Lord of the Rings TV Series Purchased by Amazon

[rhorle]

All that this really is about is that you know there's something to my argument, so you're just trying to bluff your way out of it with "I'm in the industry and I know things".

But you have no proof that several recent shows have been able to top streaming charts just because it was given away free to Amazon customers. You are purposefully ignoring your own argument to hyper focus on to something that wasn't called into question. Prime Video has always been free for Prime subscribers. If what you say is true then wouldn't every show have topped the streaming charts because of having access to "200 million subscribers"?

Again, I think that’s more a result of them basically giving away a free sub as an add on to their delivery service which already had 200 mill subscribers. That’s what separates them from Disney and HBO.

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They have to make it because they paid for it, if they stop now they lost 1 billion that they can't make back

They already made it back. Even if they didn't you drastically under estimate how much Amazon makes. Not to mention they could use Hollywood Accounting to make it beneficial for the company.

[Fencers]

You start saying social media is not engagement t but then say it is engagement

No? I did not say this at all regarding engagement. You may be mistaken about terminology.

But again, if the show is good or bad is not a matter of subjective opinion, if people liked or not is subjective, the show is objectively bad, but people, even fi rare still enjoyed.

Everything related to the quality of an artistic or creative work is subjective. There are no tracking metrics otherwise. You can not present a PRL with "good show" in it. That doesn't exist.

Nope, not my opinion

It is. Being impressed is entirely your opinion here. LOTR isn't as big a property as Marvel, Harry Potter, Star Wars, et cetera.

No one else managed to get their shows, wielding those IPs, in the top 15. Just Amazon.

This isn't a matter of opinion. The data was provided by Nielsen, it is an industry-standard. Amazon and other studios are already moving forward with the data from January.

They have to make it because they paid for it, if they stop now they lost 1 billion that they can't make back

That's not how they make their money back. Amazon doesn't have to make more of any show. Doesn't work like that, my dude.

Amazon would stop ordering any show if it had low engagement or was otherwise unable to be packaged. To hold the rights to anything is immensely valuable. To be able to package any IP you own and any production or suites owned- even more valuable. That is the purpose of IP acquisition.

It's not a fantasy scenario.

A hypothetical scenario where you made up metrics nobody uses within the business to determine how popular you are supposing a book series is in relation to the performance of a streaming show or other major IPs?

Fantasy.

Amazon did give prime video to all its customers who subscribed to prime for delivery.

Their revenue model for Prime Video is not strictly a subscriber base. Some of that is categorized as ancillary. This is not what Amazon bases the performance of its shows on.

All that this really is about is that you know there's something to my argument, so you're just trying to bluff your way out of it with "I'm in the industry and I know things".

I don't even know what your argument is actually. It just seems like a bunch of your feelings.

There is no argument to be had. The data is collected. Decisions have already been made based on the consumer data collected by Nielsen, OTS, and so on. In fact, it's kinda old news. I just happened to notice it a few days later.

The only relevance of working in market research is I can see data points not freely available to the public. Which I have not shared or mentioned. I mentioned specifically the Nielsen data- which is free to everyone. If you ask me questions on how their data is collected or used, I can answer that accurately.

If you are a shareholder you can get a lot of information for free too. Quarterly reports are free, IIRC. I don't know when the next Shareholder call is but Disney's running their call on the 8th.

I don't own Amazon stock. Maybe you do? Take a look or request documentation as you see fit.

You are arguing with the blunt data.

[Fabinas]

It's not a fantasy scenario. Amazon did give prime video to all its customers who subscribed to prime for delivery. Not sure you understand what fantasy is.

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It's not a fantasy scenario. Amazon did give prime video to all its customers who subscribed to prime for delivery. Not sure you understand what fantasy is.

All that this really is about is that you know there's something to my argument, so you're just trying to bluff your way out of it with "I'm in the industry and I know things".

No, it is not.

Stop arguing with Fencers. She has gone out of her way to explain to all of us that "engagement" in the corporate movie/tv production and distribution industry is something different than what we as users understand and perceive.

It has also nothing to do with the quality of the show, whatever that may mean to any of us.

The fact that only RoP managed to reach the top 15 for Nielsen ratings means that, whatever the reason people had prime (as a tv service or free for their already paid prime delivery service) for the above mention industry, the show was successful.

For me as a viewer it was a trainwreck and an abomination. However, it's not the first time that corporate execs use statistics and metrics that frame their products as successful, while the public hates them. Hell, even hateposting in social media or hateviewing is counted as "engagement" and adds to their success.

