Posts for 'Netflix'

Back in February, 2011, when Amazon unveiled Prime Instant Video, I noted that the service's Achilles heel was its minimal content selection. And since the video service was embedded in the larger Prime free shipping offer - rather than getting its own standalone brand - I sensed  hesitancy that Amazon would spend big bucks to license lots of premium-quality video. That indeed seemed to be the case as Amazon didn't announce a single content licensing deal to support Prime Instant Video until July, 2011.

However, since then, things have changed markedly; Amazon has been on a content licensing blitz over the last 15 months, announcing at least 14 different deals, culminating in today's with EPIX (see below for links to all). Despite the slow start, Amazon's huge content investment shows the company is quite serious about achieving content parity, or better, with its closest rival, Netflix, while leaving others like Google, Apple, Wal-Mart/VUDU, Verizon/Redbox and others playing catch-up in user-friendly subscription OTT services. Including the EPIX content, Amazon says it now has 25,000 titles/episodes, up 5-fold from its February, 2011 launch.

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If you were trying to tune out last week, whether lying on a beach or on a family getaway, you didn't miss all that much exciting online video-related news. However there were some items worth noting and below I've highlighted five that caught my eye.

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In the past 2 weeks, Netflix delivered tepid Q2 results and a cautious forecast, while Comcast reported strong broadband numbers and an improving video subscriber picture. That's a big reversal from a year ago, when Netflix was flying high and talk of cord-cutting hung over the entire pay-TV industry. So what might we learn from these 2 companies' experiences over the past year? Though I'm sure there are plenty of lessons, here are 4 that come to mind:

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I'm pleased to be joined once again by Colin Dixon, senior partner at The Diffusion Group, for the 141st edition of the VideoNuze-TDG Report podcast.

In this week's podcast Colin and I discuss Netflix's underwhelming Q2 '12 results. As I wrote on Wednesday, the company continues to be haunted by its decision a year ago to essentially abandon its DVD-by-mail business. Although in the very long-term, streaming will dominate, Netflix jumped the gun in de-emphasizing what was a lucrative business with substantial entry barriers. DVD subscribers, which are down by 34% in the last 3 quarters were a huge contributor of profits to the company which it could sorely use now as it pursues an expensive - and uncertain - international expansion.

On international, Colin notes that Netflix's performance wasn't that bad, but he still has concerns, particularly in the highly competitive U.K. market. While Netflix seems to have eclipsed LoveFilm there, Colin's sees the new NOW TV service launched by Sky as overwhelming Netflix in marketing and service quality, in turn suppressing subscriber growth there.

Nonetheless, Colin is still reasonably bullish on Netflix in the long-term, figuring that its size and well-known brand will help it get back on track. Absent shorter-term catalysts, I'm not so sure Netflix can return to its glory days. It will be fascinating to watch unfold.

Listen in to learn more.

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Netflix reported its Q2 '12 results yesterday, and once again DVD subscriber losses in the U.S. were a driving factor in the company's overall performance. While Netflix added over 500K streaming subscribers, the company lost another 850K DVD subscribers. This has become a persistent theme in Netflix's U.S. subscriber dynamics: modest growth in streaming undermined by significant DVD losses.

In fact, as the chart below shows, over the last 3 quarters Netflix's DVD subscribers (standalone and hybrid with streaming) have dropped by 4.7 million, from 13.9 million to 9.2 million. That 34% drop is even more significant if you broaden the period to include estimated churn during Q3 '11 and forecast churn for Q3 '12. Q3 '11 was the quarter in which Qwikster was announced/withdrawn and the DVD/hybrid price increases were instituted. Churn spiked by about 2 million subscribers vs. Q2 '11; it is probably fair to assume that almost all of that was among DVD subs. For Q3 '12, Netflix's mid-point forecast for DVD subs is 8.5 million, a 700K drop from Q2.

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In case you missed it while vacationing for July 4th, last week Netflix CEO Reed Hastings posted on his Facebook page that Netflix's streaming exceeded 1 billion hours for June, a new record for the company. BTIG's Rich Greenfield calculated that equates to approximately 2,388 viewing minutes per Netflix U.S. subscriber for the month (that's up from 2,000 minutes/mo which I calculated for Q4 '11). To put the June minutes in context, it's nearly double the average 1,315 minutes that the 180.5 million U.S. Internet subscribers each streamed in May, according to comScore's data.

Admittedly, it's a little bit of apples vs. oranges (comScore vs. Netflix internal data, May vs. June, free vs. paid, etc.), but assuming the numbers are at least in the ballpark, they demonstrate how thoroughly Netflix dominates in time spent per viewer vs. all other sites. For example, Netflix's 2,388 minutes/sub in June is more than 5x YouTube's 462.7 minutes/viewer in May and almost 10x Hulu's 253.7 minutes/viewer in May. Beyond YouTube and Hulu, the disparities become even more glaring; Netflix has 30x or greater viewing time of sites like Yahoo, VEVO, AOL and others.

