The Economy

They knew their technology was dead in 10 years.

 

I don't think Netflix makes any money. At all. It borrows and borrows and borrows, on the hopes that, one day, it won't borrow. In October it said it's close, maybe, to not borrowing, but that came as the subscriber numbers were lower than projected.

More than half of Netflix's original programming is awful. The Queen's Gambit is the most successful project in history by some margin. (It's also, while a little padded, pretty good and featuring a major new star.) A lot of the down-the-line stuff is cringeworthy, and also stuff people aren't watching.

Netflix can make up any number it pleases in terms of who watched what and how often, but I tend to believe them on The Queen's Gambit.

When they say 83 million households watched Adam Sandler's Murder Mystery, I don't believe it for a second.

 

You remember the 70 million votes Trump got? There's a lot of bad taste and lowest common denominator thinking in this country. This likely applies to taste in entertainment as well.

 

I remember when ESPN lost money. And then as cable subscribers grew the company started to print money at an unbelievable rate.

Why? Because the marginal cost of servicing an additional customer is essentially zero. Almost 100% of the subscription revenue of every new customer drops to the bottom line.

And Netflix has built an incredible international subscriber base. My retired sister-in-law who does not speak English subscribes to Netflix in Mexico. The bet stockholders are making is that the worldwide subscriber base will expand to cover costs ands then turn the company into a money machine like ESPN became.

Given the company's lead over subscribers I think they will. But if Netflix does not someone else will.

 

Jim “Fucking” Belushi was on TV for years, and that’s all you need to know about bad viewing taste.

 

Mom-and-pop retailers are really struggling today. In-store sales are about half of last year.

 

I tuned in to watch Courtney Thorne-Smith.

 

Netflix doesn’t have live sports though. Yet.

further, ESPN probably wouldn’t survive on a direct-to-consumer basis. It survives via the pay through on cable bundles in which subscribers who don’t watch an hour of ESPN still have to pay for it, just as ESPN junkies have to pay for TNT.

ESPN is owned by Disney, which prints money outside the viral pandemic. Of course, Disney’s success in part depends on late Boomers and early Xers acting like lifelong adolescents in their cultural choices. The same is true of needing that from millennials, but Disney has nothing to worry about there. Millennials will deliver on that front.

 

If only they’d make more mature choices. Like watching men in tight pants and helmets tackle each other for three hours.

 

If Netflix isn't making money right now, it's because I suspect that they don't want to - instead, they're pouring the money into the development of new shows and/or new seasons. I remember similar hand-wringing about Amazon, which was focusing on expanding into more and more areas of the economy instead of just consolidating their gains and turning them into profit. Seems to have worked out OK for them.

 

I was using ESPN as an example of an enterprise that initially lost money and then turned it around and became extremely profitable. I think going forward Disney will also develop a profitable streaming service, especially given their iconic brands.

I do not think all the other companies piling into streaming like CBS, Starz, et. al will be successful. And I think that traditional cable and satellite providers will disappear.

 

I do, too. People love Disney shit. (I generally don't, but whatever, I'm in the deep minority.)