Forbes: Netflix’s Worst Nightmare Has Come True.
I think the notion that Netflix will survive but shrink is likely true. They’re large and successful enough that they won’t go suddenly into the night but quietly over a couple decades.
Along with Hulu they’ve long enjoyed being one of the only whales in the game. Efforts at original content have been a mixed bag but I think this also owes to to simple facts.
One is Netflix isn’t built around making media. They’re not like the big TV networks with the huge pipelines for content and advertising. Their strength has been in their service, and that’s gone well enough that people like me will likely remain customers for many years to come.
Second is they don’t have anti-trust / holy crap that’s comically one sided rights to streaming content. Eventually everything you see in Netflix will end up impacted by a contract and neogotiating them. It’s not like certain old world network blocks that got given away with too little forsight 😝.
Moving towards where we may be nickle and dimed by various networks is still an improvement over the cable situation IMHO. Because greater control versus take it and like it. Net result being: if it’s not in the circle of stuff we subscribe to the we are either going to skip it ’til it is or eventually come to an arrangement.
I know that’s how my streaming subscriptions work, and how several decades as a cable customer worked.