最近《权力的游戏》前传《龙之家族》播出了。
看到了大家对两代龙女颜值的对比大战。
《龙之家族》是HBO的鸿篇巨制。
无独有偶，亚马逊也即将于9月1日上映《指环王：力量之戒》。
两家大流媒体公司纷纷斥巨资打造奇幻大片，说明流媒体竞争越来越激烈了。
今天我们来读《经济学人》这一篇：
The streaming wars-Dragons v hobbits
流媒体之争：龙与霍比特
A big-budget battle between old and new Hollywood
新旧好莱坞大成本之战
我们先来看本文结构
本文词汇和用法较多，这里列举几个：
衍生剧-spin off
紧随其后-hot on the heel of
收视率-ratings
影院收入-cinema takings/box office run
取得进展-gain ground
勒紧裤腰带-belt-tightening
雪藏-can? 这个释义有待进一步研究
1. Half a billion dollars’ worth of sword-play, sorcery and sex is on its way to a small screen near you. On August 21st Warner Bros Discovery launched “House of the Dragon”, a spin off from its racy smashhit, “Game of Thrones”, made at a reported cost of over $150m. Hot on its heels, on September 1st Amazon Prime Video will release “The Rings of Power”, a more chaste but pricier drama based on the “Lord of the Rings” books. With a rumoured pricetag of $465m, Amazon’s offering will be the most expensive piece of television ever made.
花费5亿美元，充斥着打斗、魔幻和性场景的鸿篇巨制即将登录你的小屏幕。8月21日，华纳兄弟发现频道上映了大热剧《权力的游戏》衍生剧《龙之家族》。
紧随其后，美国时间9月1日，亚马逊流媒体Prime Video也将开启《指环王》系列衍生剧《力量之戒》。据悉，《力量之戒》制作成本到了4.65亿美元，是亚马逊最昂贵的一部电视剧。
2. This will make for an epic ratings battle. But it is also part of a longerrunning war that pits old Hollywood studios against new streaming upstarts. Warner Bros will celebrate its 100th birthday next year. Amazon, which makes its money from ecommerce and cloud computing, launched its video sideline only five years ago. As the streaming wars intensify, each side believes it has the advantage.
这将是一场史诗般的收视率之战。同时，这场战争也是存在已久的美国新旧好莱坞制作公司之战。明年华纳兄弟将迎来成立100周年。
而依靠电商和云计算揽财的亚马逊五年前才成立了视频公司。随着流媒体之争愈演愈烈，任何一方都不会甘拜下风。
3. Lately the dragons of old Hollywood have gained ground. Investors flocked to streaming specialists during lockdowns, but have lost interest as new subscribers have dried up. Netflix, which once talked of a potential market of 800m households, appears to have stalled at 220m and has seen its share price fall by 60% this year. On August 10th old Hollywood claimed a symbolic victory when Disney announced that it had overtaken Netflix, with 221m streaming subscriptions. That figure doublecounts subscribers to Disney’s various services, and ignores the fact that many are in lowpaying countries like India. But it has banished any doubt that ageing studios can play the streaming game.
近来，旧贵好莱坞巨头取得了一定的进展。疫情封锁期间，投资者涌向流媒体专业公司，但当订阅者不再增加时，投资兴趣也随之消失。
曾经豪言将有8亿家庭市场的网飞订阅数似乎停在了2.2亿，而且今年股价下降了60%。8月10日，老牌好莱坞赢得一战，迪士尼宣布其平台订阅数超过了网飞，达到了2.21亿。
这个数字把迪士尼其他的服务人数也算在内，并且忽视了一个事实，即很多订阅数来自低收入国家，如印度。
尽管如此，这个数字也表明老牌工作室一样能在流媒体时代拔得一筹。
4. Hollywood’s old hands are also refocusing on the business of making money, after two expensive years of chasing subscribers. Disney says its main streaming service, Disney+, will see its losses peak this year before turning a profit in 2024. A steep price rise, beginning in December, will help. On a recent earnings call David Zaslav, Warner’s new boss, bluntly criticized the old approach of “spend, spend, spend and then charge very little”. Warner will aim for its streaming business to generate a gross operating profit of $1bn by 2025, he said. “If we do that, I don’t really care what the [subscriber] number is…We want to make sure we get paid.”
在经过两年的昂贵订阅之争后，老牌好莱坞工作室重新将精力转向赚钱业务上。迪士尼称其主要流媒体服务迪士尼+今年将会出现损失高峰，而后到2024年将会扭亏为盈。12月开始的价格飞涨将会增加其盈利几率。
华纳新当家David Zaslav 在近来的一个收益会议上当面抨击“花大钱，少收费”的模式。华纳将流媒体业务目标定为到2025年利润实现10亿美元。“如果我们想达到这个目标，我们就不能在乎（订阅数）的多少。我们要确保业务有收入。”
5. Old media formats will play a role. Cinemas, whose worldwide takings fell by 80% in 2020, are open again. The box office is still not what it was: Cineworld, the world’s second-largest theatre chain, said on August 22nd that it was considering filing for bankruptcy. But Paramount, a 110year-old Hollywood dragon, held back the release of “Top Gun: Maverick” during the pandemic and was rewarded in May with a box office run of over $1bn. Warner, which in 2021 released all its films on its streaming platform at the same time as they launched in cinemas, has gone back to exclusive theatre runs.
