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I'm not on the inside, but I have a possible explanation. Netflix has competitors. If we assume that leisure-time hours are fixed in the short term, the more

I'm not on the inside, but I have a possible explanation. Netflix has competitors. If we assume that leisure-time hours are fixed in the short term, the more hours you spend watching Netflix, the less you have available for Hulu, Amazon Prime, CBS, HBO, MLB, or Disney streaming services. Thus, if all those have comparable prices, more hours watching Netflix translates to greater subscriber-perceived entertainment value for money spent on watching Netflix than on the other services. Netflix does not have to be number one, but it does have to be high enough on people's ranked lists to be above their individual fragmentation threshold. If a customer's hours watched is low and dropping, Netflix is in danger of losing them as a customer, especially when Disney comes online later. Perhaps if CBS All Access tracked that number, they would give up, and contract with Netflix or Hulu to stream their content. It seems to me that it is the service that would be least likely to get subscribers that are already at or near their fragmentation tolerance.

pmontra 7y ago
> Netflix has competitors. If we assume that leisure-time hours are fixed in the short term, the more hours you spend watching Netflix, the less you have available for Hulu, Amazon Prime, CBS, HBO, MLB, or Disney streaming services. Not only those competitors but any other activity, from reading HN to working to going out with friends, etc.
- logfromblammo 7y ago
  We could lump those together as screen-time versus non-screen-time. I hypothesize that converting an hour from one subcategory of screen-time to another is easier than converting it from non-screen-time to screen-time. I.e. it's easier to convince someone to watch Netflix instead of watching Hulu, than it is to convince them to watch Netflix or Hulu instead of hosting/attending a summer outdoor grilling party. Netflix would show greater gains relative to competitors by converting more hours spent watching their streams. Any attempt to bring in more hours from the outside would also tend to help competitors, since they would then have an easier time poaching those hours from Netflix later. That might be beneficial in a nascent industry, but I think we're past that now. Nobody is going to be launching an explicit "stay in, and watch more TV" campaign any time soon, but apparently they all will whisper "now that you're already watching TV, why not just keep doing it?" via autoplay mechanisms. And time spent working is definitely not leisure time, by definition.

pmontra 7y ago

> Netflix has competitors. If we assume that leisure-time hours are fixed in the short term, the more hours you spend watching Netflix, the less you have available for Hulu, Amazon Prime, CBS, HBO, MLB, or Disney streaming services. Not only those competitors but any other activity, from reading HN to working to going out with friends, etc.

logfromblammo 7y ago
We could lump those together as screen-time versus non-screen-time. I hypothesize that converting an hour from one subcategory of screen-time to another is easier than converting it from non-screen-time to screen-time. I.e. it's easier to convince someone to watch Netflix instead of watching Hulu, than it is to convince them to watch Netflix or Hulu instead of hosting/attending a summer outdoor grilling party. Netflix would show greater gains relative to competitors by converting more hours spent watching their streams. Any attempt to bring in more hours from the outside would also tend to help competitors, since they would then have an easier time poaching those hours from Netflix later. That might be beneficial in a nascent industry, but I think we're past that now. Nobody is going to be launching an explicit "stay in, and watch more TV" campaign any time soon, but apparently they all will whisper "now that you're already watching TV, why not just keep doing it?" via autoplay mechanisms. And time spent working is definitely not leisure time, by definition.