Monday, May 27, 2019

"Netflix Has 175 Days Left To Pull Off A Miracle... Or It's All Over"

In other news, "Model Emily Ratajkowski: 'organic content is king' in brand building".
Okay, just kidding. Ms Ratajkowski appears to be quite knowledgeable about brand building but that's a story for another day.

Today's story, from Forbes:
Last year, half of Americans aged 22 to 45 watched zero hours of cable TV. And almost 35 million households have quit cable in the past decade.
All these people are moving to streaming services like Netflix (NFLX). Today, more than half of American households subscribe to a streaming service.
The media calls this “cord cutting.”

This trend is far more disruptive than most people understand. The downfall of cable is releasing billions in stock market wealth.
Combined, America’s five biggest cable companies are worth over $750 billion. And most investors assume Netflix will claim the bulk of profits that cable leaves behind.

So far, they’ve been right. Have you seen Netflix’s stock price? Holy cow. It has rocketed 8,300% since 2009, leaving even Amazon in the dust:


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But don’t let its past success fool you.

Because Netflix is not the future of TV. Let me say that one more time… Netflix is not the future of TV.

The Only Thing That Matters
Netflix changed how we watch TV, but it didn’t really change what we watch…
Netflix has achieved its incredible growth by taking distribution away from cable companies. Instead of watching The Office on cable, people now watch The Office on Netflix.
This edge isn’t sustainable.

In a world where you can watch practically anything whenever you want, dominance in distribution is very fragile.

Because the internet has opened up a whole world of choice, featuring great exclusive content is now far more important than anything else.
For example, about 20 million people tuned in to watch the first episode of the latest season of hit show Game of Thrones.

It was one of the most-watched non-sporting events in TV history....MORE