Netflix got some attention for itself just before its Q3 2014 earnings call by announcing a deal with Imax and The Weinstein Company to release Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon: The Green Legend—a sequel to the $128 million–grossing 2000 hit—simultaneously on Imax screens and streaming on Netflix. Unsurprisingly, theater owners responded less than enthusiastically, with major domestic and international circuits announcing they had no intention of booking a title simultaneously released to the home.
Netflix在其2014年第三季度财报电话会议之前宣布与IMAX及温斯坦公司达成协议，将会在IMAX银幕与流媒体Netflix上同步发行《卧虎藏龙2青冥宝剑》——1.28亿美元收益票房2000强的续集，从而引起一点关注。不出所料，影院业主反响并不热络，国内外大型院线均宣布他们无意向预订家庭同步发行的电影。
Netflix’s chief content officer, Ted Sarandos, continued to tout the plan,assailing theater owners for standing in the way of “innovation.”
Netflix首席内容官泰德·萨兰多斯继续推销该计划，批评影院业主阻碍“创新”。
“Movie distribution is pretty stuck in old models. A lot of models thatthe theater owners have kept in place are outdated,” he said at the fifthannual U.S. / China Film Summit on November 5. “We need to stop distinguishing the experience by access. Many movies are just as good if not better at home.”
“电影发行仍然滞留在老旧模式。影院业主大多数模式所维持的已经过时了，”他在11月5日第五届年度中美电影峰会上说道。“我们需要停止区分不同观影方式的体验，许多电影在家里看同样很好。”
This is an old refrain from Sarandos, who a year earlier said at the Film Independent Forum, “Theater owners stifle this kind of innovation at every turn. The reason why we may enter the space and release some big movies ourselves this way is because I’m concerned that as theater owners try to strangle innovation and distribution, not only are they going to kill theaters, they might kill movies.”
这是萨兰多斯在老调重弹，他早在上一年电影独立论坛中就说道，“影院业主在每个转折点都扼杀了这种创新。我们进入这一领域，用这种方式自行发布一些重磅电影，因为我们担心影院业主试图扼杀创新与发行，他们不仅是在毁了影院，而且他们还很可能会毁了电影。”
NATO president John Fithian quickly fired back.“Subscription movie services and cheap rentals killed the DVD business, and now Sarandos wants to kill the cinema as well,” he said. “The only business that would be helped by day-and-day release to Netflix is Netflix. If Hollywood did what Sarandos suggests, there wouldn’t be many movies left for Netflix’s customers or for anyone else. It makes absolutely no business sense to accelerate the release of the lowest value in the chain.”
NATO总裁约翰·菲西安迅速还以颜色。“会费电影服务与廉价的租金毁掉了DVD生意业，而今萨兰多斯还想毁了电影院，”他说。“在Netflix同日发布的唯一得益者是Netflix。如果好莱坞采纳萨兰多斯的建议，就不会有太多的电影留给Netflix顾客或其他任何人了。加速产业链中最低价值端的发行绝对没有任何商业意义。
Sarandos quickly backpedaled, saying at the Bloomberg Tribeca Film Festival Business of Entertainment Breakfast a few days later, “I wasn’t calling for day-and-date with Netflix. I was just calling to move all the windows up to get closer to what the consumer wants. I think there’s a better business in giving people what they want than a artificial distance between the product and the consumer.”
萨兰多斯迅速收回了这个说法，在几日后的彭博翠贝卡电影节娱乐业务早餐会上说，“我并非要求在Netflix上做得一日不差，我只是呼吁缩短所有的窗口期，以便更贴近消费者的需求。我认为会满足大家所需，生意会更好，胜过在制片与消费者之间制造人为的距离。”
Sorry, not sorry.
抱歉，但并不遗憾。
We have covered numerous times the various fallacies inherent in the simultaneous-release business model. Movies like Margin Call, Arbitrage, and Bachelorette, touted as successful examples of the model domestically, far underperform theatrically in the United States compared to their performance internationally. Arbitrage’s distributor there was no cannibalization of theatrical revenues because the moviegoing audience is different from the home audience, citing surveys that show 90 percent of moviegoers were unaware it was also available on VOD. A business model predicated on consumer ignorance does not inspire Confidence.
我们已经讨论过无数次同步发行商业模式与生俱来的各种谬论。电影如《商海通牒》、《套利交易》、《未婚女子》吹嘘成国内模式的成功案例，他们在美国的票房与国际的表现相比却远远落后。《套利交易》的发行商声称对影院收入没有影响，因为电影院观众与家庭观众是不同的，而市场调查显示90%的电影院观众没有注意到有VOD（视频点播）版本。但以消费者不知情为前提的商业模式是不能让人信服的。
More recently Snowpiercer, released to VOD in its third week in theatrical release, fell off 37 percent, despite expanding its screen count by more than 42 percent. Conversely, Boyhood, with a traditional platform release (it opened on five screens, then 34, then 107 in its third week) expanded from 107 screens to 310 screens in its fourth weekend (189 percent increase) and revenues rose 36 percent. Further, Boyhood outgrossed Snowpiercer (in its third-week expansion) on slightly fewer screens ($1.76 million to $.63 million). Through seven weeks of release, Boyhood had quadrupled Snowpiercer’s theatrical gross over nine weeks.
