Major streaming services test releasing children's content on YouTube and cut back on fare for kids. From a report: Netflix's share of U.S. streaming viewership by 2- to 11-year-olds fell to 21% in September from 25% two years earlier, according to Nielsen. Meanwhile, YouTube's share jumped to 33% from 29.4% over the same period. That reality is changing major streaming services' approach to children's entertainment, from what shows and movies they make to where they release them. Many are pulling back on investments in children's content, and some streamers have started content for young viewers on such platforms as Google-owned YouTube and Roblox.

[...] Netflix has also slimmed down its slate of animated children's originals, opting instead to rely more on third parties such as Skydance Animation, with which it just signed a multiyear deal to do animated films. Now, Netflix is focusing its youth programming resources on bigger swings, such as the animated film "Leo," starring Adam Sandler, its biggest animated debut ever in terms of views. The eight largest U.S. streamers, including Netflix, Warner's Max and Amazon Prime Video, added 53 originals catering to children and families in the first half of the year, down from 135 for the first half of 2022, according to Ampere. That represents a decrease of 61%, compared with a 31% decrease in overall originals across these streamers for the same period.

According to Axios, the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslav, met with Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish to discuss a possible merger. "The combination would create a news and entertainment behemoth that would likely trigger further industry consolidation," reports Axios. From the report: Zaslav also has spoken to Shari Redstone, who owns Paramount's parent company, about a deal. WBD's market value was around $29 billion as of Wednesday, while Paramount's was just over $10 billion, so any merger would not be of equals. The meeting between Zaslav and Bakish, which sources say lasted several hours, took place at Paramount's headquarters in Times Square.

The duo discussed ways their companies could complement one another. For example, each company's main streaming service -- Paramount+ and Max -- could merge to better rival Netflix and Disney+. It's unclear whether WBD would buy Paramount Global or its parent company, National Amusements Inc. (NAI), but a source familiar with the situation says that both options are on the table. WBD is said to have hired bankers to explore the deal.

The deal could drive substantial synergies. WBD could use its international distribution footprint to boost Paramount's franchises, while Paramount's children's programing assets could be essential to WBD's long-term streaming ambitions. CBS News could be combined with CNN to create a global news powerhouse. CBS' crime dramas, such as "NCIS" and "Criminal Minds," could be combined with Investigation Discovery and TruTV. CBS Sports' footprint could be combined with WBD's. For example, CBS and WBD's Turner Sports currently share TV rights for March Madness.

After years of withholding viewership data, Netflix earlier this week released statistics showing its top viewed titles from January-June 2023. The winner with over 800 million hours watched was The Night Agent. Though the steamy, soapy Sex/Life scored over 120 million hours, the warm coming-of-age series Sex Education had under 30 million.

Netflix claimed "success comes in all shapes and sizes," but co-CEO Ted Sarandos admitted the data guides business decisions. So while Netflix says stats aren't everything, pouring resources into sure bets like The Night Agent seems likely as competition grows post-Hot Strike Summer. The show is what some call "just OK TV" -- not offensive, not groundbreaking, but reliably watched. Wired adds: This era of Just OK also comes as Netflix captures the King of Reality TV throne. Shows like Love Is Blind and Selling Sunset are becoming cultural juggernauts, and the streamer shows no sign of slowing down, especially now that the Squid Game spinoff, Squid Game: The Challenge, is getting major traction.

True, Netflix is still putting out artful content. A show like Wednesday, for example, had more than 507 million hours viewed and is also currently up for 12 Emmys. Netflix, on the whole, is nominated for a whopping 103 Emmys. That's impressive, but also, it's down from the 160 nods it got at its peak in 2020 and fewer than the 127 nabbed by (HBO) Max, which crushed thanks to shows like The White Lotus, The Last of Us, and Succession. You see where this is going. Netflix likes to tout its prestige shows, but also has to keep its paying customers, who left in droves in 2022 before partly coming back as Netflix cracked down on password sharing. To that end, it behooves Netflix to make more Ginny & Georgia, more Night Agent, more You. One analysis of the data found that the most-watched film, according to Netflix's data dump, was the Jennifer Lopez vehicle The Mother, which accumulated about 250 million hours watched in six months. Variety puts that level of engagement up there with Barbie and The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Not a bad showing.

