Netflix's New Chapter

But I'm not sure how much money is in there, especially for a subscriber service--which mostly justifies licensing costs by retaining or gaining subscribers.

I'd also observe that Netflix has allowed their back disc catalog to deteriorate. Which suggests a fairly comprehensive back catalog doesn't necessarily pay the bills.

Like, Netflix's UI has some annoyances, but it would be so much better if I could access all my streaming content in one central place instead of having to manage a dozen different shitty services, all with their own separate accounts, apps, watch lists, etc. and their own idiosyncratic quirks and buggy (or outright missing) features.

1) On the talk of saturation Netflix had somewhere around 230 mil subscribers last year. In theory the addressable market should be adults ~20 and up so somewhere around 5 bil. So not even close to saturation. Discounting say half of that imagine how much better the service could be with 10x the current subscriber base. They talk about increasing subscription price... At 10x you could half the subscription price and still increase content spending 5x which would be pretty incredible.

2) The article talks about old content not holding value as expected. I think a lot of this has to do with the near complete failure to invest in rewatchable content. They were clearly aware the value of shows like The Office and Friends in terms of rewatchability. Off the top of my head I can't even think of an attempt at original content in that lane from Netflix (Licensing and extra seasons of Arrested Development is the only thing that comes to mind). To be fair though utterly bizarrely nearly every service has failed at this kind of content for the past 5 years or so.

3) The lack of global hits is very strange. I was trying to lookup high budget tv productions in foreign countries and not sure if it is just a lack of data or they don't exist. I would think even if there is a cultural bias around kinds of shows people watch just in terms of production quality western shows would still be globally dominant. Are there any examples of international shows with 20 mil per episode budgets?

This one is definitely strange to me looking back on what I would have estimated for the world of streaming a decade ago. I would have expected a much more expected shared culture in terms of what is watched worldwide. Instead it seems if anything we have become increasingly isolated. It's crazy to think Netflix isn't even active in a country the size of China for example. I would have thought by now technology would lead to shows with viewerships counted in the billions not millions. Squid Game is apparently Netflix's most popular show ever but even that from brief research has under 200 mil views which in the context of total population still makes it incredibly unpopular. I.e. if you take 100 random humans and put them in a room almost none of them have seen it. I wonder if we will ever reach a point where anything is actually globally popular.

I'm curious whether that total box office number includes taxes on the tickets as well.