更近期的《雪国列车》，在影院放映三周后发行了VOD而成绩跌落了37%，尽管其增加排片，银幕数量占比多达42%。相反的，《少年时代》以传统平台发布（首映5块银幕，然后34块，然后在第三周增至107块）从107块银幕增加至第四周的310块银幕（189%增长率），票房收入也增长36%。此外，（在增加排片的第三周，）《少年时代》以略少的银幕数超越了《雪国列车》（176万美元对63万美元），经过7周的放映，《少年时代》的票房总收入达到了《雪国列车》9个星期的影院票房总收入的4倍。
Yet strangely enough, one of Boyhood’s producers, John Sloss, slammed exhibitors at the Produced By: New York conference, saying, “The real criminals here are the exhibitors. We’re creating bad habits. I don’t think people steal content because they want content for free. They just want it when and where they want it.”
然而奇怪的是，《少年时代》制片人之一的约翰·斯洛斯在“制片人：来自纽约”发布会上抨击影院业主说，“这里真正的罪犯是影院业主。我们正养成坏习惯。我不认为人们窃取内容是因为他们想让内容免费，他们只是希望随时随地想得到。”
This, too, is a myth. The leading indicator for piracy is, in fact, availability. Illegal downloads of movies spike on the Internet almost as soon as a movie hits theaters and then trail off, mirroring the weekly declines in admissions in theatrical release until they are a barely perceptible background hum. They spike back up again the week before the home release when a DVD or two falls off the truck between the warehouse and retailers, which again mirrors legal availability and popularity.
这，同样也是个神话。对盗版的领先指标，事实上，就是可以得到。几乎只要电影在影院上映，互联网的电影非法下载就会飙升，随后减弱，完全对应影院放映入场人次的每周跌幅，直至最后的无声无息。它们会在家庭发布前一周再度飙升，那周会在仓库与零售商店之间掉落的一两张DVD，再次对应合法观看和热门情况的轨迹。
The entire argument for simultaneous release is founded on bad faith, shoddy data, and mysterious bookkeeping. John Sloss made waves in the industry with his call for transparency in the reporting of VOD revenues. It’s long past time for that call to be heeded. Netflix doesn’t even provide viewership data per title to its own shareholders.
同步发行的整个论点是建立在不诚信、劣质数据与难以理解的记账方式基础上的。约翰·斯洛斯呼吁对VOD收入报告的透明化掀起波澜。再去重视这项呼吁早就不合时宜了。Netflix甚至不向自己的股东提供每个节目的收视率数据。
And, frankly, I don’t think that Ted Sarandos believes his own arguments. If he truly believed that exclusivity is a curse, “creating artificial distance between the product and the consumer,” he would make House of Cards and Orange is the New Black available on Hulu, Vudu, Redbox, Amazon Prime, cable VOD, and next to the checkout counter at Walmart. But he doesn’t.
而且，坦率地说，我认为就是泰德·萨兰多斯也不相信他自己的论点。如果他真的相信排他性是一种祸根，“拉开了制片与消费者之间的人为的距离，”他就会在Hulu、Vudu、Redbox(红盒子)、亚马逊、有线电视点播、沃尔玛收银台边发布《纸牌屋》与《女子监狱》。但他没有。
And why not? Because exclusivity matters. Exclusivity works. Because Netflix needs to offer its subscribers something its competitors don’t to retain them as subscribers and for those subscribers to believe they are getting something of value that they can’t get from a growing number of competitors.
为什么没有呢？因为排他性的问题。独家作品。因为Netflix需要提供其用户一些竞争对手没有的东西，从而留住他们续订服务，令这些用户相信他们正获得一些有价值的东西，这些东西是他们在越来越多的竞争者中无法获取的。
There are really only two things that matter to Netflix’s bottom line: the cost of acquiring and delivering content and subscription revenue. The importance of keeping costs down led to Netflix’s biggest misstep with its customers when it tried to separate out the DVD-by-mail business from its streaming business. It costs Netflix far more to ship DVDs back and forth per transaction than it costs to stream over the Internet, but subscribers revolted at what they saw as an attempt to impose a nearly 100 percent price increase on those who wished to receive their content both ways. The company backed down, not only failing to contain costs, but also losing them enormous goodwill and quite a large number of subscribers.
