You are reading a preview of The Ankler, a newsletter about the world of Hollywood edited by Richard Rushfield. To get read the rest of this issue and get in on all the action each and every week, click below to subscribe now.
Welcome to the weekly dispatch from Entertainment Strategy Guy, The Ankler’s top secret anonymous showbiz data guru and analyst.
Okay, okay — that headline was meant to grab your attention. It’s a little harsh, but also not wrong about a company whose helium-filled stock (debt, what debt?) has always defied gravity, and changed almost every single person’s job in this industry to a streaming-first orientation. The Schadenfreude Set here has been waiting for this moment to come, while at the same time suddenly feeling beset by existential worries…what does this mean for me?
A fellow Netflix “bear”—meaning someone who thinks the stock price has been too high until its recent haircut—hit me with an interesting thought:
What if, he pondered, the stock price collapse was actually good for Netflix long term?
No longer beholden to a growth-at-all-costs narrative, maybe Netflix can now change its strategy. Figure out what is next, not being beholden to streaming disruption narratives, or the sugar highs from carefully doled out headline “wins” about viewership. And as goes Netflix, so would the rest of entertainment.
It’s not a bad point. The past week has been bad for Netflix, the first real bump in an otherwise charmed (rivals would say Teflon) narrative. Thus, it’s natural to ask what comes next. What should Netflix do now?
First, of course don’t feel sorry for Netflix. If you’d invested $1,000 in Netflix in 2010, you’d still be up something like 1,000 percent even with the recent downturn. Clearly Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos aren’t passing the hat and don’t need me to tell them what to do.
But they’ll get my advice anyways. Because I love writing these.
I last wrote recommendations for a giant in 2020, and that article held up pretty well. To that end, I’ve drawn up a quick list of some strategic options available to Netflix, in order of easiest to pull off to most difficult. For each, I answer if they should do it and if they could do it, two different things.
1. Start Releasing Some Series Weekly
Should they? Yes
Could they? Hubris says…maybe
At the same time that Netflix had probably their best quarter for original content in a year, subscriber growth slowed down. Netflix could blame the fact that a lot of the content came at the start of the quarter, especially TV series. Squid Game, Maid and You all came out in September or October, and burned out before the end of the quarter.
This has been a sneak preview of today’s edition of The Ankler, the industry’s secret newsletter. To read the rest of this issue, subscribe today for just $17 a month and don’t miss out on who’s in the hot seat next!
Also on The Ankler:
Is Bob Chapek Secretly the One Hollywood’s Been Waiting For? Richard looks at the mobs forming against Disney’s still-getting-comfortable kingpin and asks, what if we’re getting it all wrong? A look at the business under Chapek, the Iger ghost that haunts the company, and how the low key, non-nonsense boss might in fact be what Disney needs, if not what they want.
Ankler Hot Seat Podcast: Sundance Cinderella Stories and The Time Harvey Weinstein Joined the Women’s March
A few weeks before the Netflix subscriber miss, and a precipitous stock tumble, our own Entertainment Strategy Guy delivered four charts illustrating how Netflix’s woes were right around the corner in Streaming’s Winner-Take-All Theory Collapses. More recently, ESG weighed in on The Worst Case Scenario for Disney, now facing many of the same downward pressures afflicting its rival. In his column, ESG predicts how the next decade for Disney (and possibly all the streamers) could look very very different from the 2010s.
Check out the debut of Andy Lewis’ The Optionist. And sign up to not miss tomorrow’s new edition!
To advertise with The Ankler, please contact Kymber Allen at kymber@anklermedia.com.
We now offer group subscriptions! Please email info@anklermedia.com to sign-up.
Can’t afford The Ankler right now? If you’re an assistant, student, or getting your foot in the door of this industry, and want help navigating the craziness of this business but don’t have money to spare right now, drop me a line at richard@theankler.com and we’ll work it out. No mogul or mogul-to-be left behind at The Ankler.
The Ankler is Hollywood’s favorite secret newsletter, an independent voice holding the industry’s feet to the fire. If you’re a subscriber, feel free to share this edition with a friend but just a couple, please. The Anklerdepends on its paid subscribers to keep publishing.
If you’ve been passed along this issue, take the hint and get on the train. Find out why the New York Times called us the “hit Hollywood newsletter.”
