Nintendo Switch users who are already subscribed to Nintendo’s top-tier version of its online service, the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack option, have some more perks coming their way soon. These limited-time offerings were announced by Nintendo this week a surprise additions tot eh benefits already included in the service and will be live starting on November 1st. They include double the Gold Points spent on eligible games and DLCs as well as some icons that invoke the Nintendo 64 era.
As is the case with some of these announcements, players first found out about these extra perks through some posts on the Nintendo Japan site, but the benefits were later confirmed for other regions as well. The Nintendo of America Twitter account, for example, tweeted about it this weekend to confirm what the perks would be and when they’d start. That tweet also offered a preview of the Nintendo 64 icons that’ll be available come November which include things like the console and controller itself, Mario Kart, Star Fox, Kirby, and other memorable characters and games.
Limited-time benefits are coming for #NintendoSwitchOnline + Expansion Pack members on 11/1!
✔ Earn double #MyNintendo Gold Points on the purchase of eligible digital games or DLC in Nintendo #eShop and My Nintendo Store.
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) October 22, 2022
Nintendo didn’t specify what “eligible digital games or DLC” look like, so we don’t know just yet what this deal applies to and what it doesn’t. However, Nintendo does have a couple of high-profile releases coming up, so there’s a good chance subscribers will be able to get double the Gold Points from purchases on things like Bayonetta 3, Pokemon Sword, and Pokemon Shield.
This perk is going on the UK, too, though that promotion said users would get twice the Gold Points on all Nintendo eShop purchases instead of just some of them. But again, if there’s something newish that you’ve been considering buying from the eShop, you probably don’t have much to worry about in terms of eligibility.
Even though these perks are marketed as being limited-time benefits, they’re going on for quite a while. These won’t end until January 31st, and hopefully, something will replace them after they expire to give Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscribers extra benefits.
Minecraft YouTuber Dream has unveiled his face after years of smiley anonymity.
After many years of posting anonymously, Minecraft YouTuber Dream revealed his identity because there had been “a little bit too much” conjecture about him. Dream, a 23-year-old content creator with more than 30 million subscribers, has only ever made one public appearance while using a smooth, egg-colored cheerful face mask.
For years, Dream has been a well-known name among gamers, but they were unaware of his appearance. The primary focus of “Dream” is the video game Minecraft, and on October 2, he made his face visible via a YouTube live stream.
According to Forbes, 1.2 million viewers tuned in live, and 14 hours later, the video had more than 18 million views. Dream revealing his face was, to put it mildly, a big deal for his community and Minecraft as a whole. The dream has 5.6 million Twitter followers, 3.1 million Instagram followers, and 30.4 million YouTube subscribers. For context, Fortnite’s Ninja has 23.8 million. Dr Disrespect has 4.1 million. Taylor Swift has 47.5 million. The dream is a big deal.
The BBC said in a report that Minecraft is the world’s bestselling video game and Dream’s most popular videos have tens of millions of views, with one having been watched more than 115 million times. “Hi, my name is Clay, otherwise known as Dream,” he said in a five-minute video viewed more than 12 million times.
“Maybe you’ve heard of me, maybe not. Maybe you clicked on this video out of pure curiosity and you don’t care who I am. But now you’ve seen my face, ” he said while first revealing his face.
He continued by saying that he has come under pressure from those who are curious about his appearance. “People have been trying to leak my face, trying to find out what I look like. There’s too many, it’s a little bit too much,” he said.
reported a better-than-expected 26% jump in revenue Wednesday, driven by record results at its theme parks division and the addition of more new subscribers than projected to its flagship streaming video platform Disney+.
Disney’s results highlight the complex dynamics of the competitive streaming landscape. The company lowered its forecast for future Disney+ growth, raised the prices on its streaming offerings, outlined plans for a new ad-supported tier of Disney+ and said nearly all of the streaming service’s growth is coming from overseas.
The company’s earnings this quarter reflect the difficulties it and rivals, such as
Netflix Inc.,
face in attracting new customers domestically, where streaming options abound and many households use one or more services. Plus, in an increasingly difficult economic environment, some households are rethinking spending on in-home entertainment, industry analysts have said.
Chief Executive
Bob Chapek
said he didn’t think the price changes would result in any meaningful loss of streaming customers. “We believe that we’ve got plenty of price value room left to go,” Mr. Chapek said.
