin, Disa or Elrond was boring. :P

Which just makes me wish the show was just a road trip with Durin, Disa and Elrond basically lol

[DarkAmbient]

Hate watching is still watching. However it is an amusing thought that the people who hate the show the most were the largest contributor to its success.

An amusing thought but not actually true.

[Triceron]

This isn't at all true for Amazon. This is premium tv, not some internet website that makes money by promoting clickbait. They need people to like it, to spread buzz about it, to encourage others to subscribe to it. If you make money off advertising, then sure clickbait works, but this is a service you need to convince people to actively pony up cash for.

If you disagree, explain to me how they make money off of people who hate the show but watch it because Amazon Prime is effectively free to them and they are Tolkien fans who can't avoid watching the trainwreck? And how they make the same amount of money that they would if those same fans really liked it and were encouraging all their other friends to watch it.

I had a coworker today tell all my other coworkers they should watch Ted Lasso - I have Apple TV because of Ted Lasso. That's the model that works - you get a hit that creates buzz and people want to subscribe. People don't subscribe because their friends are like, "Jesus, Rings of Power is a trainwreck but I can't help but watch it."

Yes, having negative news is better than no news, but it's not as good as people liking the show.

Because whatever they're doing, it's still performed better than any of Disney's shows. In Amazon's eyes, even if it failed to capture people watching it the full run, it's managed to get people to sub for a month and in turn use their Amazon account to buy stuff online because they have it active anyways (or it was always active, and watching the show was just a bonus). What matters to Amazon is the bottom line.

Amazon's business model has always been an outlier to how they gauge success. And really, if in the light of this news the Amazon heads of the series and of Prime Video are still touting it an internal success, then more power to them. They don't bank on LOTR's views, or 'ad revenue'. They bank on having it be a way people are drawn to subbing. Not staying subbed, not engaging in online reviews, not in promoting it on social media. Subbing to Amazon Prime, in order to buy shit online.


And let's not confuse this with talking about the quality of the show. It's pretty clear it could be a better show, and what we got was a mess. It has its problems and there are plenty, but nothing's gonna stop Amazon from making more if they consider it successful. And if they make more, then that's still better than having nothing, despite whatever haters want to say.

And to be very frank, anyone who thinks the show needs to be cancelled needs to get their priorities straightened out and a nice reality check on what they're actually being angry about. You can literally opt not to watch the show and ignore it completely. It existing and continuing to exist doesn't hurt anyone, especially if there's other LOTR properties right around the corner with War of the Rohirrim and potentially a LOTR reboot (for better or worse).

[rhorle]

This isn't at all true for Amazon. This is premium tv, not some internet website that makes money by promoting clickbait. They need people to like it, to spread buzz about it, to encourage others to subscribe to it. If you make money off advertising, then sure clickbait works, but this is a service you need to convince people to actively pony up cash for.

People have been paying and staying. Prime Video has grown a lot in the past few years. We know that Amazon sees an increase in sales when one of their shows wins an award. "Effectively free" is still money going to Amazon one way or another. You just got done saying that it was probably the hate-watching fans of Tolkien and now you are trying to spin why they really were "sticking it" to Amazon. It is always about the spin with you.

Paying to watch regardless of your motives is still paying to watch. Amazon has said that Prime Video free trials convert at a greater rate then other services they offer.

[bledgor]

Because whatever they're doing, it's still better than all of any of Disney's shows and their performance. So even if it's failed to capture people watching it the full run, it's managed to get people to sub for a month and in turn use their Amazon account to buy stuff online because they have it active anyways (or it was always active, and watching the show was just a bonus).

Amazon's business model has always been an outlier to how they gauge success. And really, if in the light of this news the Amazon heads of the series and of Prime Video are still touting it an internal success, then more power to them.

Let's not confuse this with me talking about how good or bad this show is. It's pretty clear it could be a better show, and what we got was all over the place. It has its problems and there are plenty, but nothing's gonna stop Amazon from making more if they consider it successful. And if they make more, then that's still better than having nothing, despite whatever haters want to say.

Cuz to be very frank, if anyone says the show should be cancelled, you can literally just not watch it and pretend it doesn't exist, just like Star Wars fans pretend the Sequel Trilogy doesn't exist. Having the show doesn't actually hurt anyone, and anyone who thinks it does needs to get their priorities straightened out and a nice reality check on what they're actually being angry about.

I can't say that I agree, in fact I very STRONGLY believe the RoP brought in few new prime accounts, and really it was just existing prime holders checking it out. The show had NO word of mouth, literally no one I know including fantasy nerds talked about the show, and only the group I watched it with watched it. HotD, Mando, heck even Andor I heard talk about, but RoP it was no one. I think the prime was a double edged sword here, where it exposed A LOT of people to the show that might not have checked it out gaining them a ton of watched time, but like the 37% retention suggests, the show had no legs. I just don't see many people being in a rush to check out the show/paying for a new prime just to get it.

[Triceron]

I can't say that I agree, in fact I very STRONGLY believe the RoP brought in few new prime accounts, and really it was just existing prime holders checking it out. The show had NO word of mouth, literally no one I know including fantasy nerds talked about the show, and only the group I watched it with watched it. HotD, Mando, heck even Andor I heard talk about, but RoP it was no one. I think the prime was a double edged sword here, where it exposed A LOT of people to the show that might not have checked it out gaining them a ton of watched time, but like the 37% retention suggests, the show had no legs. I just don't see many people being in a rush to check out the show/paying for a new prime just to get it.

Even if that is true, it fulfilled Amazon's internal metrics for how they gauge success - Being the first-watched show for any given Amazon Prime subscription.