Let this serve as a warning to all of us.

[Veggie50]

Dear god, this entire page is just “no, u!”

[bledgor]

No, it is not.

Stop arguing with Fencers. She has gone out of her way to explain to all of us that "engagement" in the corporate movie/tv production and distribution industry is something different than what we as users understand and perceive.

It has also nothing to do with the quality of the show, whatever that may mean to any of us.

The fact that only RoP managed to reach the top 15 for Nielsen ratings means that, whatever the reason people had prime (as a tv service or free for their already paid prime delivery service) for the above mention industry, the show was successful.

For me as a viewer it was a trainwreck and an abomination. However, it's not the first time that corporate execs use statistics and metrics that frame their products as successful, while the public hates them. Hell, even hateposting in social media or hateviewing is counted as "engagement" and adds to their success.

Let this serve as a warning to all of us.

I mean to be fair they had a massive mostly free video service with the greatest trilogy of all time and barely made top 15 while earning 0 awards. Not much of a success.

[Syegfryed]

Everything related to the quality of an artistic or creative work is subjective. There are no tracking metrics otherwise. You can not present a PRL with "good show" in it. That doesn't exist.

No its not, and there is metrics to determine if a work is good or not with objective points.

By example, if the actors are saying their lines like they read yesterday, with no effort, like they are reading from a paper, is not good acting, period. The show is bad, There is countless of bad points already discussed here in the topic.

It is. Being impressed is entirely your opinion here. LOTR isn't as big a property as Marvel, Harry Potter, Star Wars, et cetera.

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

Is "not as big" that they paid fucking a billion for some of the rights

That's not how they make their money back. Amazon doesn't have to make more of any show. Doesn't work like that, my dude.

Ok, they paid 1 billion for the 4/5 seasons, and they can just, not make said seasons, and its all dandy, because they don't need to. what its matter is that they have the IP that will make back the money they spend in a short while.

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Stop arguing with Fencers. She has gone out of her way to explain to all of us that "engagement" in the corporate movie/tv production and distribution industry is something different than what we as users understand and perceive

I said once, RoP success is like when your mom give you money to make lemonade, but your father buys all, because no one else did, you can say it was successful because all the thing was sold. This is the kind of metric used.

Let alone that the chart show 9.4 million "minutes watched" for the season, and they said 8milions or the first episode/premiere, that means only 1m for the rest of the season, and if that is true, no matter how metric you use, this only can be seeing as a failure, thats low engagement and low numbers.

[rhorle]

Let's say Apple did something similar to what Amazon did, and made Apple TV+ a free addon for anyone who buys an iPhone. Then Ted Lasso would unquestionably make it into the top 15 streaming shows, but Apple would lose revenue because they made Apple TV+ free.

Would it? Not every Amazon show has made it into the top 15. You are wrongly assuming that everyone would watch a show if they get access for free. Apple does give 3 months free when buying a new Apple device. Do you have evidence that their shows see a large boost in minutes streamed around product launches? Apple TV is also $168 for two years ($7x24). So they could easily add that cost to that of the Iphone and not lose any revenue.

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I mean to be fair they had a massive mostly free video service with the greatest trilogy of all time and barely made top 15 while earning 0 awards. Not much of a success.

The over all top 15 from Nielsen is half reruns so position on the charts doesn't mean much at all.

[Veggie50]

When the reality you need to believe turns out to be false, you have to do all you can to handwave it away

It's a pretty good show of arrogance, if nothing else.

Agreed, it seems both sides believe they’re on the right side of that argument though xD

[Fencers]

No its not, and there is metrics to determine if a work is good or not with objective points.

If that were so, everyone would use these metrics and make nothing but "objectively good" things.

Spoiler: no such thing exists.

By example, if the actors are saying their lines like they read yesterday, with no effort, like they are reading from a paper, is not good acting, period. The show is bad, There is countless of bad points already discussed here in the topic.

All subjective.

Im not talking which is bigger, but you are out of your mind to say lotr isn't as big as those other stuff,

It isn't. Look it up.

The highest data value point of engagement in the last 3 years for LOTR was 8. The lowest for Star War was 12. Harry Potter was 17.

Even if you don't have access to ProData or Quckstats, a simple Google Trends comparison has the last 5 years LOTR the least among Marvel, Star Wars, and Harry Potter.

Lord of the Rings is valuable, never said it was not, though it is not on the level of other properties. Go look it up.