On the company’s call with analysts, Chief Financial Officer
Christine McCarthy
ratcheted down its forecast for Disney+, saying it now expects a total range of 215 million to 245 million subscribers by September 2024, in part because it lost the right to air popular Indian cricket competitions.
A few months ago, Mr. Chapek said the company’s previous target of 230 million to 260 million, set by the company in December 2020, was “very achievable.”
In the three-month period ended July 2, Disney+ gained 14.4 million new subscribers, bringing its global total to 152.1 million subscribers. Analysts were expecting 10 million additions, according to
FactSet.
Wednesday’s report brings Disney’s total subscriber base to 221.1 million customers across all of its streaming offerings, including ESPN+ and Hulu, surpassing Netflix, its chief streaming rival, in total customers. Netflix last month reported it had 220.67 million subscribers.
Disney shares rose about 7% in after-hours trading to $120.11.
Overall for the third quarter, the world’s largest entertainment company reported profits of $1.41 billion, or 77 cents a share, up from $918 million, or 50 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Revenue increased to $21.5 billion, above the average analyst estimate of $20.99 billion on FactSet.
Since 1967, the Florida land housing Disney’s theme parks has been governed by the company, allowing it to manage Walt Disney World with little red tape. WSJ’s Robbie Whelan explains the special tax district that a Florida bill would eliminate. Photo: AP
Sales at the parks, experiences and products division—which includes Disneyland, Walt Disney World and four resorts in Europe and Asia and has historically been Disney’s most profitable segment—reached $7.4 billion for the quarter, a record, and was up 70% from a year earlier. The division posted profits of $2.2 billion for the quarter, up from $356 million a year ago.
“Demand has not abated” at the parks, Ms. McCarthy said. Since reopening in 2021 after pandemic-related closures, Disney’s theme parks haven’t been running at full capacity, but a new online reservations system and ride-reservation apps have helped the company better respond to demand and generate more revenue per visitor.
Over the past year, CEO Bob Chapek and other top Disney executives have signaled an increased focus on international markets for growing its streaming business.
Photo:
Laurent Viteur/Getty Images
Ms. McCarthy said that if economic conditions worsen, Disney could tweak the reservation system to allow more visitors in on certain days, but as of now, demand is outstripping available spots.
Disney’s direct-to-consumer segment, which includes video streaming, lost $1.1 billion in the third quarter, widening from a loss of $293 million a year earlier. Since Disney+ launched in late 2019, the segment has lost more than $7 billion. On Wednesday, Ms. McCarthy said Disney’s estimate for overall spending on content for fiscal 2022 had fallen slightly, from $32 billion to $30 billion.
Disney gave a launch date of Dec. 8 and outlined pricing information for its previously announced ad-supported tier of Disney+ in the U.S., a new product designed to expand the reach of the company’s streaming business.
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The price of the ad-free stand-alone Disney+ service will rise from its current level of $7.99 a month in the U.S. to $10.99 a month, or $109.99 a year. The new, basic Disney+ service with ads will cost $7.99 a month.
The premium Disney streaming bundle, which includes ad-free versions of Disney+ and Hulu, as well as a version of sports-focused ESPN+ with ads, will remain at its current price of $19.99 a month in the U.S., while a bundle that includes all three services, but with ads on Hulu, will rise in price by $1 a month, to $14.99.
Mr. Chapek defended the price increases, saying that when it was launched, Disney+ was among the most competitively-priced streaming offerings and that the company has added more and higher-quality content to the service.
“I think it’s easy to say that we’re the best value in streaming,” Mr. Chapek said Wednesday.
Over the past year, Mr. Chapek and other top Disney executives have signaled an increased focus on international markets for growing its streaming business. Disney is spending heavily to produce hundreds of local-language television shows in countries such as India, and over the summer, Disney+ launched in 53 new countries and territories, mainly concentrated in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
Pricing for a Disney+ subscription in many of these new markets runs below the $7.99 a month that American customers pay. Still, Disney+’s average monthly revenue per paid subscriber—a key metric in streaming businesses—stood at $6.27 in North America, compared with $6.29 internationally, excluding Asia’s more inexpensive Disney+ Hotstar service.
Disney+ Hotstar, the service used by Disney’s 58.4 million subscribers in India, produces just $1.20 a month per user. Some analysts and former Disney executives predict that losing cricket streaming rights will result in millions of canceled accounts over the next year.
