(Yes, I know it’s $109.1 million after tax credits, but, like, why.)
i… is this wrong?
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My concern would always be over indexing on insignificant metrics. Like what specifically is it about Korean romance shows that leads to more watch time than you’d expect? Like while The Office and Parks & Rec were on Netflix, there would be a huge spike in the watch time for workplace comedy mockumentaries. How do you know you’re capturing the relevant part? How do you know it’s reproducible in order to capture a meaningful portion of the same audience?
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I think it’s hard to evaluate Netflix’s spending on original programming. For a long time they were in a phase of operation where they were trying to maintain near monopoly status. I think their capex was unrealistic because they were hoping streaming platform competitors would see their numbers, and balk.
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Probably?
If it’s not, my two best theories are either, “This is meant to draw new people in” (I’m accounting for that as best I can already) or, “This is meant to cultivate talent, even if it loses us money on paper,” but I’m leaning towards me bungling something up as a precaution.
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to give the good team an incentive to lie so the minions don’t just narrow things down
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A lot of tech companies lose money hand over fist for a very long time because they’re trying to become a near monopoly. The strategy for a long time for many companies was secure enormous war chests from VCs, disrupt an existing industry, and operate at a loss until the diverse competition of smaller companies without effectively infinite capital is dead. Then, try to pull the profit lever. I’m not sure this has actually worked all that well for virtually anyone except for Amazon, but that’s I think entirely due to AWS which didn’t follow this model.
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Also Ash have you considered the decision may be one that somehow personally enriches or otherwise benefits the folks who authorize the expenditures?
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this is just like my yaoi fan-fiction!
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Do you think it makes financial sense for Tesla to pay Elon Musk $274 million every day for 10 years?
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The short answer is, “The metrics I have (read: the 1.5 sources of data we have from Netflix directly) seem to support the idea these shows are watched consistently over a long period of time and don’t seem affected by week-to-week fluctuations.”
The longer answer is that I don’t really have enough data to pin down an exact cause for it. The correlation with a lot of my datasets is shaky at best - the most I have is “don’t be below a 6 on IMDb” - so my best guess is that they fall into a broader “comfort watch” genre that matches well into the drama-heavy content that most people seek out.
There’s probably some cultural things at play - the list of top Korean shows on Netflix is about 40% romance while the only comparable romance English show in the top 100 is Bridgerton - but I don’t think I have enough data to work with to determine what that exact demand pool looks like. As such, my work is building outwards from the data I have: weekly + biannual data, the major film datasets I have access to, and comparables from other streaming platforms.
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that number can’t be real
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Christmas party is engineering-disasters themed. I’m doing Boston Molasses Flood (basically an old fashioned with some molasses and extra spices) and Tacoma Narrows Bridge (citrus tonic water drink w/ gin and, of course, a citrus Twist)
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One of my roommates is doing some cherenkov radiation with blue curacao drink and the inciting incident for this one is a Challenger drink with frozen (peach rings? pineapple rings) for the o-rings
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The ideal is a deficit of 1000 calories. Every single day. Forever. Calories are EVIL and are trying to KILL you. High calorie = UNHEALTHY
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why is your christmas party on november 15th
…it’s not, I’m planning it?
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Titan Submersible will be a popping boba drink but I haven’t figured out the details
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Uh…
I’ve considered it, but you can only really model that if you integrate that from get-go and only if you can quantify that. In the case of Tesla, for example, you set out probabilities for how likely each of the goals is to complete (charitable answer is that he does at max two of them) and value it accordingly.
Netflix already is enough of a black box and already has enough hard-to-quantify measures without considering the crushing weight of human greed and politics. If I were actually working at the company, I’d mix it in using the data I have, but given what I’m working with, I’m just gonna explain it as part of, “Here’s why Netflix isn’t doing the optimal strategy.”
We only have mango and strawberry and I feel like a blue drink would be way more appropriate for the ocean, like if it’s NOT blue that’s a problem
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