Netflix reported a first-quarter profit of $60.2 million on Monday. Count em…I'll wait. The booming company says it has welcomed 3.3 million subscribers in the United States in a span of three months. That's record time, no literally, its fastest rate of growth yet. Netflix Chief Executive, Reed Hastings mentioned “It took us four years to get to 3.3 million subscribers, now we did it in one quarter.”
Netflix’s streaming-only service costs $7.99 a month. To keep customers paying for unlimited access to its currently massive library of movies and TV shows, Netflix must maintain its own (damn near exclusive) access to that content. Last month, it announced that it had bought the exclusive rights to a show, “House of Cards,” that Media Rights Capital is producing. This month it paid Lionsgate for the rights to stream archived seasons of the AMC series “Mad Men” and paid Twentieth Century Fox for the rights to the Fox series “Glee,” among others.
But at the same time, the pay cable channels Starz and Showtime are becoming more restrictive about Netflix’s access to their content. Netflix is trying to make the case that its streaming deals benefit all players because when users watch past seasons of shows, they are then more likely to watch current seasons shown by a cable provider or broadcaster. “We hope over time that HBO and Showtime will let us prove this proposition for them,” the company wrote in the shareholder letter.
I foresee more big moves for Netflix in the future.
SCREAM @ ME!!!
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