The LOTR films in total, all 3, barely did the numbers of singular Marvel films. This information is on Wikipedia if you want to look that up.

Is "not as big" that they paid fucking a billion for some of the rights

That isn't a lot. They got it for a bargain.

Ok, they paid 1 billion for the 4/5 seasons

They paid to be able to produce a property they own and can leverage freely. They own wholly Rings of Power as a property. Amazon only needed to make one episode if they so desired.

Truthfully, if these companies could dole out content in 1-minute shorts (so to speak) they totally would. What keeps them from doing so is consumer habits. Consumers have an expectation that a series is a half-hour to hour content block.

Companies and media researchers have tried to pitch shorter, much shorter, content duration for years. Some have actively worked on international markets and investors are constantly asking about shorter content delivery. There was a platform that tried it recently and failed big time- again, consumer habit. But the investment was there because that is an attractive model to clients and property owners to give you content in shorter duration format.

It is coming, the day of the 2-3m per episode series, not yet. But it is going to happen.

[Rennadrel]

And, as you said yourself, as trash as the show can be, and next to zero engagement from the fanbase, still become a success by arbitrary metrics, so there is no reason to stop doing it

The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results. That is kinda how I view how Amazon has been handling this show in light of it doing poorly relative to the budget that they've spent on production and licensing, and the overall viewership numbers jumping the shark rather quickly as season one went on.

So they sidelined the showrunners for season two and decided to bring in a couple of other people who are also significantly lacking in experience producing a show, thinking that it'll somehow be better. I've said it before but Prime Studios has a massive problem with nepotism from their upper management. Jennifer Salke needs to be canned because there's no way you can let literal nobodies keep producing these high budget projects and not get significant ROI from it in terms of viewers. Either that or at the very least there needs to be creative oversight over these projects from upper management to ensure the shows are successful by holding the producers accountable and not letting garbage get released to the public.

[bledgor]

The LOTR films in total, all 3, barely did the numbers of singular Marvel films. This information is on Wikipedia if you want to look that up.

I mean this is a pretty stretched logic to introduce. Sounds like a typical BS stats defense. Lets ignore things like the minimal increase of 50% in ticket prices (yes the first phase the tickets weren't 50% but only $1.50 more, but by the time of big money makers the price of tickets had gone up over 50%). Not to mention even people in the movie industry are pointing out how soulless and vanilla comic book movies are, they are literally the fast food/Mcdonalds of movies.

Also you act like Marvel series had a bunch of movies get close, it was literally only Endgame/Infinity War, a pair of films with what a 20 movie build up?

The 3 LOTR movies made ~3 billion dollars, are among the highest grossing film series EVER (with Hobbit they are 12th, without it they would be 22nd). All of phase 1 BARELY earned more money than the 3 movies dd, and if you include The Hobbit it wasn't till phase 3 that marvel beat them out in a singular series (it would have taken all of phase 1 and half of phase 2 to edge them out).

Not to mention the sheer accolades that the trilogy has received (won 17 out of 30 Academy awards), the fact it is widely considered the best fantasy series/movies, and even is in the national film registry of the Library of congress for being so significant.

Like I get you like stats, how about how many people finished the series vs started it? You know why we will never get that stat from amazon? The show lost A LOT of people before the end, because it was a piss poor adaptation with some terrible dialogue, bad pacing and story lines, basically carried by music, visuals, and one of the greatest legacies one could ever ask for topped with a larger budget in ONE SEASON than the entire original trilogy combined.

[Syegfryed]

If that were so, everyone would use these metrics and make nothing but "objectively good" things.

Spoiler: no such thing exists.

All subjective.

Thats a dumb take, because those objectively good things require, time, talent and effort, if you don't have those you can't do good things, even if you want to.

You know you have to hire good actors, but you don't, because any reasons, this will drag your work down, this is the same for the script, the direction and all, otherwise all movies would be good and therw would not be bad movies..

Even if you don't have access to ProData or Quckstats, a simple Google Trends comparison has the last 5 years LOTR the least among Marvel, Star Wars, and Harry Potter.

You want to compare a movie from 20 years ago to shit that happens recently? cause we had thestar wars sequel and fantastical beasts, lord of the rings didn't have much apart from a trilogy 10 years ago. Hell, HP have the game going on increasing people engagement, it was the most sold game a month before release in all plataforms.

And LOTR are still holding up, like you said, even with nothing going and a trash show to lower their credibility lol.

