Even as it dominates globally, the streaming giant no longer shines. HBO Max and Disney+, your move.

即便它称霸全球，但流媒体巨头的光彩不再。HBO Max 和Disney+，你们干的。


There’s only one reason I haven’t canceled my Netflix subscxtion. I’ve been counting the days until the streaming service releases the second season of Tim Robinson’s sketch show I Think You Should Leave. (Almost there! It comes out July 6.) But once I tear through Robinson’s latest, it might be time to smash the unsubscribe button. Over the past year, the most popular streamer has become my least-watched. If apps could gather dust, it would have cobwebs.

我还未取消网飞的订阅只有一个原因。 我一直在等待蒂姆·罗宾逊 的幽默短剧《我认为我该离开》第二季的上映(快了! 7月6日上映。一旦我看完罗宾逊的最新作品，或许就该按下取消订阅的键了。在过去的一年里，这个最受欢迎的流媒体已成为我最不喜欢看的了。如果应用会落满灰尘，它恐怕已经蜘蛛网了。

Netflix is the Kleenex of streaming, a brand so dominant it can stand for the whole of the market. (It’s not “Hulu and chill,” after all.) There are signs that this synecdochal power is waning, though. Shiny new rivals, particularly HBO Max and Disney+, have rolled out their own formidable streaming libraries. Plus, a constellation of smaller streamers have established themselves by catering to niche audiences. Film buffs have MUBI, Ovid, and Criterion; horror fans have Shudder; for animee devotees, there’s Crunchyroll and Funimation; the list goes on. As competitors multiply in the United States, they’re purloining former Netflix staples like The Office and Friends and coming out with features every bit as cinematic as Netflix awards bait like The Irishman. The original streaming giant is finally facing real competition.

网飞是流媒体中的舒洁，这个品牌如此强势，可以代表整个市场。这毕竟不是 "Hulu and chill"。不过，有迹象表明，这种协同的力量正在减弱。出色的新对手，特别是HBO Max和Disney+，已经推出了他们强大的流媒体库。此外，一众小型流媒体应用已通过填补利基市场空缺取得了一席之地。电影迷有MUBI、Ovid和Criterion；恐怖迷有Shudder；对于动漫爱好者，有Crunchyroll和Funimation；这个名单还在扩大。在美国，随着竞争对手成倍增加，他们也在偷偷复制网飞以前的主打作品模式，如《办公室》和《朋友》，并推出像网飞的《爱尔兰人》这样的电影作品做奖项诱饵。昔日的流媒体巨头终于面临真正的竞争。

With buzz building for these newer services’ hits—like WandaVision on Disney+, or HBO’s Mare of Easttown—streaming analyst Sarah Henschel says it is understandable that Netflix feels less popular right now. But she sees its dominance as far from over. “Netflix is still blowing everyone out of the water, they’re still the market leader.” Financially, it’s in a good place: Having recently rocketed past 200 million subscribers, it has also finally stopped borrowing money. Henschel attributes Netflix’s reputational funk to Covid-related production delays. What’s more, she sees Netflix as completely peerless in international markets. Operating in 190 countries, Netflix has a formidable head start over everyone else, and it pours resources into plucking shows from around the world that perform across borders, like the fun French-language caper Lupin.

这些较新应用的热门作品--如迪斯尼+的《旺达与幻视》，或HBO的《东城梦魇》建立了口碑--流媒体分析师莎拉.亨舍尔说，网飞现在感觉不太受欢迎是可以理解的。但她认为网飞的主导地位远未结束。“网飞仍然比其他任何应用强得多，所以它仍然是市场领导者。”它财务表现良好：最近，它的用户订阅数猛增，超过了2亿，也终于不再借债了。亨舍尔将网飞的声誉困境归因于新冠疫情造成的制作延误。更重要的是，她认为网飞在国际市场上是完全无敌的。网飞在190个国家开展业务，具有领先任何竞争者的强大优势。它投入了大量的资源，从世界各地挑选跨国性的节目，如有趣的法语惊险喜剧片《鲁邦》。