Adobe said US regulators are probing the company's cancellation rules for software subscriptions, an issue that has long been a source of ire for customers. From a report: The company has been cooperating with the Federal Trade Commission on a civil investigation of the issue since June 2022, Adobe said Wednesday in a filing. A settlement could involve "significant monetary costs or penalties," the company said.

Users of Adobe programs including Photoshop and Premiere have long complained about the expense of canceling a subscription, which can cost more than $700 annually for individuals. Subscribers must cancel within two weeks of buying a subscription to receive a full refund; otherwise, they incur a prorated penalty. Some other digital services such as Spotify and Netflix don't charge a cancellation fee. Digital subscriptions have been a recent focus for the FTC. It proposed a rule in March that consumers must be able to cancel subscriptions as easily as they sign up for them.

"Too often, companies make it difficult to unsubscribe from a service, wasting Americans' time and money on things they may not want or need," President Joe Biden said in a social media post at the time. Adobe said the FTC alerted the company in November that commission staff say "they had the authority to enter into consent negotiations to determine if a settlement regarding their investigation of these issues could be reached. We believe our practices comply with the law and are currently engaging in discussion with FTC staff."

For the first time, Netflix has released a comprehensive report of what people watched on the platform over a six month period. It includes hours viewed for every title, the premiere date for any Netflix show and movie, and whether a title was available globally. From the Hollywood Reporter: The list includes worldwide viewing for more than 18,000 movies and seasons of TV (18,214, to be exact) between January and June. Those 18,214 titles all had at least 50,000 hours of viewing over those six months, encompassing about 99 percent of all viewing on Netflix, vp strategy and analysis Lauren Smith told reporters during a presentation of the data on Tuesday. It is the deepest dive into viewing that Netflix (or any other streamer) has ever made public.

Among the highlights: The Night Agent was the biggest title on Netflix in the first half of 2023, racking up 812.1 million hours of viewing. Season two of Ginny & Georgia was second at 665.1 million hours, followed by Korean drama The Glory (622.8 million hours). Wednesday ranked fourth at 507.7 million hours of viewing, despite being released in November 2022. The company is using total hours viewed in this report as a way to measure engagement by its users rather than the "view" formula (total viewing hours divided by running time) it employs to compare titles in its weekly top 10 lists.

Original series and movies dominate the top of the chart, but Smith said the split between original and licensed titles was more even: About 55 percent of viewing was for originals and 45 percent was for licensed shows and films. Suits, which dominated the Nielsen U.S. streaming charts for much of the summer and fall, had a combined 599 million hours of viewing worldwide on Netflix across all nine seasons. The show's first season ranked highest, coming in 67th place with 129.1 million hours. At the other end, a little more than 20 percent of the titles on Netflix's list (3,813 in all) had very little viewing. The company rounded them to 100,000 hours but they would fall between 50,000 and 149,999 hours -- barely a drop in the streamer's more than 100 billion total hours of viewing for the six months. The full "What We Watched: A Netflix Engagement Report" can be downloaded here.

Twitch, the popular video streaming service, plans to shut down its business in South Korea on February 27 after finding that operating in one of the world's largest esports markets is "prohibitively expensive." From a report: Twitch CEO Dan Clancy said the firm undertook a "significant effort" to reduce the network costs to operate in Korea, but ultimately the fees to operate in the East Asian nation was still 10 times more expensive than in most other countries. The ceasing of operations in Korea is a "unique situation," he wrote in a blog post.

South Korea's expensive internet fees have led to legal fights -- streaming giant Netflix unsuccessfully sued a local broadband supplier last year to avoid paying usage charges, but Seoul's court ruled that Netflix must contribute to the network costs enabling its half-billion-dollar Korean business. Twitch attempted to lower its network costs by experimenting with a peer-to-peer model and then downgrading the streaming quality to 720p video resolution, Clancy said. While these efforts helped the firm lower its network costs, it wasn't enough.

On December 14, 2023, three Grand Theft Auto games will officially become available for Netflix members on the App Store, Google Play, and in the Netflix mobile app. IGN reports: Those who can't wait to jump into Grand Theft Auto III - The Definitive Edition, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - The Definitive Edition, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - The Definitive Edition can pre-register today to get ready for December 14 and play as soon as they are available. The addition of these three classic Grand Theft Auto games will bring Netflix's gaming library to over 80 titles, and all of these games are available to all Netflix subscribers without any ads, in-app purchases, or extra fees.

