Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth
No, I said Amazon makes so much from AWS that the retail and streaming can be a hobby.
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Those "hobbies" are bigger than the entire US publishing business in gross and net.
There's way more to the Amazon Empire than just AWS.
As is, while everybody is looking at AWS, they are already looking to put their money to work on an even bigger thing. Project Kuiper, for one. Health care is another.
As for Netflix, they are a *global* business.
Already established in over 190 countries. Us revenue is still inchng up but tgeir international business is growing big.
Disney+ came and they still grew their membership. No significant losses.
As Disney and Warner and (maybe) Peacock settle in their share of the total US market will go down but it will take time and, more importantly, the total numbers won't. The near term key for them is that being first mover they are two steps ahead of the studio services. While Disney is rolling out country by country, Netflix is already out there and producing local content in those markets. India alone has over 7000 local titles. Turkey. Latin America. Germany, Italy, Spain, they're all producing content for Netflix.
And Netflix exclusives aren't just the ones they own lock stock and barrel. That's where Forbes and the other Netflix naysayers get it wrong: global streaming is hard to do, let enough do it right. Netflix is already doing it right.
So yeah, they're losing Disney and Warner and NBCU *over time* but that simply frees up the big money they were paying those guys to license otger people's content. And because setting up a streaming service is beyond so many studios, there will still be plenty of content to license from international and smaller American studios. For the US and other markets.
Disney and co will do the same but not now. Just getting a foothold in the US, Europe, etc will take the bulk of their effecorts for years. Meanwhile, Netflix will keep rolling alobg with the strategy they conceived in 2011.
Point to consider: Warner sold itself to AT&T and NBCU to comcast, FOX to Disney because they didn't have the deep pockets for the game. Good moves. But in doing so, they saddled the merged companies with huge debts. Before the new content expenses. ViacomCBS has a similar problem. The merged company today is valued at barely half what the two pieces were last year. Netscape's debt is small compared to their valuation and it all stems from creating new assets.
However the game ends up, they'll still be arond when the disruption stabilizes because *none* of their income comes from cablecos.
The flip side of cordcutting is less money is flowing to the cablecos and tgus to the companies running the live tv channels.
Disney made it clear that shifting from cable to streaming as their primary distribution was going to cost them money in the short term. Warner is in better shape but they are treadung lightly during the transition, but tge AT&T side is hurting. They'll probably end up selling DirecTV. NBCU is in the worst position because the comcast side is deep in live TV over cable and ibternet revenue won't make up for the losses.
The whole sector is in disruption, just as publishing was a decade ago.
Netflix will be fine, along with Prime, Disney and HBO. The rest? time will tell but they too serve who end up as roadkill.