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Netflix: Watch the bonds

No regular reader will doubt that I’ve never exactly over-indulged on the Netflix Cool-Aid, so the latest news isn’t a big surprise. Price rises in a cost-of-living crisis and plateaued content offerings (both quality and quantity), matched with inflation in production, were never going to be a good mix. Add in vociferous competition and the […]

April 20, 2022 Nick Snow

C4: If it ain’t broke, break it

The UK government is pressing ahead with privatising Channel 4, though it is by no means guaranteed success as opposition is widespread, not least on its own benches. The case for, as put forward by the DCMS, is that the broadcaster needs to be private to compete better with Netflix, Prime etc. For example, a […]

April 5, 2022 Nick Snow

Streaming drama could be a horror show

This columnist’s conviction that Netflix’s business model is fundamentally a plate-spinning act, with the same potential mishaps, has waxed and waned as results have continued to boom, with just the odd bump in the road. But the conviction has never gone away completely, even as the company seemed to reach the status of 800lb gorilla […]

February 14, 2022 Nick Snow

Dorries – dog whistler in chief

It goes without saying that the current British government is an embarrassment at home and abroad. With Trump, for now, off the stage, and Berlusconi, for now, in retirement, Boris Johnson has the stage to himself as a global unifier as nations the world over laugh at him, and pity us. One of the worst […]

January 17, 2022 Nick Snow

2022 – what can go wrong?

I signed off last year’s last blog with “I make no predictions for 2021, including ‘at least it can’t be worse’”. That was a good decision. Who’d have thought we’d all be here at the end of 2021 having missed Vegas, Cologne and Amsterdam, again. Any bets on the 2022 travel itinerary? No, didn’t think […]

December 21, 2021 Nick Snow

Streaming is an arms race, with the same morals

Disney+ has passed 100 million US subs. The gamble of going direct, cutting out the service provider middlemen, has paid off. Among its objectives now must be to make inroads internationally into the lead held by Netflix, the pioneer of D2C. The weapons in this war of attrition are: pricing, marketing and content. Disney doesn’t […]

November 29, 2021 Nick Snow

MENA and The Magpies

As the organisers hope many will gather for the CABSAT 21 expo in Dubai, in the latest issue of Euromedia Chris Forrester offers a reflection on the progress, or otherwise, of TV propositions across the MENA region. Of course, in many ways, MENA is not a region from which any wider conclusions or pointers can […]

October 20, 2021 Nick Snow

Hooray for the human touch

Broadband networks and all that comes with them – CDNs, nodes, edge servers etc – were expected to fall over in the pandemic. The forecast of friction points, and outright failure, as traffic caused by WFH and more time to use entertainment, was so solid that the big streamers voluntarily cut their data intensity, trading […]

October 8, 2021 Nick Snow

The Orwellian Ofcom appointment

George Orwell’s dystopian future world of a sinister, mind-controlling dictatorship is often called upon as an analogy for political shenanigans in ‘the real world’. Usually, the comparison is overblown and inaccurate, and I’m not going to break with that tradition. However, the UK government’s manipulation of the ‘independent’ appointment of the chair of the media […]

August 31, 2021 Nick Snow

Netflix – breaking bad?

Netflix seemed relaxed about raining on HBO Max’s parade (for achieving impressive subscriber growth) by telling markets: “HBO doesn’t bother us at all”. Fair enough – though the contrast between HBOs North America growth and Netflix shedding of 400,000 subs is marked. But more worrying for them is the worldwide growth and share gains of […]

July 22, 2021 Nick Snow