In 2018, director Carl Rinsch was courted by multiple studios due to high demand for content, despite his first film being a flop. He pitched a sci-fi series about artificial humans providing aid worldwide, but who are eventually rejected by humans. After a bidding war, Netflix signed an $61 million deal for the unnamed project, giving Rinsch final cut privilege and rights to future seasons - highly unusual moves.

Soon after, Rinsch's behavior grew concerning as he claimed to discover COVID's transmission and predict lightning, and he gambled away millions from Netflix on stocks and crypto, The New York Times reported Wednesday. His wife Gabriela Roses worried about his amphetamine use and tried intervening, but he refused rehab. In 2020, Netflix gave Rinsch another $11 million, which he also lost much of on risky bets.

By mid-2021, Roses informed Netflix executives about Rinsch's state and filed for divorce, the Times reported. Netflix consulted police about Rinsch's behavior before deciding to stop funding the project in March 2021, though he could shop it elsewhere. Rinsch made $27 million on crypto bets, which he used to buy Rolls-Royces and luxury items. He claims Netflix owes him $14 million more, while Netflix says he never delivered the project milestones to receive additional funding. The confidential arbitration case over the contract dispute concluded this month.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Music streaming service Spotify struck a seemingly unique and highly generous deal with Google for Android-based payments, according to new testimony in the Epic v. Google trial. On the stand, Google head of global partnerships Don Harrison confirmed Spotify paid a 0 percent commission when users chose to buy subscriptions through Spotify's own system. If the users picked Google as their payment processor, Spotify handed over 4 percent -- dramatically less than Google's more common 15 percent fee. Google fought to keep the Spotify numbers private during its antitrust fight with Epic, saying they could damage negotiations with other app developers who might want more generous rates.

Google's User Choice Billing program, launched in 2022, is typically described as shaving about 4 percent off Google's Play Store commission if developers use their own payment system, bringing down Google's 15 percent subscription service fee to more like 11 percent. That often ends up saving developers little or no money since they must foot the cost of payment processing themselves. And in court, Google has focused on benefits like greater flexibility rather than cost savings. [...] Harrison says Spotify's "unprecedented" popularity was great enough to justify a "bespoke" deal. "If we don't have Spotify working properly across Play services and core services, people will not buy Android phones," Harrison testified. As part of the deal, both parties also agreed to commit $50 million apiece to a "success fund."

Google acknowledged Harrison's testimony in a statement to The Verge. "A small number of developers that invest more directly in Android and Play may have different service fees as part of a broader partnership that includes substantial financial investments and product integrations across different form factors," says spokesperson Dan Jackson. "These key investment partnerships allow us to bring more users to Android and Play by continuously improving the experience for all users and create new opportunities for all developers." Google would not name other developers that have gotten the company to agree to more generous rates. During the trial, we learned that Google offered Netflix a special discounted rate of just 10 percent, but Netflix refused. Netflix no longer offers an in-app purchase option on Android and no longer pays Google anything to distribute its app as a result.

Netflix's annual virtual event "Geeked Week" pre-announces its biggest upcoming shows. This year Netflix released a trailer for its upcoming adaptation of The Three-Body Problem, and for its new live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series. (And there's also going to be some kind of live-action Stranger Things stage show opening in London in December.)

Variety noted the "explosive" new trailer for Zach Snyder's new "action-packed space opera" Rebel Moon. The film — which will also have a one-week theatrical run in December — takes place in the same universe as Snyder's Army of the Dead. But instead of being set in Las Vegas, "The story centers on a young woman living on the outskirts of a galaxy who must find a group of warriors to save the galaxy from an invasion from a tyrant."

The Verge pulled together a good rundown of all the other announcements — one of which involves Neil Gaiman: Following last year's The Sandman, Netflix is bringing even more beloved Neil Gaiman characters to the small screen. This time it's Dead Boy Detectives — which was originally slated to stream on Max — based on a crime-solving duo who made their debut in a Sandman comic in the '90s. The news was paired with the first trailer for the series, which shows off a pretty fun-looking supernatural whodunit...

Netflix says the new eight-episode series is part of its growing "Sandman universe"... with Gaiman serving as one of the executive producers. [Coming sometime in 2024]
They're also launching several animated series.

• Netflix released a short teaser for Terminator: the Anime Series.

• An animated new take on Ultraman.

• An animated He-Man reboot, Masters of the Universe: Revolution (with Mark Hamill providing the voice of Skeletor).