真正只有两件事可触碰Netflix的底线：获取与交付内容的成本,以及订阅收入。降低成本的重要性导致Netflix与客户间的最大的失误，它试图将DVD邮件租赁业务从流媒体业务中分离。相比在互联网以流媒体传输，Netflix每笔交易来回寄送DVD所要耗费更多，但订户抗议Netflix试图强加的几乎100%的价格上调，如果订户希望用两种方式获取内容。公司做出了让步，不但未能控制成本，同时失去了极大的商誉和相当多的用户。
And costs continue to rise. Netflix is no longer the only streaming player, studios have started to pay close attention to the potential revenues in the space, and Netflix is no longer content to wait at the back of the line of home windows. This means to compete with more competitors for prime content, which will keep their subscribers growing and satisfied, their content costs will only go up. At the same time, Internet service providers are squeezing Netflix for more money to guarantee fast connections to their systems. Additionally, Netflix is spending large sums to break into international markets.
然而成本持续上涨。Netflix不再是唯一一家流媒体播放商，电影公司开始密切关注对这一领域的潜在收入，Netflix不再满足于在家庭窗口线背后等待。这意味着要为精华内容与更多竞争者较量，内容将令用户增长和满意，他们的内容成本只会上涨。与此同时，互联网服务提供商向Netflix压榨更多钱来保证用户快速地接入系统。此外，Netflix正花费大量资金打入国际市场。
Simultaneously, the company is seeing a slowdown in subscriber growth in the United States. Some analysts cite a price increase for new subscribers as a reason for that slowdown. Current subscriber rates will rise later. With 36 million U.S. subscribers, the domestic market is running out of grow room, and consumer acceptance of price increases will become critical to revenue growth.
与此同时，该公司正目睹美国用户增长状态在放缓。一些分析师提及对新用户提价是放缓的原因。当前用户费用往后会提升。美国现有3600万用户，国内市场可提升空间已经不多了，消费者对价格上涨的认可将成为收入增长的关键。
Netflix truly broke ground with home delivery of DVDs and later with on-demand streaming (of whatever Netflix had streaming rights to). But their first-mover advantage has an expiration date. Premium cable channels are starting to wade into the streaming space and they, like Netflix will have a mix of exclusive self-generated content as well as exclusive licensed content, and they are going to have to compete for it.
Netflix先是DVD送货上门，其后点播流媒体（任何Netflix流媒体权限），的确做出了突破。但他们的先发优势是存在有效期的。收费有线频道也在开始涉足流媒体领域，他们，跟Netflix一样，将拥有专属的自我制作的内容组合，以及独家授权内容，他们将不得不为此展开争夺。
Consumers have a finite amount of money to spend on home entertainment, which is why low-cost subscription services like Netflix and cheap rentals like Redbox took off in the first place. Consumers also have access to an enormous variety of free entertainment thanks to the broadband connection they already pay for to access Netflix. Maybe that connection is also bundled with cable services, and that costs money, too. There’s a ceiling on what various services can extract from in-home customers, and Netflix is starting to get a pretty close-up view of it.
消费者花费家庭娱乐的资金是有限量的，这就是为何低价订阅服务如Netflix和廉价租赁如Redbox最初能脱颖而出。消费者们同样有机会获得海量的各式各样的免费娱乐项目，这得益于他们访问Netflix时已付费的宽带连接。或许这些连接还捆绑了有线电视服务，而这同时也是花钱的。不同服务从家庭消费者中可以收取的利润是有天花板的，而Netflix正在开始贴近查看这道风景。
Which may be why Ted Sarandos keeps talking so loudly about movie theaters. It keeps the industry from looking too closely at the cards Netflix is actually holding.
这或许就是泰德·萨兰多斯不断对电影院人士夸夸其谈的原因。这避免行业过于密切地关注Netflix实际掌握的底牌。
Or maybe he just envies our business model.
又或许他只是羡慕我们的商业模式。
“If [Netflix’s Ted Sarandos] truly believed that exclusivity is a curse, “creating artificial distance between the product and the consumer,” he would make House of Cards and Orange is the New Black available on Hulu, Vudu, Redbox, Amazon Prime, cable VOD, and next to the checkout counter at Walmart. But he doesn’t.”
如果他（Netflix的泰德·萨兰多斯）真的相信排他性是一种祸根，“人为地拉开了制片与消费者之间的距离，”他会在Hulu、Vudu、Redbox(红盒子)、亚马逊、有线电视点播、沃尔玛收银台边发布《纸牌屋》与《女子监狱》。但他没有。
Kevin Spacey as Frank Underwood in the Netflix exclusive, House of Cards
凯文·史派西在Netflix独播《纸牌屋》中扮演弗兰克·安德伍德
Bong Joon-ho’s critcally-acclaimed Snowpiercer saw a precipitace drop in its box office numbers after also becoming available via VOD in just its third week of theatrical release.
奉俊昊备受好评的《雪国列车》仅在影院放映第三周后，同时也是VOD发售时票房数据急转直下。