The flagging growth of North American Disney+ subscriptions is likely the result of a glut of content being released by in movie theaters and on a proliferation of streaming services, as well as fatigue the Star Wars and Marvel superhero movie franchises, said Francisco Olivera, a Disney shareholder who manages a small family fund based in Puerto Rico that has about 15% of its holdings in Disney stock.
The addition of an ad-supported tier, higher prices and possible further integration of the Hulu service in the future, could help reduce subscriber churn and make it easier to achieve profitability, he said.
“It’s a healthier market right now with the parks recovering, so they’re really flexing their muscles on pricing,” Mr. Olivera said.
—Sarah Krouse contributed to this article.
Write to Robbie Whelan at Robbie.Whelan@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications Disney+ launched in 53 new countries and territories over the summer. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said it launched in 54. (Corrected on Aug. 10)
The New York Times Company added about 180,000 net digital-only subscribers in the second quarter of the year but generated less digital advertising revenue, it said on Wednesday.
The Times now has 9.17 million paid subscribers. It has a goal of 15 million by the end of 2027.
The company reported $76 million in adjusted operating profit, 18 percent less than the same quarter last year. It generated total revenue of $555.7 million, an 11.5 percent increase from a year earlier. Digital subscriptions accounted for $238.7 million of that revenue, a 25.5 percent increase.
The hit to operating profit was mostly from losses at The Athletic, the sports news website that The Times bought in February for $550 million. Adjusted operating losses at The Athletic were $12.6 million for this quarter, from April to June, down from about $19.4 million in the first quarter.
The Times reported 9.107 million subscribers at the end of the first quarter of 2022. That number was revised in this quarter’s results down to 9.01 million.
A key part of The Times’s strategy is making a distinction between subscribers and subscriptions. One subscriber may have a subscription to more than one of the company’s products, which include The Athletic, Cooking and Wirecutter. The Times is betting on bundling digital offerings with its news report to reach new audiences with a variety of interests.
“News remains core to our value proposition, but the bundle helps ensure that The Times is indispensable to an ever-widening group of people, even as news engagement ebbs and flows,” Meredith Kopit Levien, the president and chief executive of the Times Company, said on a call with analysts.
In the second quarter, the company had its highest-ever number of new subscribers to the All Digital Access tier, which includes The Times’s news report, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic, Ms. Levien said.
The net gain of 180,000 digital-only subscribers was a 70 percent increase from the net gain in the second quarter of 2021. The company added far more in the first quarter of the year, 418,000. The Athletic added a net increase of 50,000 stand-alone subscribers in the most recent quarter.
The vast majority of The Times’s subscribers pay for digital-only access. The number of print subscribers continued to shrink in the second quarter, down nearly 7 percent from a year earlier, to about 761,000.
Digital advertising revenue for the Times Company in the quarter decreased 2.4 percent from a year earlier, to $69.3 million, as marketers reduced their spending in the face of economic uncertainty. Print advertising rebounded 15.1 percent, to $48.1 million, from the same quarter last year, as the entertainment and luxury categories started to recover from the pandemic.
Total operating costs increased 19.6 percent to $504 million. The company also noted a $34.2 million gain from the sale of land at The Times’s printing facility in College Point, Queens.
The company said it expected digital subscription revenue in the third quarter to grow 21 to 25 percent from a year ago. It said it expected a flat or small decrease in total advertising revenue and an increase of 9 to 13 percent in adjusted operating costs in that period.
The company’s shares were down 1 percent at the close of trading on Wednesday.
Netflix lost fewer subscribers than feared in its latest quarter, reporting a significant decrease in members overall — but only after warning it would suffer a more dramatic drop.
Earlier this year, Netflix reported its first decline in membership in more than a decade — a dip that was supposed to presage an even deeper plunge in subscriptions now. But Netflix, still the world’s dominant streaming-video subscription service, said subscribers fell by 970,000 to 220.67 million total in April through June, according to its second-quarter report Tuesday.
That still the deepest plunge in membership the company has ever reported, but it beats Netflix’s April guidance that it would lose 2 million members worldwide. (Analysts on average essentially matched their estimate to Netflix’s guidance, according to a survey by Refinitiv.)
It’s “tough, in some ways, losing 1 million and calling it success,” Netflix co-CEO Reed Hastings said late Tuesday in a recorded discussion of the results. “But really, we’re set up very well for the next year.”
Still, Netflix’s outlook for the third quarter fell short of analysts’ expectations, with Netflix predicting it would gain 1 million members versus the consensus estimate for a 1.8 million subscriber increase.
