Netflix

Netflix on Wednesday disclosed summertime subscriber gains that surpassed industry analysts’ projections, signaling the video streaming service’s crackdown on password sharing is converting former freeloaders into paying customers. In an effort to bring in even more revenue, Netflix also announced it’s raising the price for its most expensive streaming service by $2 to $23 per month in the U.S. — a 10% increase — and its lowest-priced, ad-free streaming plan to $12 — another $2 bump.

The streamer will put a greater emphasis on developing games based on its popular programming, including Squid Game, Wednesday and Black Mirror.

Netflix is staffing up its unscripted division. Sahara Bushue, who was previously head of unscripted at Will Smith’s Westbrook Studios and more notably spent nearly 13 years at NBC, has joined Brandon Riegg’s team. She is a director of unscripted series.Bushue had been consulting for the streamer for many months but recently closed a deal to join the company on a permanent basis.

Teenagers in the United States say they watch more video on YouTube than Netflix, according to a new survey from investment bank Piper Sandler. The data point shows that the streaming business is getting more competitive, and highlights YouTube’s strong position as a free provider of online video, especially among young people.

Leaders in compliance, investigation and technology integration from Comcast and Netflix will share how they assess today’s disruptors across digital platforms and how they’re reshaping the media industry during a panel at TVNewsCheck’s Cybersecurity for Broadcasters Retreat at the NAB Show New York on Oct. 26. Register here.

Netflix has announced a premiere date for the sixth and final season of The Crown — but it won’t be debuting all at once. As it’s done with several series in the past year and change, the streamer will split The Crown’s last run into two parts. The first four episodes will premiere on Nov. 16, with part two — six episodes — following four weeks later on Dec. 14. Netflix has similarly split up the runs of the most recent seasons of Stranger Things, You and The Witcher — which like The Crown are among the more popular shows on the platform.

The company to become the latest streamer to lift fees; Disney weighs launching a new live-sports tier abroad.

Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building leapt onto Nielsen’s streaming charts for the week of August 7 to August 13. With the debut of Season 3, the series racked up 719M viewing minutes, making it to No. 9 on the overall Top 10 and No. 3 among streaming originals. According to Nielsen, the audience for Only Murders was a “carbon copy” of the series that’s been dominating streaming for the past eight weeks — Suits. That series had another impressive week with 3B viewing minutes once again across Netflix and Peacock.

Netflix just kicked off its big crackdown on illicit password-sharing users this spring — but co-CEO Greg Peters says there’s still a long road ahead of the company on this front. “We’ll be in the password-sharing business for some time,” Peters said, speaking Tuesday at the 2023 Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference. According to Peters, Netflix “built an elegant solution” to address the issue of informing users who were piggybacking on someone else’s account that they would need to pay for their own plan (or get added as an “extra member” for an additional fee).

Netflix Co-CEO Greg Peters, who oversaw the launch of Netflix in Japan in a previous exec role, said the strong debut of the series One Piece cleared “a very high bar” and attests to the company’s “evolving” content approach. “This is a very high bar to meet, to basically take a storied manga and deliver it in English-language, live action,” the exec said. “Pretty much all the haters are out, looking for a reason to hate you for it. To be able to deliver it and have it be massively popular and a success around the world is amazing to see.”

The new show hit the top of Netflix’s English-language TV charts during its premiere week with 18.5M views from August 28 to September 3. The live-action adaptation of Eiichiro Oda’s manga is in the Top 10 in 93 countries and No. 1 in 46 of them, according to Netflix.

In recent days, some in the U.S. have begun to discuss success-based residual metrics that already exist in parts of Europe, most notably with Netflix. The systems are driven by European copyright legislation that ensures “authors” receive what business affairs execs would call “fair and appropriate compensation,” and can broadly be seen as a reward for making a show or film that cuts through globally.

The chart will debut in the U.S. over the next week, with other countries expected to add market-specific rankings down the line. Titles must be new in order to qualify for the ranking. Series must have had a new episode hit Max within a six-week period, while movies must have debuted on the streamer within an eight-week period. The Flash is currently the number-one movie title in the U.S., while Hard Knocks: A Season with the New York Jets tops the series list.

IAC mogul Barry Diller thinks that the Hollywood studios need to “reorient” their businesses, and fast, or else face potential “catastrophic” consequences. The former studio executive, speaking to journalist Kara Swisher for her podcast, also expressed pessimism about the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, and suggested that the legacy Hollywood studios should split with Netflix and their tech counterparts at the AMPTP.

Netflix continued to add subscribers in the U.S. at a high rate in July after initiating a crackdown on password sharing in May, according to new data from research firm Antenna. The streaming giant had 2.6 million gross subscriber additions in July, the latest figures show. The company also saw the highest percentage of new sign-ups going to its advertising tier since the $7-a-month offering hit the market last November. About 23% of new subscribers opted for the ad tier, a gain of four percentage points over June levels.

The first project that Netflix greenlit after inking a mega-deal with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, is finally coming. More than two years after the streamer gave the go to Heart of Invictus, the docuseries will debut Aug. 30 on Netflix. The five-part doc will follow international competitors at the Invictus Games, an international sporting event that Prince Harry founded in 2014 for wounded, injured and sick servicemen and women.

The average cost of watching a major ad-free streaming service is going up by nearly 25% in about a year, as entertainment giants bet that customers will either pay up or switch to their cheaper and more-lucrative ad-supported plans.

The buzz about bundling has been steadily growing in TV industry circles since May, when Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav took a break from his usual mustache-twirling to lay out a case for why companies with streaming platforms needed to get on the ball and figure out a way to package their respective services together in one consumer-friendly package — a.k.a. a bundle.

Netflix and Peacock have a hot commodity on their hands with Suits. The USA Network series debuted on both platforms in June and subsequently broke a Nielsen streaming record for acquired programming. Well, Suits has now broken that same record two weeks in a row after racking up 3.7 billion viewing minutes during the week of July 3-9. That’s up an impressive 17% from the previous measurement week, when the series first broke the record for most-watched acquired content in a single week with 3.1 billion minutes viewed.

The streamer asks for patience as it tries to jump-start its $6.99 a month ad tier.

Damning want ad surfaces just days after Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos pledges his commitment to end talent union strikes.

The video streaming service added 5.9 million subscribers during the April-June period, according to numbers released Wednesday along with its latest quarterly financial results. The gains easily surpassed the roughly 2.2 million additional subscriber that analysts surveyed by FactSet Research had anticipating. Netflix ended June with 238.4 million worldwide subscriber.

Netflix continues to tinker with its subscription plans, yanking its basic $9.99 ad-free offering. That leaves its new $6.99 advertising plan, its $15.49 ad-free plan and its $19.99 premium plan, according to the streamer’s sign-in page. The move could nudge users to the cheaper ad-supported plan and doesn’t compromise the business since the vast majority of Netflix subscribers already take the $15.99 plan.