Very true, but the balancing act is not as simple as a lot of people seem to think. Obviously you can't spend a lot on shows that are losing money and stay sol

Very true, but the balancing act is not as simple as a lot of people seem to think. Obviously you can't spend a lot on shows that are losing money and stay solvent. But beyond that it's complicated If you optimize only return-per-unit or viewers-per-unit (unit being movie, series, whatever) you could easily end up being a place that only makes a small number of "big" mass market appeal shows and movies. That's a business model, but it's not the only one that makes sense. If you want to be a "big tent" sort of content place (very much where netflix started) you need to make some narrower appeal stuff. You have to make sure it still makes you money, but with a subscription service (rather than rental) this isn't actually easy to evaluate. You also have to thing about time line. If you optimize for ROI on a short time (e.g. initial release) vs long burn, you'll make different decisions. So part of this isn't just "you have to be a viable business", it's also "what sort of viable business".