Investors welcomed the news all the same, after Netflix’s share price has taken a beating this year. In recent pre-market trading Wednesday, Netflix shares were up 4% at $209.72 . But the stock has lost two-thirds of its value so far this year, as Netflix’s suddenly shrinking membership has undermined its status as a Wall Street darling, just as it has buffeted Hollywood’s confidence in streaming as the engine for television’s future.
Years of Netflix’s unflagging subscriber growth pushed nearly all of Hollywood’s major media companies to pour billions of dollars into their own streaming operations. These so-called streaming wars brought about a wave of new services, including Apple TV Plus, Disney Plus, HBO Max, Peacock and Paramount Plus — a flood of streaming options that has complicated how many services you must use (and, often, pay for) to watch your favorite shows and movies online.
Now, feeling the heat of intensifying competition to hold onto your attention and your subscription account, Netflix is pursuing strategies it had dismissed for years.
For one, the company plans to launch cheaper subscriptions that are supported by advertising, for one. Even though Netflix blazed the trail for streaming TV, its ad-free-only strategy has fallen behind the standards of the industry. As new competitors launched, they set up memberships that give viewers like you more options. Now most of Netflix’s rivals have a multitier model, typically offering cheaper memberships with ads, as well as more expensive subscriptions that are ad-free.
And Netflix is also testing password-sharing fees, aiming to get more than 100 million households that are already watching Netflix but not paying for it directly.
For now, these experiments are confined to Latin America, but Netflix said it’s planning to roll out a fee structure for account sharing in 2023.
Right now it’s testing two schemes. In its first, Netflix charges a fee to add additional memberships as official “sub” accounts. Next, Netflix said it would try a new method starting next month, which will charge you to add more “homes” where you can stream Netflix in addition to one primary residence, with a limit on how many additional homes you can add depending on how much you’re already paying for Netflix.
Elsewhere in its report, Netflix said that membership in the US and Canada, its biggest single region (for now), was down 1.3 million for a total of 73.28 million. Subscriptions also fell in the Europe, Middle East and Africa, declining by 770,000 to 72.97 million.
But in the Asia Pacific region, Netflix added 1.08 million subscribers to hit 34.8 million, and in Latin America, the company added a slim 10,000 new members for a total of 39.62 million there.
Overall in the latest period, Netflix reported a profit of $1.44 billion, or $3.20 a share, compared with $1.35 billion, or $2.97 a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 8.6% to $7.97 billion.
Analysts on average expected per-share profit of $2.75 and $8.04 billion in revenue.
Subscribers of PlayStation Plus now have the option to claim a bonus freebie that is available across both PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4. While most members of PS Plus have likely been more focused on the recent release of July 2022’s free games, Sony has also teamed up with publisher Activision to give players of Call of Duty: Warzone and Call of Duty: Vanguard some goodies that they can use in both titles.
As a way of celebrating the recent start of Season 4 for Warzone and Vanguard, PS Plus made available a new “Combat Pack” that subscribers can download. This add-on for Warzone and Vanguard is entirely free to those subscribed to the Essential version of PS Plus and it notably contains a new Operator skin for Halima Zambardi. In addition, this pack also features some new blueprints, an emblem, a double-XP token, and a handful of other items that can be used in-game. You can download the Combat Pack for yourself on the PlayStation Store right here if you’re interested.
In a general sense, it’s not that surprising to see that Sony is once again releasing more items like this via PS Plus for Call of Duty: Warzone and Vanguard. In the past, PS Plus has also given subscribers a number of goodies tied to Call of Duty, so this is a collaboration that we’re somewhat used to seeing between PlayStation and Activision. Still, the fact that these add-on packs for Warzone and Vanguard continue to release on PS Plus is something that might sway players to experience each game on PS5 and PS4 rather than on other platforms.
If you’d like to get a better idea of everything that is included in this free PS Plus Combat Pack for Call of Duty: Warzone and Vanguard, you can find the full list of redeemable items down below.
Amazon Prime subscribers in the US are getting a new benefit as part of their subscription, the company has announced. Today, they’ll be able to redeem a free year of Grubhub Plus, the monthly subscription service that offers free food delivery on orders over $12 from participating restaurants. Grubhub Plus normally costs $9.99 a month.
According to Amazon, free deliveries associated with Grubhub Plus are available from hundreds of thousands of restaurants across over 4,000 cities in the US. After the year is up, Grubhub will automatically start charging $9.99 a month for continued access. Existing Grubhub Plus subscribers can still make use of the promotion, which will be applied at the start of their next billing cycle. Canceling Prime automatically cancels Grubhub Plus.