• An adult animated comedy series based on the card game Exploding Kittens. (The Verge writes that its trailer "features god in the body of a cat and a very confounding garage door" — and that there will also be an accompanying mobile game.)

• Netflix also has a new Chicken Run movie coming in December with its own tie-in game called Eggstraction.

Angela Watercutter and Will Bedingfield report via Wired: After 118 days on the picket lines, the longest such strike in Hollywood's history, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists has reached a deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Both sides were mum about the terms of the deal Wednesday night, but it comes following a long struggle over the use of artificial intelligence on actors' performances and actors' demands for residual payments for shows and films that play on streaming services. A committee from SAG, which represents thousands of film and television actors, approved the agreement Wednesday. The strike itself, which has featured pickets outside the offices of Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and others, will end Thursday morning. It's expected that the tentative deal will head to the union's national board to be approved on Friday.

Undeniably, this is a huge milestone for Hollywood, a $130 billion-plus industry that has all but ground to halt this year, as both the Writers Guild of America and SAG dug in their heels over fair wages and the use of AI in their work. WGA members went on strike in May; SAG walked off the job in July, the first time the industry had faced a dual work stoppage since 1960. The WGA strike ended in September with a historic deal that put up guardrails to protect writers from AI encroaching on their work. As this year's negotiations between SAG and AMPTP dragged on, generative AI became the major sticking point. Back in July, studios claimed they offered a "groundbreaking AI proposal that protects actors' digital likenesses." SAG countered that the proposal stipulated background performers could be scanned, paid for the day, and then turned into digital characters that studios could use "for the rest of eternity." (AMPTP disputed this.)

The issue was volleyed back and forth until last weekend, when SAG reviewed the studios' "last, best, and final" offer and rejected it, claiming "there are several essential items on which we still do not have an agreement, including AI. A follow-up story in The Hollywood Reporter revealed that the AMPTP proposal sought to allow studios to pay for AI scans of what are known as Schedule F performers and, following the actors' death, allow studios to use the scans without the consent of the estate or SAG. Schedule F performers include anyone who makes more than the minimum rate for TV series regulars or feature films. The guild wanted compensation for reuse of the scans, along with consent. On Tuesday, the studios reportedly agreed to adjust the AI language in their proposal, a move that seems to have been the tipping point. Even though the terms of the tentative deal reached Thursday are unclear, it's hard to imagine the actors didn't get at least some of the AI protections they were seeking.

After years of inflation, Americans are used to sticker shock. But nothing compares to the surging price of streaming video. From a report: Last week, Apple TV+ became the latest streaming service to raise its price -- up from $6.99 to $9.99 per month -- following the example of Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+, and Netflix, which all hiked their prices in October. Half of the major streaming platforms in the U.S. now charge a monthly fee that's double the price they charged when they initially came to market. And many of these streaming services haven't even been around for 10 years.

Consumers have grumbled, but have so far been willing to keep paying up. It's hard to say where their breaking point will be, but given that analysts believe the platforms are likely to continue raising prices even further, we'll probably find out soon enough. Part of what's driving the price hikes is how saturated the streaming market has become. For a company like Netflix, which has 77 million paid subscribers in the U.S. and Canada, finding new paying subscribers to keep revenue growing is not easy. Netflix has started clamping down on password sharing to boost its paid subscriber rolls, but that only goes so far. Raising prices for existing subscribers is an effective way to pump up the top line and keep investors happy.

A long-time Slashdot reader writes: Continuing the seemingly industry-wide trend towards enshitification of the Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) marketplace, Max today announced that it will be making changes to the current Ad-Free plan. To wit, 4K HDR with Dolby Atmos will be removed and concurrent streams will decrease from three to two.

In other words, you are paying the same price for less features. If you wish to keep the features you've had all along, all you have to do is upgrade to Ultimate Ad-Free at a 33% premium for the annual plan or 25% increase for monthly. No news yet on a crackdown of password sharing, however, that seems inevitable as the industry races to the bottom.

Meet the new cable boss, same as the old, except, they bring death by several small cuts instead of a single large one.

AV1 -- a next-generation, royalty-free video codec developed by the Alliance for Open Media, a consortium including tech giants like Google, Mozilla, Cisco, Microsoft, Netflix, Amazon, Intel, and Apple -- is finally making inroads. From a report: We are finally seeing more hardware support for this codec. The new M3 chips from Apple support AV1 decode. The iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max also feature an AV1 hardware decoder. The official Android 14 Compatibility Definition makes support for AV1 mandatory. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, widely used by Android phones released in 2023, supports AV1. With the exception of Microsoft Edge, all browsers support AV1.