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After a golden period of scorching growth from 2010 to mid-2011, Netflix has been on a rocky road since, to say the least. While subscriber growth re-started modestly in Q1, the company reported its first loss in years. True, you can't "drive while looking in the rear-view mirror," but it is intriguing to think about where Netflix might be today had it done 5 (or maybe more) things differently. Here are my top 5 "what-ifs" to consider:

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Netflix reported its Q1 '12 results yesterday, adding almost 3 million subscribers, of which 1.7 million were domestic and 1.2 million were international, while showing its first loss in a while. Focusing just on the domestic side, the 1.7 million additions are certainly a positive reversal from the past 2 quarters, but are just about half of the 3.3 million domestic subscribers added a year ago in Q1 '11 (see chart below). While Netflix is forecasting to add 7 million subscribers in 2012, the company's domestic expansion rate is clearly slowing from its torrid pace of a year ago.

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Last Thursday night, a Bloomberg headline, "Online Film Viewing in U.S. to Top Discs in 2012, IHS Says," caught my eye. The article reported that media research firm IHS Screen Digest is forecasting that "legal online viewings of films will more than double to 3.4 billion this year from 1.4 billion in 2011." Meanwhile IHS is forecasting that DVD/Blu-ray viewing will decline from 2.6 billion viewings in 2011 to 2.4 billion in 2012.

Over the weekend, as I kept seeing other publications essentially reiterating the Bloomberg story, I started wondering how IHS arrived at its forecast, the details of which I haven't seen. Doing a little back of the envelope analysis, as I show below, it's awfully hard to see how streaming movies in the U.S. will more than double from last year, unless some very unexpected things happen with Netflix (IHS notes that 94% of streaming movie volume was subscription-based, and of course, Netflix massively dominates this segment). Rather, it seems likely DVD/Blu-ray will hold on for another year.

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I'm pleased to be joined once again by Colin Dixon, senior partner at The Diffusion Group, for the 125th edition of the VideoNuze Report podcast, for Mar. 16, 2012. This week finds Colin on business in Brazil, and he's been doing some sleuthing on how Netflix's rollout is going there. Back on the domestic front, we also discuss Intel's rumored TV plans and the latest on Aereo's rollout.

Colin reports that anecdotal feedback on Netflix's content selection in Brazil is underwhelming as it is perceived as mostly older titles. He raises the critical question of whether Netflix was wise in choosing not to partner with any established players which might have brought content as well as an understanding of local conditions. Colin points out that the landscape is very different in Brazil vs. the U.S., with pay-TV penetration of just 20% and over-the-air broadcast viewing dominant. All that said, Colin has heard that Netflix is advertising heavily to build its brand. And Brazil is of course an enormous market, representing big long-term opportunities.

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I'm pleased to be joined once again by Colin Dixon, senior partner at The Diffusion Group, for the 123rd edition of the VideoNuze Report podcast, for Mar. 2, 2012. This week's podcast has a different format; instead of discussing one topic in depth, we touch on three areas - the new lawsuit against Aereo, Netflix's deal with Starz ending (and whether the "flix" is coming out of Netflix) and UltraViolet's strategy of using discs to drive adoption.

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Today I'm pleased to share a video interview I did with Netflix's Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos at the recent NATPE Market conference in Miami, FL. Among the topics Ted addresses are:

- How the business is doing since the Qwikster reversal, and what lessons were learned?

- Is there a chance the Starz deal could be renewed at some point?

- What is the role of TV series vs. movies on Netflix (and is the "flix" coming out of Netflix since Ted told me separately that 60% of the 2 billion hours watched in Q4 '11 was TV, and that the percentage is rising)?

- Why are the after-market economics for serialized dramas so challenging, in turn making Netflix a valued partner?

- Which competitors make him most nervous?

- How are international rollouts going?

- Which connected device is most critical to Netflix long-term?

- Is Netflix having any impact on cord-cutting and cord-shaving?

The interview runs 18 1/2 minutes. (Note, I'm off camera and my audio isn't great, so the questions are overlaid in text.)

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Comcast is launching a new subscription video-on-demand service called Xfinity Streampix that will be freely available to most of its higher-paying subscribers, while carrying a $4.99/mo charge for its lower-paying video subscribers. At launch the service will include past season episodes such as "30 Rock," "Grey's Anatomy," and "Married With Children" from NBC, ABC and Sony respectively, as well as movies from Warner Bros. and Universal, plus kids programming from Cookie Jar and Disney Channel. Streampix will be accessible both in and out-of-home and on multiple devices like the Xbox 360 and Android as the year progresses.

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Here's just how expensive it has become to break into the pay-TV business: even mighty Microsoft can't afford it. Reuters reported late yesterday that Microsoft has put on hold its plan to create a pay-TV meets Netflix type subscription service, after getting sticker shock over the cost of content distribution deals. When you have $52 billion of cash and equivalents on your balance sheet and still can't figure out how to make the numbers work, that's a pretty significant statement about how expensive licensing linear content has become.

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