The LOTR films in total, all 3, barely did the numbers of singular Marvel films. This information is on Wikipedia if you want to look that up.

Numbers of what? oscars? money? tickets sold? what we are talking about here?

That isn't a lot. They got it for a bargain.

Well, maybe 1 billion isn't a lot for bezos, but the money comes from somewhere, and need to come back.

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The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results. That is kinda how I view how Amazon has been handling this show in light of it doing poorly relative to the budget that they've spent on production and licensing, and the overall viewership numbers jumping the shark rather quickly as season one went on.

But thats the big problem, as long they make into that chart, and have "x millions of minutes watched" they think they are succeeding, so, they are fine with getting the same result, because by those metrics, the result is a success.(let alone how those "minutes watched" is a very sus metric to use)

I mean, i don't remember if wheel of time manage to go to those charts, but they are still making another season, so they reach a number of minutes to be considered a success in their metrics, and tis fine to do another, even if its trash like RoP.

So they sidelined the showrunners for season two and decided to bring in a couple of other people who are also significantly lacking in experience producing a show, thinking that it'll somehow be better. I've said it before but Prime Studios has a massive problem with nepotism from their upper management. Jennifer Salke needs to be canned because there's no way you can let literal nobodies keep producing these high budget projects and not get significant ROI from it in terms of viewers. Either that or at the very least there needs to be creative oversight over these projects from upper management to ensure the shows are successful by holding the producers accountable and not letting garbage get released to the public.

That woman is crazy in the head, that lady AXED the Conan series that was in development because "it was too manly", and fired the dudes working on it, what they did? went to HBO and made House of the dragon, one of the best shows last year. And conan show had so much potential.


I seriously don't know how those people can fail upwards, they fail and get another or even a better job to do, is nuts.

[rhorle]

Is "not as big" that they paid fucking a billion for some of the rights

They paid $250 million for the rights. I'm not sure how, after all your time and involvement in this thread, that figure is confused with $1 billion.

[rhorle]

But thats the big problem, as long they make into that chart, and have "x millions of minutes watched" they think they are succeeding, so, they are fine with getting the same result, because by those metrics, the result is a success.(let alone how those "minutes watched" is a very sus metric to use)

Why is it "sus"? You yourself admitted in another thread of watching a show you called bad two times and likely would watch it a third time. The problem here isn't that metric. Why wouldn't how much a show is watched be useful for a metric? Why shouldn't potential multiple viewings by the same people be included? Lmao.

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I think you are combining my post with other posts here because I didn't do most of the things you said. My total argument is that them cracking the top 15 is less impressive because of how many subscribers basically get the series for free. I didn't make up any metrics or a hypothetical scenario. You're confusing me with someone else.

You are making up a hypothetical scenario. As you are implying that everyone that gets the service for free would be watching Prime Video content. Otherwise it would be impressive when Amazon finally starts placing on yearly streaming charts. As they always would have done so because of their large subscriber base, right?

[Fabinas]

So Fencers is proving worthless to engage with, so I'll ask you this question:

Let's say Apple did something similar to what Amazon did, and made Apple TV+ a free addon for anyone who buys an iPhone. Then Ted Lasso would unquestionably make it into the top 15 streaming shows, but Apple would lose revenue because they made Apple TV+ free.

Not all engagement is the same. Engagement with a free service is different from engagement with a paid one. To take it to an extreme, if all that mattered was engagement, then no one would charge a fee for anything. The argument that making Amazon Prime effectively free had no impact on how engagement should be valued is complete nonsense.

What you claim is IRRELEVANT to corporate tv/movie industry. I understand your argument, but, whatever you say here, doesn't count for them. Amazon will ALWAYS claim success on RoP, because they managed to enter the top 15.

I have nothing more to say on the matter. Anything else is your assumption. They have the numbers. Anytime you say anything about that, you lose.

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I mean to be fair they had a massive mostly free video service with the greatest trilogy of all time and barely made top 15 while earning 0 awards. Not much of a success.

I agree with all my heart. For us, consumers, for critics, awards-wise, it was a massive FLOP. It was mostly hated for any reason you can find. Art, production, scenario, acting, add whatever you like.

BUT!!! Whatever we say here means nothing to Amazon and the movie/tv industry. The numbers from Nielsen, unfortunately, show it was the only Amazon show that broke Netflix's domination of top 15 watched shows. And that's despite Amazon producing and streaming superior shows in every facet. Boys, Reacher etc.

That top 15 spot is (and will be) what Amazon claims as "success". It will be always accepted as such in the relevant industry.

