CHRONIC
The disappointments announced on April 19 by Netflix, which saw its subscriber portfolio shrink for the first time since 2011 (−200,000, just 0.1% of the 222 million subscribers registered in the previous quarter), caused the company to lose “tumum” †onomatopoeia inspired by the musical comma that precedes every content on the platform – 50 billion dollars (46 billion euros) in market cap.
The utopia from which Netflix emerged is getting further and further away
As Wall Street responded by massively selling shares of Netflix, Hollywood analysts believed that this initial slump — the company predicts a further drop, this time by 2.5 million subscribers, in the third quarter — showed the streaming giants would become subjected to their first real “stress test” since the exponential expansion phase that accompanied the pandemic. The “peak TV”, this period of huge investment in series production, which is the budget of episodes of Game of Thrones surpassing that of Oscar-winning feature films may be coming to an end.
This column is devoted to what we see on the screens rather than to the movements of capital and the technological innovations that rule the entertainment industry. The very moment of Netflix weakness will have repercussions on our evenings. Reed Hastings, the president and co-founder, announced that he was studying a new subscription plan, less expensive, that would leave room for advertising, which he hated until now. Amazon (via Freevee, the new name of IMDb TV) and Disney (with Hulu) already use this format.
Beautiful playground
Will we soon see again these blurs to black, made to save space for advertising screens, characteristic of the series of the major American networks, which had rendered obsolete the hegemony of the payment channels and then the platforms? It’s unlikely. Platforms are primarily connected sites that can become a wonderful playground for extracting data from viewer profiles. The spectators of Sex education hearing aids are unlikely to be offered.
Advertisements and maybe just one episode a week. Several stock analysts have pointed out that one of the weaknesses of the Netflix model is the habit of putting an entire season online at once. For those who suffer from an addiction to Weird stuff True Bridgertonall you need to do is subscribe to see the eight episodes of your favorite series and unsubscribe until the next season.
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