James said ‘Apple designed a user-friendly device that did a few useful things very well, rather than a mass of complicated-to-use features that only techies knew how to use properly."
Douglas said “We have entered a frenzied phase of media innovation, both from inside established businesses and start-ups."
Tom said the potential for the business "remains enormous", but its priorities are starting to change. "I think Netflix will approach pre-Covid like growth in 2022, but that growth will continue to be mostly outside of the US, UK and Canada."
"This is why the corporate narrative now concentrates on its non-English speaking content pipeline, its market-leading dubbing, subtitling and meta-tagging operations, which give the service a boost in those territories. The response from investors will depend on how much they mind about the tougher conditions in Netflix's domestic market."
He added that the move pre-empts the prospect of tighter regulatory scrutiny. "The scaling up of Netflix's operations in the past decade has been impressive, and its transition to becoming part of the establishment was intended."
Claire said “Without the debate on privatisation, it would have been impossible for those 60,000 organisations to make their views known.”
She explained that by reopening discussion it was actually “strengthening the remit for Channel 4”, which could lead to a codification of its essential functions, like reinvesting back into talent. This could then be passed on to a buyer, whoever that may be.
Gill said the ad market has enjoyed “phenomenal growth” in recent months and shows no signs of slowing over Christmas.
She added that traditional broadcasters have the opportunity to put on “big shows that appeal across age groups."
“The TV programme schedule is probably better at achieving that than a show on Netflix or Amazon, where it’s targeted more at one demographic or another."
Claire said “They have always been a deterrent, a very serious media company that no one wants to piss off. They aren’t your average garden variety deterrent, they are a big monster deterrent.”
She added “It is not viewed as a badly run business, it is efficiently and well run. Every part of their business is doing extraordinarily well at this time. A couple of exceptional years and people will see the core of the business is not in this secular decline. ITV is not getting the credit it should, but it will do.”
Abi said some investors were also reluctant that they could be “losing out” on any upside of online growth in titles like the Daily Mail if the group went private. “What this ignores is how many more online users would be required to fully replace declining print revenues and the scale of investment needed to transition the print readers of the Daily Mail to an online membership model of some kind."
Alice pointed out the symbiotic relationship between the success of streaming platforms and catalogue investments: “There is no question that the rise of music rights is led by the rise in streaming. Streaming has also increased as more people are staying at home in the pandemic to consume music.”
She added that it is “all about scale”, and trying to acquire as many rights as possible, especially ‘evergreen’ records. Evergreen tracks would be older music from the 60s,70s, and 80s that is already valuable and popular.
Francois said “We’ve been through four or five years when all the new money [in Europe] was coming from the streamers." he adds that sometimes the streamers “have been pretty generous,” prompting costs of talent, crew and facilities to rise in some countries.
“But this is going to stop at some point. The streamers are starting to become more stingy; maybe some of them are going to start cutting back.” And, rather than high-end shows like Netflix’s “The Crown,” they are starting to spread their resources widely, spending more on documentaries and non-scripted content, which is cheaper to produce.