老牌媒体业务模式将会发挥作用。2020年，世界影院的收入下降了80%。虽然现在重新开放，但票房收入仍不理想。8月22日，世界第二大影院连锁公司Cineworld宣称正考虑申请破产。
但是，派拉蒙公司，一个拥有110年历史的好莱坞老牌影视制作公司疫情期间推迟了《壮志凌云：独行侠》的上映。在五月收到了超过10亿美元的票房收入。2021年华纳所有电影在影院上映的同时，在其流媒体平台也上映，重回票房之王。
6. Theme parks are full again, too, with Disney’s American ones generating record revenues and margins. Even broadcast and cable tv, long in decline, look like relative havens as the streaming business gets tougher. “We effectively have four, five or six cash registers,” Mr Zaslav told investors. “And in a world where things are changing, and there’s a lot of uncertainty and there’s a lot of disruption, that’s a lot more stable and a lot better than having one cash register.”
主题公园再次“人满为患”，美国迪士尼公园实现历史性营收和利润。虽然广播和有线电视收入长期低迷，流媒体和其他业务收益似乎在增强。
Zaslav告诉投资者“我们有4、5、6个收益稳定的收银机。当世界变化莫测，动荡不稳时，多个收益来源更好。”
7. That may be a convincing argument against an upstart like Netflix, which depends on streaming. The trouble for old Hollywood is that some of its new competitors have bigger and more varied cash registers. Warner’s path to profit involves drastic cuts—it has already scrapped its streaming news service, cnn+, and canned unfinished productions including “Batgirl”. Amazon shows no sign of belt-tightening. Besides “Rings of Power”, it recently bought Metro Goldwyn Mayer, the studio behind “James Bond”, for $8.5bn and acquired rights to America’s National Football League for a reported $1bn a year. Morgan Stanley, a bank, estimates that it will spend $16bn on media content this year. Netflix spent $14bn. Next year Amazon’s spending could reach $20bn.
这个说法对依靠流媒体营收的新贵好莱坞制作公司如网飞来说似乎是个有力的说辞。对老牌好莱坞公司来说，他们的竞争对手的收银机更大、来源更多。华纳增加收益之路包括削减成本，其已经砍掉了流媒体新闻服务CNN+并且搁置了未完成的制作如Batgirl。
而相比而言，亚马逊则没有一丝“勒紧裤腰带过日子”的迹象。除了《力量之戒》，其近来又花费85亿美元买下了《邦德》工作室Metro Goldwyn Mayer，10亿美元获得了美国国家橄榄球联盟的转播权。
摩根斯坦利估计，亚马逊今年花在媒体内容上的费用将达到160亿美元。网飞花了140亿美元，明年，亚马逊的花费将达到200亿美元。
8.Unlike the old Hollywood dragons, some new streamers don’t even need to get paid, in Mr Zaslav’s words. Amazon Prime Video exists to keep people signed up to Prime, whose main benefit is free delivery of Amazon purchases. Apple’s steadily expanding tv+ service is geared towards keeping customers in its ecosystem of phones and computers, where the firm makes its real money. The video services from Amazon and Apple also provide real estate for advertising, a business in which both have ambitions to grow.
与好莱坞老牌不同，新流媒体公司甚至不需要他人付费。亚马逊的流媒体公司Prime Video 存在是为了让用户注册Prime，用户能得到亚马逊购物免费的优惠。苹果不断扩大其TV+服务是为了让消费者存在其手机和电脑生态中，而手机和电脑才是其真正的摇钱树。
亚马逊和苹果的视频服务也为房地产提供广告服务，这是两家公司都在努力踏足的业务。
9. Old Hollywood is fighting back, offering viewers bigger “bundles” of content at a reduced cost. Warner plans to combine its main streaming service, HBO Max, with Discovery+ next summer. Disney is experimenting with discounted packages of services like espn+ and Hulu; some wonder if entry to its parks could one day form part of a Disney mega-bundle.
老牌好莱坞公司在反击，以低价给用户提供更大的“一揽子”内容服务。华纳计划明年夏天将其主要的流媒体服务HBO Max和Discovery+合并。
迪士尼正在进行给用户提供ESPN+和Hulu的折服务包试用计划。有人好奇进入迪士尼公园是否会被列入迪士尼大服务的一部分。
10. Yet Hollywood’s new rivals offer bundles of a different sort. Apple’s video vault is far smaller than that of Disney or Warner, but its “Apple One” package includes not just tv but music, games, storage, news and fitness. Amazon Prime comes with a similarly eclectic bunch of benefits. As households look for savings, deals like these may prove tempting.
好莱坞新贵们也在摩拳擦掌，提供各种新服务。苹果视频库远比不上迪士尼或华纳，但其Apple One 一揽子服务不仅电视，还包括音乐、游戏、存储、新闻和健身服务。
亚马逊Prime Video 也有类似的一揽子优惠服务。这样的优惠服务似乎对准备节省开支的家庭更有诱惑力。
11. That may be why some old Hollywood dragons are doing business with the upstarts. On August 15th Paramount announced a deal with Walmart, a giant retailer, in which members of Walmart+, the store’s answer to Amazon Prime, will get free access to the Paramount+ streaming service. Walmart also sees media as a way to keep customers loyal to its main business. It recently added music to its bundle, via a deal with Spotify.
这也可能是为什么好莱坞大佬们与新贵们合作了。8月15日，派拉蒙公司宣布与沃尔玛合作。与亚马逊类似，沃尔玛+的会员能免费获得派拉蒙+流媒体的服务。
沃尔玛也将媒体看作是黏住顾客的手段。最近，其还与Spotify达成协议，将音乐增加到一揽子服务中。
12. As competition for viewers intensifies, the battle between old and new Hollywood is proving as bloody as an episode of “Game of Thrones”. For consumers, who have more choice and more deals than ever, it is just as entertaining.
随着吸引观众的竞争不断激烈，好莱坞新贵制作公司的竞争正是一场血雨腥风的“权力的战争”。
对消费者来说，这场竞争给他们带来了更多选择和更实惠的交易，何乐而不为呢。
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