Bloomberg reports that Comcast's stock price took its biggest drop in over a year on Thursday, "after reporting drops in broadband and cable subscribers, and predicting more losses to come." Cord-cutting and increasing competition have eroded Comcast's traditional customer base. The company, which owns Xfinity, the NBCUniversal media empire and SkyTV, lost 490,000 cable-TV customers in the third quarter, better than analysts expected but part of an ongoing trend as consumers switch to streaming services like Netflix. It also lost 18,000 broadband subscribers in the quarter, with nearly all of those residential customers. Analysts had predicted Comcast would instead gain 10,900 residential broadband customers.

Shares fell as much as 8% on the news Thursday, their biggest intraday decline since July 2022.

"Growth has halted for Comcast — the largest US broadband provider, with 32 million homes," said Bloomberg Intelligence senior media analyst Geetha Ranganathan. "The company derives 80% of profit from cable, where, even after a pandemic-demand surge, broadband has been hurt by fierce competition and low-move activity among customers." Comcast expects "somewhat higher subscriber losses" in the fourth quarter due to pullback on promotional offers that targeted lower-end customers, Chief Financial Officer Jason Armstrong said on a call with investors. Revenue per customer climbed, however, in part because of price increases and promotions of higher-rate plans.

Broadband is becoming increasingly competitive as mobile providers move into the market with improved wireless internet offerings. In the past week, the Big Three — T-Mobile US Inc., AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. — all reported subscriber gains.

The World Science Fiction Society "administers and presents the Hugo Awards, the oldest and most noteworthy award for science fiction," according to Wikipedia. Its members vote on each year's winners, and this year they received 1,847 nominating ballots.

This year the 81st edition of their World Science Fiction Convention was held from October 18 to 22 in Chengdu, China. More details from Gizmodo: While fan-favorite cozy fantasy novel Legends & Lattes lost Best Novel to T. Kingfisher's excellent horror-fantasy Nettle & Bone, Legends & Lattes author Travis Baldtree won the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. Everything Everywhere All at Once snagged film's top honor, and The Expanse's finale episode did the same for televsion, beating out both nominated Andor episodes among others. Some other great standouts include short fiction editor Neil Clarke, who has kept Clarkesworld magazine running despite getting swamped by AI-generated submissions earlier this year.
And "By winning Best Graphic Story or Comic, [Bartosz] Sztybor-who also served as a producer on the overwhelmingly popular Netflix anime Cyberpunk: Edgerunners-also becomes the first Polish author to win a Hugo," reports Forbes: [Cyberpunk 2077: Big City Dreams] is set in Night City-as seen in Cyberpunk 2077-and follows the story of two small-time thieves, Tasha and Mirek, who are trying to survive the harsh metropolis together. "Tasha and Mirek make a living for themselves stealing cyberware and indulging in parties and braindances," the official teaser explains...
Other highlights from this year's awards:

• Best novella: Where the Drowned Girls Go, by Seanan McGuire (Tordotcom)
• Best Novelette: "The Space-Time Painter", by Hai Ya (Galaxy's Edge, April 2022)
• Best Short Story: "Rabbit Test", by Samantha Mills (Uncanny Magazine, November-December 2022)
• Best Series: Children of Time series, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Pan Macmillan/Orbit)
• Best Related Work: Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes, by Rob Wilkins (Doubleday)

"No roof, no solar power. That has been the dispiriting equation shutting out roughly half of all Americans from plugging into the sun," writes the Washington Post's "Climate Coach" column.

"But signing up for solar soon might be as easy as subscribing to Netflix." Scores of new small solar farms that sell clean, local electricity directly to customers are popping up. The setup, dubbed "community solar," is designed to bring solar power to people who don't own their own homes or can't install panels — often at prices below retail electricity rates...

At least 22 states have passed legislation encouraging independent community solar projects, but developers are just beginning to expand. Most existing projects are booked. At the moment, community solar projects in the United States generate enough electricity to power about 918,000 homes — less than 1 percent of total households, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, a nonprofit trade group. But as more states join, and the Environmental Protection Agency's "Solar for All" program pours billions into federal solar power grants, more Americans will get the chance...

