Cordkillers 454 - Wonka Grant and the Hugh Factory (w/ Merrill Barr)
Netflix was saying their password-sharing crackdown was good, but the test didn't do so hot in Spain. DC releases a double-Flash trailer and Wonka got previewed. All that and more on Cordkillers! With special guest Merrill Barr ( https://twitter.com/merrillbarr ).
This week on It's Spoilerin' Time: Ted Lasso (307), Succession (406), Miami Vice (405 - "Child's Play")
Next week: Silo (101-102), Ted Lasso (307), Succession (406)
Download video http://archive.org/download/cordkillers-ep-454/CordkillersEp454.mp4
Download audio http://archive.org/download/cordkillers-ep-454/CordkillersEp454.mp3
CordKillers: 454 - Wonka Grant and the Hugh Factory
Recorded: May 1 2023
Guest: Merrill Barr
Intro Video
Working: What We Do All Day
Primary Target
Netflix minus 1M users in Spain over no-password-sharing policy
Netflix's crackdown on password sharing results in over 1 million fewer users in Spain
- During its earnings call last Week, Netflix announced that it did see temporary drops in subscribers when it first launched its crackdown on passwords, but that over time the subscriptions came back and revenue rose. It held up Canada as an example. Canada's paid membership base is now larger than prior to the launch of paid sharing, and revenue growing faster than US.
- However a study from Kantar of Netflix subscribers in Q1 found that about one million users left Netflix as a result ion the crackdown. Keep in mind that's users, not paid accounts. About 2/3 of those users were using someone else's account. So they left and aren't paying to keep their profile. But a good 300,000+ were paying and also canceled. Some of that might be unrelated to password sharing of course, as competition is rising and Amazon and Sky Showtime added subscriptions during the quarter, and the number of households in Spain that had at least one streaming subscription fell in Q1 by 292,000.
NOTES
- [[Canada, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain got the "buy an extra member" plan in Feb. Previously tested in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru]]
- $7.99 CAD (around $5.97 USD) per month per person in Canada up to two people on Standard and Premium accounts. €5.99 monthly fee in Spain
- Netflix will try to detect if someone outside your household is regularly accessing your account and ask them to pay an extra $6 or $7 or so a month. They promise travel won't be an issue and if people want to just move to their own account they can take their profiles with them.
- SPAIN: Amazon + 34.4%, Sky Showtime + 32.6%.
- Households that subscribe to at least one video streaming service in Spain fell 292,000.
How to Watch
Roku Matches Wall Street Forecasts For Quarterly Losses, Beats Revenue Expectations; Advertising Challenges To Continue In Q2
- Roku managed to raise its revenue 1% on the year despite losing more money ($1.38 per share vs. 19 cents). Still, it was better than expected.
- Average Revenue per user fell 5% on the year. However hours streamed rose to 3.9 streaming hours per active account per day. So if ads bounce back revenue per user should too.
- Roku hosted more streaming of the Super Bowl than any other platform.
What to Watch
It's May 1st, so let's see what is new on the streaming services. Iyaz?
‘The Flash’ Trailer: Michael Keaton’s Batman Takes Flight in Multiverse Battle
‘The Flash’ Dazzles Exhibitors At CinemaCon: “Emotional…Some People Crying…The Movie Will Have Legs”
- DC released a trailer for The Flash starring Ezra Miller as the Flash and Michael Keaton reprising his early 90s role as Batman. The movie takes place across several alternate timelines. Two Miller-played Flashes must team up with Supergirl to stop General Zod. Zod is played by Michael Shannon who played him in Man of Steel. Ben Affleck also plays a Batman.
- Theater-owners who previewed the full movie at Cinemecon raved about it calling it possibly the best superhero movie yet and saying it is "a wild and surprising tribute to what came before." it resets the DC universe.
- “The Flash” hits theaters on June 16.
‘Wonka’ Trailer Reveals Timothée Chalamet’s Musical Take on Mystical Chocolatier and Hugh Grant as Singing Oompa-Loompa
‘Frasier’ Revival at Paramount+ Adds Peri Gilpin in Guest Role
- Paramount+ announced that Peri Gilpin will return as Roz for one episode in the return of Frasier. Bebe Neuwirth will guest star in one episode as Dr. Lilith Sternin. The revived series will take place in Boston. No date yet.
Eyes On:
Merrill: Ghosted
Brian: The Super Mario Bros. Movie
Tom: Jinny's Kitchen
On the Lookout: Suzume's Door Locking
Front Lines
These are the FAST services you need to know about
- The Verge has a special report on free-ad-supported TV or FAST services. You've heard us talk about them but if you want to read their take, they cover Pluto TV, The Roku Channel, Tubi, Freevee, Plex, Xumo, Sling Freestream, and Samsung TV Plus
NBCUniversal reports higher Peacock losses as it shows CEO the door
- Good news and bad news for Peacock. The good news, paying subscribers rose from 13 million last year at this time, to 22 million. And revenue rose 45%. But the bad news is that it lost more money, as it spent more on the product. Peacock lost $704 million in Q1. The same time last year it lost $456 million.
Steven Spielberg: ‘No film should be revised’ based on modern sensitivity
- Steven Spielberg told the Time's 100 Summit in New York City that he regretted changing later releases of ET to remove the guns. He said, "ET is a product of its era. No film should be revised based on the lenses we now are, either voluntarily, or being forced to peer through.” He added, "All our movies are a kind of a signpost of where we were when we made them, what the world was like and what the world was receiving when we got those stories out there."
Star Trek fantasy: step aboard every Starship Enterprise with this website
- The Roddenberry Archive launched a website at Roddenberry.x.io that lets you virtually tour the bridge of almost every version of the Enterprise. Graphics company OTOY helped build the site which lists every Enterprise, including alternate universe versions.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie has made a cool $1 billion
CBS & Pluto TV Partner For Tony Awards Pre-Show
- On June 11th, Paramount will air live pre-show for the Tony Awards on its PlutoTV FAST platform leading up to its live broadcast on CBS.
‘It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’ Gets Season 16 Premiere Date On FXX
The spinoff Bosch: Legacy will get a third season on Amazon's Freevee.
Apple renewed The Morning Show for a fourth season. Season three is expected to stream later this autumn.
Dispatches from the front
Hi Tom/Bryan/Bryce
Given Netflix’s outstanding numbers in the past quarter, are we the minority who quibbles over Netflix focussing on Quantity over Quality? Anecdotally I recommend more shows from Netflix to my parents (Recently the Night Agent and the Recruit) than from HBO as at their age, they are a little more averse to gratuitous nudity and violence and this would be a similar case in a lot of south asian cultures, where the much lower bar to entry that the netflix shows offer is a much more suitable. I am not saying Netflix doesn’t have high quality shows or shows that are a hard R, but given their quantity approach they have something for everyone. HBO shows are still a niche audience and more for a specific set that will never get as popular as Network or stuff like starnager things. (Unless they are Genre shows like GoT or HoTD)
Look forward to hearing from you on this.
Thanks,
- Josh
I think of it like CarPlay in a car...you don't need it per se, but it's a nice option to have, and for many people it's arguably better than what you get by default. We have a surround sound system and there are definitely shows where we can't hear dialogue so we turn up the volume, but when the action hits, our subwoofer blows out the windows. So this will be a nice solution for those scenarios, and won't require me to keep adjusting my center channel volume up and down.
Love the show!
- Adam
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