Changing horses mid-streaming? Netflix’s next act
The Intelligence from The Economist
The Economist
4.5 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 21 July 2021
⏱️ ? minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On the face of it, the streaming giant’s quarterly results were lacklustre. But our media editor explains why its international growth looks promising, and how it is spreading its bets. A largely uncontested purge of LGBT accounts from China’s social-media platform WeChat reveals much about a growing Chinese-nationalist narrative online. And why researchers are cataloguing the microbes of big cities.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. |
| 0:06.8 | I'm your host, Jason Palmer. |
| 0:09.1 | Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. |
| 0:17.6 | This month's censorship of LGBT accounts on WeChat, a Chinese social media platform, came |
| 0:23.2 | as little surprise. |
| 0:24.9 | And unlike previous clamp downs, resistance this time has been muted as a curious Chinese |
| 0:29.8 | nationalist narrative takes hold online. |
| 0:33.7 | And the full list of all the bacteria and other critters in and on a person can reveal |
| 0:38.6 | a lot about their health. |
| 0:40.5 | The same is true of cities. |
| 0:42.7 | We look at an annual international survey of bugs in metropolitan areas and how it might |
| 0:47.5 | act as an urban health check. |
| 0:56.0 | First up though. |
| 1:02.5 | Netflix released its quarterly results after markets closed yesterday, revealing that its |
| 1:07.5 | staggering pandemic fuel rise is stalling. |
| 1:11.7 | Its global subscriber growth was down by 85% on a year earlier. |
| 1:16.4 | In North America it actually lost customers. |
| 1:19.6 | But still, Netflix boss Reed Hastings sounded sanguine. |
| 1:23.2 | I think for at least the next several years the gross story of streaming as a whole is |
| 1:27.8 | very intact. |
| 1:29.6 | And this is the internet applied to entertainment. |
| 1:32.8 | And consumer entertainment around the world is a enormous market. |
... |
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