Netflix probably won't be jacking up prices again anytime soon (The Daily Charge, 7/18/2019)

Today on the daily charge Netflix in Islam. YouTube cracks down on pirates and Neopets in 2019? [MUSIC] Good morning and welcome to the cinet charge. It's Thursday July 18th. I'm Joni Salzman. I'm Roger. I'm Doratin. Let's take a look at today's headlines. [MUSIC] 20 years after Neopets launched to become an internet fab of the 2000s, a die-hard core endures, inviting others to their weddings, celebrating birthdays, and sharing life milestones through Scattered social media groups. Yeah. So at one point, we had this virtual pet community online. It's basically like mapping your dog or cat. But 2d, you can't really pet it, but you're tasked with the responsibility of taking care of it. So you have to feed it. And then you have to earn games too. I mean, you play games to earn your points. We can buy Items to feed your pet, but through this universe, you can also do a million of other things, you can- But it's gone beyond just feeding a pet, right? People have formed relationships over these things. Yes, so I went on this group called Neopets Nation, it boasts about 5,000 members, and there was this mom who grew up playing Neopets. She's 29 right now, when Neopets started in 1999, she was playing it. And then she passed her off to he six year old daughter. Six year old daughter has a birthday, no one showed up to the birthday. That is so sad. Yeah, that's like the mightmare scenario for her parents. No one showed up to the birthday, but through this group people heard about her birthday and gave her all these virtual items. 20 virutal items, and if you play the game you know they're very rare items. Yeah, so these weren't just like empty gestures. No. They actually There was some value behind the [UNKNOWN] right? Yeah, these are games. I mean, the value of the items you'd have to play games for a really long time and be really good at them. It's a nice heartwarming story. It's a warm and fuzzy corner of the Internet. [LAUGH] And lastly, today's main story, Netflix's [UNKNOWN] schedule of new releases last quarter and ongoing resistance to a 20% price hike earlier this year. Pummeled it's subscriber growth. So they had a difficult time with subscriber growth in the first quarter. Now in the second quarter the same problem is persisting. Partly because Stranger Things, it's massive hit, didn't hit until right after the quarter closed. Now you think it's gonna make a difference still? Or is there still going to be some resistance to this price hike? Because that seems to be what it's It's been for the first of the last two quarters. Right, and I think that any screaming and yelling about this being the end of Netflix is overblown. I think that the price hikes, people will generally get used to them. And it's true that this quarter didn't have a lot of the kind of big Huge releases that would really bring people on. But that said, I don't think that Netflix is gonna be hiking the price of 20%. again anytime soon. This was this price. I think they're gonna have to make last for a while. I imagine that they'd have to Second guess that decision, especially given all these other streaming services jumping in the market right- Well I don't think they really are, I think that their perspective is that at the price they are now they're still a lot cheaper than cable. And really depending on people flowing out of cable which is way more expensive. Right. Moreso than the competition of these newer services that Although some of them have like for example NBCU is going to have the office. Yep. The service that's being launched by Time Warner, [UNKNOWN] Max is going to have friends, those are getting pulled off of Netflix. Yeah. All the Disney stuff is getting pulled off Netflix too. But at the same time Netflix doesn't want to be the place that you go to to find everything at any time. They want to be the place where you expect. Except them to create your next favorite show or movie. And that's what they're leading into and I don't think they're really that upset about this misses. At least are not messaging that at all to the street or to us.>> Right, well I also wanna bring up Adam Sandler continue to be a phenomena on Netflix. Yeah I don't understand. People love islands they learn. Well you watch the last one. Yeah the murder mystery. No no mystery. It's almost like childhood playing Clue again. [LAUGH] He had a very eccentric character but I don't know I just mean I'm not the hugest fan of Adam Sandler was something that that movie made me want to see more of. So you were unbelievable. Yeah. Maybe you will believe it. I don't say any movies it got almost as much viewership as Bird Box which was like a huge massive, everybody's eyes are popping out of their sockets, okay so. I'm also glad to see it always be my maybe. Which is a really good movie. Which actually was a really good film. It had 32 million people watch it in the first month, also big hits that they dropped. Perfect dates. Mm hmm. A teen rom com. Our planet did really well that's their business down nature documentary. And they bragged about that me which I've never seen another it's a drama series. Yeah. They have none of them though to me they keep track. None of them as they get stranger things. You look tired. I'm Joni Salzman J. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. [LAUGH] [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]