The Window Closes

Netflix was beautiful for about five years. Ten euros a month, basically everything, no ads, no cable negotiations. That was the window. Disney looked at those numbers, did the math, and decided Netflix was just a distributor taking a cut. So they’re pulling all their content to run their own service.

Toy Story 4, the next Frozen, original series, all exclusive to Disney’s platform. Their CEO literally called it disposable content made for engagement cycles. At least he’s honest about what he’s doing.

Supposedly it’ll cost somewhere between ten and thirty euros and probably include sports because Disney owns ESPN and has too many subsidiaries to count. The math is simple: control the content and the distribution, cut out the middleman, capture the full margin.

It’s the obvious move. Netflix made them rich but running their own service makes them richer, so they’re leaving. Paramount will follow. Warner Bros. will follow. Sony will follow. In a couple of years you’ll need fifteen subscriptions to watch the things you care about, each one costing between ten and thirty euros, and they’ll all compete for screen real estate on your TV. We’ll have rebuilt the cable subscription model except fragmented across a dozen apps, which somehow feels worse.

The beautiful part is how it’s inevitable and predictable and the worst outcome for everyone except the studios. Netflix showed that on-demand streaming could work, and the studios immediately wanted their margins back. You can resent it, but you can’t blame them.