Even as it adds subscribers globally, though, Netflix’s domestic market share is shrinking. As that happens, competitors are moving in. According to analysis from streaming guide ReelGood, HBO Max had the most popular blockbuster film releases this spring and early summer with Mortal Kombat and Gorilla v. Kong. Its tag team of action movies made Netflix’s biggest hit, Army of the Dead, look wimpy. Plus, while Netflix continues to build itself into a streamer doubling as a studio, Amazon just bought a studio—MGM—outright. And some of Netflix’s homegrown attempts at making its own Game of Thrones–style or Marvel-style cultural touchstone have fizzled out spectacularly; a television adaptation of Mark Millar’s comic Jupiter’s Legacy, initially intended as a launchpad for a superhero franchise, was abruptly canceled less than a month after it debuted.

不过，即使网飞在全球范围内的用户数在增加，它在美国国内的市场份额却在萎缩。这种情况下，竞争对手也趁机杀入市场。根据流媒体指南ReelGood的分析，HBO Max在今春和初夏发布的《真人快打》和《大猩猩对金刚》是最受欢迎的大片。它的动作电影的标签团队使网飞最大的热门影片《死亡军团》看起来很懦弱。此外，当网飞继续将自己打造成一家兼作电影制片的流媒体公司时，亚马逊却直接收购了一家工作室——米高梅。而网飞的一些本土尝试，如自己制作类似《权力的游戏》式的或《奇迹》式的文化试金石作品最后都无疾而终；马克.米勒的漫画《朱庇特的遗产》的电视改编剧，最初是作为超级英雄系列的启动平台，但在首次亮相后不到一个月就突然被取消。

Here’s the thing: Jupiter’s Legacy had mediocre reviews. And mediocrity is increasingly a liability when competitors have hotter rosters. I Think You Should Leave aside, the other upcoming show on Netflix I’ve seen people hyped up for is that nightmarish-looking furry-themed dating show Sexy Beasts. And while its commitment to the grotesque appears admirable, Sexy Beasts looks like good-humored trash at best. This is not to say that Netflix is totally devoid of worthwhile content—the limited-series food show High on the Hog comes to mind as a recent creative success—but that its ratio of blah offerings to genuine winners is all off. At least for me, right now, there’s too much filler and not enough appointment television to justify the price, especially with other streamers asking for my money.

事情是这样的: 《朱庇特的遗产》 观众评论一般。而当竞争对手拥有更热门的一系列作品时，表现平庸越来越成为一种负累。撇开《我想你应该离开》不谈，我看到人们对网飞的另一个即将播出的节目，就是那个看起来很可怕的毛发主题的约会节目《性感野兽》。虽然它对怪诞的承诺似乎令人钦佩，但《性感野兽》充其量看起来是好脾气的垃圾。这并不是说网飞完全没有有价值的内容--限定美食剧《美式大餐》作为最近的成功创意出现在人们的脑海中--但是它的乏味的作品和真正的获奖作品之间的比例是完全不合理的。至少对我来说，现在，有太多的备选，没有足够的预定电视节目来证明这个价格是合理的，尤其是在其他流媒体要求我付钱的时候。

HBO Max, meanwhile, has a clunky user interface and a bad habit of fritzing out on its biggest nights. (When I tried to watch the finale of Mare of Easttown, the app on my Apple TV kept playing an episode of The Big Bang Theory. Rude.) But since its debut in May 2020, HBO Max has gradually bodied Netflix where it hurts the most: by offering better shows and movies. The HBO originals back catalog is already unparalleled, plus it has been on a roll with creative, fresh shows like I May Destroy You and Hacks. The pandemic spurred parent company WarnerMedia to release its slate of theater-bound Warner Bros. movies on the platform, from Shaka King’s tense, excellent drama Judas and the Black Messiah to the upcoming, long-awaited Dune. While Netflix’s 2021 film slate is nothing to sniff at—there’s new Adam McKay and Jane Campion films coming, for example—it simply doesn’t have the juice from a studio like Warner Bros. behind it. After years secure in its position as the “it” streaming service, Netflix has, at least temporarily, lost the quality-control crown to HBO Max.