Also, hatewatching, hateposting, uploading hate videos in youtube etc, all count as "engagement" for them. If all the above are still happening, the more engagement numbers Amazon can claim.

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I said once, RoP success is like when your mom give you money to make lemonade, but your father buys all, because no one else did, you can say it was successful because all the thing was sold. This is the kind of metric used.

Let alone that the chart show 9.4 million "minutes watched" for the season, and they said 8milions or the first episode/premiere, that means only 1m for the rest of the season, and if that is true, no matter how metric you use, this only can be seeing as a failure, thats low engagement and low numbers.

It doesn't matter for the corporate suits. They got a nice number from Nielsen, and they will always claim success from now on. As the kid will claim to its buddies that it managed to sell all lemonade and made x bucks. If it grows up, it may still show off with the story. Forever.

Every hatewatch of this on Prime gave the numbers. And Amazon can claim "engagement" for the show, even if we assume or we could magically know or prove that EVERY SINGLE person who watched it, hated it.

It's simple, yet you continue to argue with objective numbers, using abject stuff.

To them you will always look like a fool. Plus, they will be happy you actually keep talking about this trainwreck. Yes, it's that cynical.

Bad rumours or opinions still count as publicity and "success" numbers to them. Stop arguing.

[Triceron]

BUT!!! Whatever we say here means nothing to Amazon and the movie/tv industry. The numbers from Nielsen, unfortunately, show it was the only Amazon show that broke Netflix's domination of top 15 watched shows. And that's despite Amazon producing and streaming superior shows in every facet. Boys, Reacher etc.

The Boys is number 11 when RoP was 15.

[s_bushido]

It is coming, the day of the 2-3m per episode series, not yet. But it is going to happen.

I would be incredibly surprised if that ever happened. Music videos are around that length, and even then the ones that try to be "cinematic" end up being longer than the run-time of the song itself.

[Shadowferal]

The Numbers Are In And The Rings Of Power Failed at least according to that website.

Bounding into Comics reports that Amazon’s Rings of Power, the most expensive series from Amazon Studios, did not bring in enough viewers to justify the price tag.

Nielsen has been the most trusted name in television ratings for decades and the companies efforts in tracking streaming programs is also second to none. As a result, when the best tracking company in the country reports that the Rings of Power wasn’t even the most viewed original on Amazon Prime Video, it’s not good for the Tolkien adaptation. Months ago, the head of Amazon Studios talked about the records broken by the series, but going by Nielsen’s information, a different narrative for the show takes shape.

Rings of Power started out very strong with over 25 million viewers worldwide for the first episode. That’s good! By Amazon’s own admission 100 million watched the series while it was first airing! That’s good! The series is eight episodes long meaning 75 million watched the remaining 7 episodes, which equates to barely over 10 million for each of them. That’s not good!

Now those numbers are going by what Amazon has publicly shared, which are vastly different from Nielsen’s report for 2022. In the Nielsen report, Rings of Power is the 15th most watched original series, losing out to Netflix’s heavy hitters Wednesday, Great British Baking Show, Umbrella Academy, and Inventing Anna. Worse for the show that cost millions just to acquire the rights from Tolkien’s estate, is that The Boys did better numbers.

Using Amazon’s numbers mean that the Rings of Power was a disappointment, going by the Nielsen numbers it also underperformed, which means this would be a great time to try and use social media and figure out how the public felt about the show. On every platform, from Facebook to Tumblr, Twitter to Mastodon, fans expressed a mostly negative sentiment about the series. To Amazon’s credit, the Head of Global Television Vernon Sanders did publicly say that “some people just aren’t on board.”

Rings of Power is returning for a second season sometime in 2024. Hopefully in the meantime the studio is retooling and revising the scripts based off of fan feedback. While it’s never good to fully listen to the fans, making small adjustments here and there can dramatically alter how a show is perceived by the public. When the most expensive show in a company’s history, based off of a franchise that has stood the test of time for nearly 100 years, is losing out to Gilmore Girls and Cobra Kai, it’s time to try something different.

[s_bushido]

Bounding into Comics reports

rofl... Thanks for instantly reminding me why I dipped from this shitshow of a thread months ago.

[Shadowferal]

I think the reality check is that Amazon is considering changing the showrunners...assuming they haven't already, or at least dilute their idiocy. The show just isn't the big hit Bezos wants...his "Game of Thrones" isn't even close to its successor "House of the Dragon."