We already know that is the metric they use to gauge show success. And if they are touting LOTR as being internally successful, then we can assume this is what they mean. So to them, LOTR is fulfilling its duty by being the first show that Prime sub members are going to first. This is why watching the full season doesn't even matter; it's not really calculated into Amazon's metrics. It's a bogus system, but it works for what they intend to use Prime Video in the first place. Because let's be VERY clear - Prime Video's main budget comes from online sales made on Amazon as a platform as a whole; not just on Prime Video subscriptions alone. We already know that it operates on a loss-leader system, and very intentionally so.

We can try and spin how bad it is, but the first season spoke for itself, and managed to get pretty darn high viewership regardless of how good or bad it was. We can't even point at a single Disney original series that could compare to that.

What will be a better gauge for Amazon moving forward is how S2 reception will be, and whether it maintains a high influx of watchers. We could say that many people not finishing the season could mean a way low viewership for S2, but there have been cases where shit movie sequels shouldn't have gotten the viewership it had and yet it still did (Rise of Skywalker following the piss-poor TLJ for example). We will have to wait and see how S2 performs, really.

If it's really a case of Prime subscribers just watching LOTR because it's there, and despite there being little-to-no marketting push for the series, then that's actually going to benefit the show because the Prime subscribers who aren't invested in LOTR but will watch it because it's there will be the ones who support it the most; not any diehard fans or people who are literally subbing to Amazon Prime just to watch this show.

This kind of shit is going to be allowed on Amazon's platform, because they aren't necessarily interested in making great content, but rather content that reaches a wide audience and is simply content worth clicking on. It's like how the best Tik Tok or Youtube shows online aren't necessarily top-notch quality content, but rather very click-baity stuff that is aimed at people with low attention spans - it's a product of the algorithm. And that's pretty much where this show stands right now - it's touted as an internal success and allowed to thrive, because it's beat the algorithm that Amazon built for itself.

[rhorle]

Agreed. I find it very hard to believe that people actively subscribed to Amazon Prime to watch this thing. They just watched it because it was effectively free due to them already having Prime.

Retaining a customer is still earning Amazon money. In fact more money since they often offer free trials. Also Disney+ had a 3 year deal at launch that gave people around a year free due to its low cost. Why is it ridiculous to compare the two when the same "effectively free" situation could have applied? You are reaching way to hard to hate on Amazon.

- - - Updated - - -

I just don't see many people being in a rush to check out the show/paying for a new prime just to get it.

How many of those people that got attracted by Rings of Power stayed signed up because of other shows or benefits of Prime? During the earnings call in February the CFO said that video is a strong driver of Prime member engagement and new prime member acquisition. There have even been talk from the CEO that the economics of Prime being a standalone service are attractive though it gets a lot from the NFL Thursday exclusive.

[rhorle]

It sounds to me like your argument boils down to "Amazon has weird metrics for success that don't care about whether they make any money, and those metrics say it is a success."

Statements from Amazon have said it has more then paid off. It is strange you'll accept a "source at Amazon" when it reports 37% completion but not when it reports something good about the show. Why are you on such a crusade to hate everything about this show. If you hate watched the show why do you still surround yourself with it and discuss it?

[bledgor]

Even if that is true, it fulfilled Amazon's internal metrics for how they gauge success - Being the first-watched show for any given Amazon Prime subscription.

We already know that is the metric they use to gauge show success. And if they are touting LOTR as being internally successful, then we can assume this is what they mean. So to them, LOTR is fulfilling its duty by being the first show that Prime sub members are going to first. This is why watching the full season doesn't even matter; it's not really calculated into Amazon's metrics. It's a bogus system, but it works for what they intend to use Prime Video in the first place. Because let's be VERY clear - Prime Video's main budget comes from online sales made on Amazon as a platform as a whole; not just on Prime Video subscriptions alone. We already know that it operates on a loss-leader system, and very intentionally so.

We can try and spin how bad it is, but the first season spoke for itself, and managed to get pretty darn high viewership regardless of how good or bad it was. We can't even point at a single Disney original series that could compare to that.

What will be a better gauge for Amazon moving forward is how S2 reception will be, and whether it maintains a high influx of watchers. We could say that many people not finishing the season could mean a way low viewership for S2, but there have been cases where shit movie sequels shouldn't have gotten the viewership it had and yet it still did (Rise of Skywalker following the piss-poor TLJ for example). We will have to wait and see how S2 performs, really.

If it's really a case of Prime subscribers just watching LOTR because it's there, and despite there being little-to-no marketting push for the series, then that's actually going to benefit the show because the Prime subscribers who aren't invested in LOTR but will watch it because it's there will be the ones who support it the most; not any diehard fans or people who are literally subbing to Amazon Prime just to watch this show.

This kind of shit is going to be allowed on Amazon's platform, because they aren't necessarily interested in making great content, but rather content that reaches a wide audience and is simply content worth clicking on. It's like how the best Tik Tok or Youtube shows online aren't necessarily top-notch quality content, but rather very click-baity stuff that is aimed at people with low attention spans - it's a product of the algorithm. And that's pretty much where this show stands right now - it's touted as an internal success and allowed to thrive, because it's beat the algorithm that Amazon built for itself.

I mean to be fair we just had an article that said they were aiming for 50% retention, and they got 37% in US, and 45% abroad. Not exactly the great success they wanted it to be, and considering that before the show dropped they said it HAD to be a big success or why have prime video*, I am not exactly going to sit here and believe every word they said. When you drop 500 million on a show you expect great things, and when you get bad retention on a show that is basically free for what hundreds of millions? Not a great look.