同时，HBO Max有一个笨重的用户界面，还有一个在最重要的夜里出故障的坏习惯。(当我试图观看《东城梦魇》的结局时，我的苹果电视上的应用程序一直在播放《生活大爆炸》的剧集。但自HBO Max于2020年5月首次亮相以来，它已经逐渐在网飞最弱的地方打下了基础：提供更好的节目和电影。HBO原创节目的全部作品已经是无与伦比的了，再加上它一直在推出创意和新鲜的节目，如《我可能会毁了你》和《黑客》。这场大流行刺激了它的母公司华纳传媒公司在该平台上发布其影院版的华纳兄弟电影，从沙卡-金的紧张、出色的剧情片《犹大与黑弥赛亚》到期待已久即将上映的《沙丘》。虽然网飞的2021年电影片单不可小觑--例如，有亚当-麦凯和简-坎皮恩的新电影，但它根本没有像华纳兄弟这样的工作室在背后支持它。在多年来稳坐 流媒体服务的位置后，网飞至少暂时把质量控制的桂冠拱手让给了HBO。

Will Netflix get its groove back? It certainly could, perhaps by the time I Think You Should Leave’s third season makes me renew my subscxtion. But it also might be so big it doesn’t need the zeitgeist, anyways. There is a good road map for how Netflix could continue to dominate even if it loses its cool forever. In a recent column on media consolidation, my colleague Angela Watercutter pointed out that the competing streaming services may end up resembling network TV’s Big Three: ABC, NBC, and CBS. While CBS wasn’t the first television network—NBC beat it to the punch—it became the most popular network just as Americans were purchasing television sets en masse in the 1950s and 1960s. Likewise, Netflix wasn’t technically the first streaming service (that was iTV, out of Hong Kong), but it was the one that became the juggernaut. I’d argue that Netflix may be inching ever closer to occupying the role that CBS did during the heyday of broadcast television—incredibly popular, and yet rarely considered even remotely adjacent to hip. And yes, of course, Paramount+ is literally the CBS of streaming services in that it is owned by CBS—but Netflix is its true spiritual successor, with a vast, entrenched audience. Relevance will be a battle fought over and over in the streaming wars, but this is still ultimately a tussle for the most eyeballs, not the most discerning ones.

网飞是否会重新获得它的地位？它当然可以，也许到了《我想你应该离开》第三季让我续订的时候。但无论如何，也可能是因为它太大，不需要顺时代潮流。有一个很好的发展路线图，说明即使网飞永远优势，仍可以继续占主导地位。在最近关于媒体整合的一个专栏中，我的同事安吉拉.华特卡特指出，相互竞争的流媒体服务最终可能产生类似于网络电视的三巨头：ABC, NBC, 和 CBS。虽然哥伦比亚广播公司不是第一个电视网络--NBC比它更早--但它在20世纪50年代和60年代美国人大量购买电视机的时候成为了最受欢迎的电视网络。同样，网飞在技术上并不是第一个流媒体服务（香港的iTV比它更早），但它是成为巨头的那一个。我认为，网飞可能越来越接近于广播电视全盛时期的CBS的角色--极其受欢迎，但却很少被认为是中心和唯一。是的，当然，派拉蒙+实际上是流媒体服务中的CBS，因为CBS是其母公司，但网飞是其真正的精神继承者，拥有大量忠实的观众。相关性将是流媒体战争中反复进行的一场战斗，但这最终仍是一场争夺最多的，而不是最挑剔的眼球的比赛。