The deal comes just a few short years after Amazon shut down Amazon Restaurants, its own attempt to compete in the takeout delivery market. The service was live between 2015 and 2019 but faced stiff competition from the likes of Uber Eats and DoorDash.
Since then, the e-commerce giant has mainly focused on grocery deliveries but has kept a toe in the takeout delivery market through partnerships with other firms. It announced an investment in Europe-focused Deliveroo in 2019 and started offering access to its Deliveroo Plus subscription service as an additional perk for Prime members in the UK last year. As part of the deal announced today Amazon has warrants that it could exercise in the future to take a two percent stake in Grubhub, a stake that could increase to 15 percent over time.
“Amazon has redefined convenience with Prime and we’re confident this offering will expose many new diners to the value of Grubhub Plus while driving more business to our restaurant partners and drivers,” Grubhub CEO Adam DeWitt said in a statement. The company, which is owned by Just Eat Takeaway.com, says it expects Grubhub Plus subscriptions to rise as a result of the deal.
GrubHub Plus isn’t the only additional benefit Amazon is announcing for Prime members today. The e-commerce giant is also making a short teaser trailer for its upcoming TV show, TheLord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, available exclusively to Prime subscribers for 48 hours. Members can watch the teaser over on the show’s Amazon page. The trailer ends by promising yet another teaser is coming on July 14th ahead of the release of the series on September 2nd.
Update July 6th, 5:55AM ET: Updated to note Amazon’s two percent stake in Grubhub.
Correction July 7th, 8:07PM ET: The Financial Times previously reported Amazon is taking a two percent stake in Grubhub as a part of this deal. In fact, as this press release states, Amazon will receive warrants exercisable for a two percent stake, as well as additional warrants exercisable over up to 13 percent more.
Twitter Blue has finally started letting subscribers on Android customize the app’s navigation bar. The feature, which was previously available only on iOS, lets you get rid of the Spaces icon that’s smack-dab in the middle of your navigation bar (and of course, remove some of the other tabs if you want, too).
With custom navigation, you can reduce the number of displayed tabs to as few as two, or keep all five that appear by default — handy if you’re tired of stretching your finger over the Spaces tab just to get to your DMs and notifications. Twitter first started testing the Spaces tab on iOS last year and rolled out the tab on Android in May, which seemed to only give more inconvenienced users a reason to sign up for the $2.99 / month Blue subscription launched last year.
The Spaces banner now displays more information, like Topics.
Twitter Blue subscribers on Android can now customize their navigation bars.
But Blue can’t save us from every feature that’s cluttering up the app. Twitter announced last week that it’s going to start including more information in the banner that shows active Spaces at the very top of your timeline. While there still isn’t a setting to turn this banner off entirely (neither for free or Blue subscribers), it will now show who’s hosting the Space, who shares a tweet in the Space, as well as relevant Topics.
Typically, when Game Pass starts trending, it’s either because it scored a killer game or some influencers concocted a viral “joke” that ultimately does nothing other than hand a $2 trillion corporation two days of free marketing. Over the past few days, however, Microsoft’s games-on-demand program started trending for another reason: Players say they’re unsubscribing. For now.
The burnout largely comes down to subscribers saying that Game Pass isn’t delivering on its value proposition. For a monthly fee, Game Pass grants you access to a Netflix-style library of games that you can download to your Xbox or PC (or, in some cases, stream to a compatible device). But the big selling point is this: Every first-party Microsoft game hits the library at launch, meaning subscribers get access at no extra cost to Microsoft’s prestigious first-party releases, like Halo Infinite or Forza Horizon 5.
Earlier this month, Bethesda—officially now one of Xbox’s first-party studios, following an industry-shaking acquisition in 2021—delayed its two biggest forthcoming games: space-RPG Starfield and vampire shooter Redfall (developed by Bethesda subsidiary Arkane). Both were expected to launch day-one on Game Pass this year. Now, they won’t come out until the first half of 2023, leaving Microsoft’s first-party portfolio looking much drier than it did a month ago.
All right, time for some reductive math! Let’s say that you’ve signed up for the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate tier, which costs $15 a month and includes standard access to the game library plus a number of other perks. Let’s also assume any big-budget games, exclusive or not, that hit the service cost an industry-standard $60. By that math, you’d need to play two full-price games via Game Pass every four months to justify the cost.
