Netflix just needs movies, we haven't watched HBO since the 80s'. Their programming was never why we watched anyway. It's all about the movies. If I want original programming, and we do, we watch the education channels, in HD, free OTA.
As a counter point, I honestly see 'movies' somewhat dying out. Shows like Game of Thrones, House of Cards and several others now have the same production quality as movies and aren't hamstrung by the same limitations. e.g. how do you tell a deep story in 2 hours?
For what it's worth I consider the so called 'limitations' of movies their greatest strength. TV shows, given an almost unlimited time budget, have a nasty tendency to ramble unfocused all over the place, telling 20 stories badly as opposed to 1 story well. With a movie you have to pare down and focus on what is really important and have a clear vision of what you're trying to say. To my taste this almost always leads to a much better story.
Depends on what your definition of "deep" is. Have you watched Game of Thrones? The story is very complicated and I can't imagine a 2 hour movie being made out of it without dropping a lot of story on the floor.
You couldn't really make it work in 5 or 6 2-hour movies. There is much more material in ASOIAF than there is in Harry Potter or something similar, and they had to split that into almost 10 full length movies.
Have you tried their original programming recently? At the turn of the century HBO and Showtime started producing really amazing original shows that easily rival any movie and have become the top tier of TV shows. I would venture to say that most people that get HBO nowadays do it for the original programming and not the movies.
These premiere shows had a much different feel than normal "big 3" network TV shows. They tend to be much more serial, with story arcs that go for whole seasons or even longer. They also tend to have much shorter seasons (generally around 8 to 12 episodes). This serial style really lends itself well to in-depth story telling and the shorter seasons means more attention is spent on each episode (since they don't have to constantly churn out new episodes all year).
An interesting technique that many of the shows use is to base themselves off a book series but make the entire 10 to 12 episode season cover a single book. Dexter, Game of Thrones, and True Blood all seems to do this with reasonable success. It allows them to get much more detailed than a 2 hour movie based on a book could possibly be.
I think that's it's actually the other way round. Popularity of YouTube and shows like Game of Thrones proves that people are tired of long movies. Attention span has shortened and people want condensed action delivered immediately.
The popularity of Game of Thronesdisproves that attention spans have ``shortened and people want condensed action delivered immediately''. It's incredibly complicated, in-depth, and sometimes takes entire seasons for the pay-off to be delivered. Spending the first two episodes (20%!) of the third season laying the table for the remaining eight is pretty much the antithesis of ``condensed action delivered immediately''.
