Damn It, Netflix!

More than a decade ago, newly married and riding my undiagnosed anxiety disorder with neither therapeutic perspective nor chemical assistance, I freaked out and got an MBA in accounting. I didn't like the looks of the bureacratic ladder I could climb from my then-position in the pop culture blogosphere, and I didn't feel the level of confidence, faith, inspiration, self-worth, discipline, drive and such to make a go of freelance writing or comedy or any of the other pursuits taking up my spare time. I did, however, know I had a mind for the mathematical grind, and decided it was time to have a trade to my emotionally codependent name, lest I had to prove my value to those I loved if the apocalypse came, the entertainment industry collapsed and/or my then-wife's five-year plan to become a TV writer didn't work out (it impressively did work out, though apocalypse and industry collapse remain question marks).

One of the rare papers I had to write was about Netflix, then mocked for its failed attempt to spin off its DVD rental service as Quikster, and attempting to embarrass their customers into embracing streaming television. The position I took was that Netflix was doomed, as they had only one income stream, and - at the time - only a subscriber base to their name. Amazon, Google, Disney and others were dipping their toes into the land of online TV content, and could afford to wage a war over the marketplace for much longer. I argued that Netflix was spending gobs of money to create their own programming to fatten themselves up for a buyer, rather than to endure as an indepedent entity.

Though I'd read The Big Short before starting the program, I missed a big takeaway my paper would have been improved by. The cynical smarties who saw the inevitability of the real estate crisis and shorted the market almost lost their wads because of how long Wall Street can stave off an inevitable crisis when it wants to. As long as we keep clapping, Tinkerbell lives, and as long as banks provide loans and stockholders don't lose faith, nobody in finance has to admit there isn't a viable endgame. Similarly, I couldn't have imagined that Netflix would be allowed to acquire billions in debt, and that its competitors would need Netflix to survive because of its unprofitability.

You see, nobody has figured out how to make a cash cow out of subscription streaming. And while Google, Prime, Apple, Disney, Warner Discovery, Paramount, etc ever more effectively continue to fight for a share of the global market, if Netflix fell apart due to the lack of value in their effort, it would call into question why all these other companies are bothering. Wouldn't Amazon be better off focusing on delivery? Disney on resorts? Google on advertising? This is a big reason you can still find old studio titles on Netflix, when it would have been so easy to ice out the company entirely and force them to live and die on their own content. Today, Netflix collapsing would prove there is no long game, and that the effects on the entertainment industry of destroying the physical media market will never be fully recovered from.

But even if your peers want you in the mix, there's still the unpredictability of the stock market for Netflix to sweat. Which is why they're allegedly the biggest dog keeping the AMPTP from conceding to the WGA strike (and any impending strikes from SAG or the DGA). Which is why they're risking a huge customer base backlash by being the first of the streaming services with an extreme one household/"no moochers" policy, willing to risk pissing off a baby trying to watch Cocomelon at home while one of their parents is trying to watch something more ribald on a business trip. While the dubious mega-merger that is Warner Discovery has made a remarkable second place showing with their innovative Bat-tax write-offs and self-loathing brand dilution, Netflix is visibly winning Most Aggrieved Streaming Service because they're the one most upset we haven't made their expenditures unquestionably worthwhile.

I still think this ends with Netflix either merging with a company that wants into the streaming racket, or being consumed by one that's already in the game. But I'm no longer willing to prognosticate on when that will happen. As Matthew McConaughey made hilariously clear in Wolf Of Wall Street, the human beings tending to the economic hellscape benefit not from everyone else profiting, but from everyone else keeping their money in the market. Executives get their pay now for the promise of a payday for all later. And with stockholders withholding support, it behooves Netflix execs to be bold about squeezing the humans that subscribe in case they can't successfully squeeze the humans they employ.

I have no idea if this "one household" policy will become the new normal or the new Quikster. I'd personally abandon the platform if my kid wouldn't wonder why he's being denied the Roku icon (seriously, I don't know why everyone sans sprats doesn't just let seasons build up on different services and then hop from one to another each month). But the DVD service will finally depart this year, and subscription access is likely to tighten eventually everywhere. The current situation simply isn't tenable, and it's up to each of us to decide whether its worth enjoying for the moment or worth escaping while we can.