That tape on a Starfield helmet is temporary.Screenshot: Bethesda
“The service is great but there aren’t any AAA exclusives to compel me to stay,” Tom’s Guide writer Tony Polanco said in a tweet. “I’ll be back when the titles start dropping.” Washington Post reporter Gene Park shared a similar sentiment, pointing out that, over the past few months, the only game from the service he’s availed himself of is Trek to Yomi, a side-scrolling samurai action game. (Trek to Yomi costs $20. Also side note: It rules.) Other prominent members of the gaming cognoscenti lamented paying up front for months if not years of Game Pass, while others compared it unfavorably against the upcoming revamp of PS Plus, Sony’s competing subscription service. (Sony’s generally vaunted first-party games won’t launch on PS Plus.)
On the flip side, there’s no shortage of people calling this whole thing a “clout war” or saying that “no one cares.”
It’s unclear whether the extended convo has had a tangible impact on Game Pass subscription numbers. Microsoft does not make such figures public, and representatives for the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A dip in interest was, to a certain extent, inevitable. For the past few years, Xbox has coasted on a tidal wave of goodwill generated by Game Pass, which has continually made some of the biggest AAA games—not just exclusives but also multiplatform hits like Guardians of the Galaxy—available on its service. Those come alongside a regular flow of smaller titles that benefit from the marketing boost of appearing on Game Pass. Part of the joy of subscribing is that you never know what you’re gonna get; you might try out an under-the-radar indie and bounce off it in minutes, or it could quickly become one of your favorites of the year. (Everyone, say hi to Tunic.)
Read More:The 24 Best Games On Xbox Game Pass
This mix of big and small, old and new, caused Game Pass subscriptions to ramp up significantly in 2020. They ticked up last year too (albeit at a slower rate than 2020), amid an absolutely banger series of lineups in the fall and winter. There’s no way Microsoft could’ve maintained that cadence forever; nearly six months into 2022, though it’s added the occasional gem, Game Pass has yet to feature an “OMG take my money!!!” lineup of forthcoming games.
That said, the service will almost assuredly improve again. Next month, Xbox will host its not-E3 press conference. During its 2021 conference, Xbox announced more than 20 games planned for Game Pass. Some of those have already come out. But plenty—from the Limbo-like Somerville to the Fallout-like Atomic Heart to the Outer Worlds-like Outer Worlds 2—have yet to receive release dates.
Netflix’s fabled “culture deck,” which over the years has taken on the importance of the Magna Carta in tech and business circles, has gotten some updates reflecting the streaming giant’s current circumstances.
The document, which is based on a PowerPoint deck created by Co-Founder and Co-CEO Reed Hastings, lays out precepts guiding employee priorities and the company’s overall approach. It has been posted publicly for years, revised at various intervals, and viewed more than 20 million times. Its section headings (“Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled,” “Disagree Then Commit”) echo some of the pillars of the company’s uniquely articulated culture. Hastings elaborated on many of those tenets in his 2020 book, No Rules Rules.
In a section called “Judgment,” a new bullet point is phrased in the imperative tense: “You spend our members’ money wisely.” At a current level estimated at $20 billion in 2022, Netflix’s content spending is under harsh scrutiny after the company posted its first subscriber declines in more than a decade in the first quarter and indicated more losses in the current quarter. More than two-thirds of its market value has vanished over the past six months. While the company is unlikely to radically slash its spending, management has signaled a new commitment to trimming the fat and some shows and employees have already been cut loose as that process begins.
Another newly updated section, “Artistic Expression,” indirectly references recent controversies over titles like Cuties or Dave Chappelle’s comedy special The Closer. The latter, released last fall, created a fierce backlash and a large-scale walkout by employees upset over Chappelle’s broadsides against transgender people. Netflix resisted calls for the special to be taken down from its service.
“Entertaining the world is an amazing opportunity and also a challenge because viewers have very different tastes and points of view,” the section says. Ratings, content warnings and parental controls are all tools aimed at helping subscribers avoid content that may upset them, the document adds.
“Not everyone will like—or agree with—everything on our service,” it goes on. “While every title is different, we approach them based on the same set of principles: we support the artistic expression of the creators we choose to work with; we program for a diversity of audiences and tastes; and we let viewers decide what’s appropriate for them, versus having Netflix censor specific artists or voices.”
Variety first reported on the update to the document.