While projects exist in most states, they are highly concentrated: More than half are in Massachusetts, Minnesota and New York. These might be on a condo roof, or on open land like the 10-MW Fresno community solar farm, on a city-owned plot surrounded by agricultural land. Most are small: 2 megawatts of capacity on average, about enough to power 200 to 400 homes... The renewable energy marketplace EnergySage and the nonprofit Solar United Neighbors connect customers to community solar projects in their region. People generally receive monthly credits for electricity produced by their share of solar panels. These are subtracted from their total electricity bill or credited on future bills... Subscribers on average save about 10 percent on their utility bill (the range is 5 percent to 15 percent).

These economics are propelling the industry to record heights. Between 2016 and 2019, community solar capacity more than quadrupled to 1.4 gigawatts. By the end of this year, energy research firm Wood Mackenzie estimates, there will be 6 GW of community solar. And the Energy Department wants to see community solar reach 5 million households by 2025. "The economics are strongly on the side of doing this," says Dan Kammen, an energy professor at the University of California at Berkeley. "It's now cheaper to build new solar than to operate old fossil [fuel plants]. ... We're at the takeoff point."
The article notes "solar for renters" saves about $100 per year for the average ratepayer (while rooftop solar arrays may save homeowners over $1,000 annually). But according to the article, the arrangement still "reflects a new reality...

"Solar energy prices are falling as private and public money, and new laws, are fueling a massive expansion of small-scale community solar projects."

Netflix said its effort to limit password sharing led to a 10.8% rise in subscriptions in the third quarter, a better-than-expected result that comes as the company plans to increase some prices in the U.S. and other markets. From a report: The streaming giant added 8.8 million subscribers in the third quarter with customer growth in every region, its largest quarterly customer gain since the second quarter of 2020. The company plans to immediately raise prices for its basic plan in the U.S., which is no longer available to new customers, to $11.99 from $9.99 and up the cost of its premium plan to $22.99 from $19.99.

It is also increasing some prices in the U.K. and France, though the cost of its ad-supported and standard ad-free plans are unchanged. The price increases are a sign of streamers' efforts to improve profitability and wean consumers off the low monthly subscription fees that drew users away from pricey cable bundles in the early days of streaming.

Christopher Grimes reports via the Financial Times: Some of Netflix's competitors are reversing a streaming war tactic by licensing their old TV shows and movies to the streamer -- boosting its programming offerings but also potentially squeezing its profit margins, analysts say. Netflix relied heavily on programming that it licensed from other companies when it launched its streaming service in 2007. But after Walt Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount and the then Time Warner launched their own streaming services, they pulled many of their shows from Netflix to avoid feeding a company that had grown into an arch-competitor. With legacy media groups under pressure to produce streaming profits, however, licensing revenue is looking attractive again -- even if it comes from Netflix. This summer, Warner Bros Discovery's HBO network began licensing a handful of older shows to Netflix, including Insecure, Six Feet Under, Ballers and Band of Brothers.

Analysts at Morgan Stanley said the return of licensing deals was a "long-term positive" for Netflix and would "pad" its lead over competitors in streaming. But the bank added that the cost of licensing -- along with the Netflix's investments in gaming and other sectors -- could add pressure to its profit margins in 2024. The analysts raised their outlook for Netflix's overall cash spending next year by $500mn to $17.7bn. Netflix will report results on Wednesday, with investors expected to focus on whether it plans to increase subscription prices and signs of progress on its new advertising tier. The latest data on its password sharing crackdown will also be watched.

[T]he studios' experiments with licensing deals appear to have given some old shows new life. After NBCUniversal licensed its show Suits -- which aired from 2011-19 and starred Meghan Markle -- to Netflix in June, the show experienced a revival. The legal drama was in the top spot on the Nielsen Streaming top 10 for three months, an example of the "Netflix effect" on older shows. Bloys said licensing shows to Netflix had also boosted traffic for the programs on Warner Discovery's Max streaming platform, home to HBO programming including Ballers, a sports drama that ran from 2015-19. Ballers entered the Nielsen top 10 after it went to Netflix, and Insecure, a comedy starring Issa Rae that ran from 2016-21, had a similar boost.

Last year Netflix put up a billboard on Los Angeles's Sunset Boulevard to poke fun at itself. It read: "Wait, Netflix Has Games?" The company is working hard to clear up any confusion. It is deepening its push into the videogame industry, taking advantage of the studios it has acquired in the past two years to create more titles based on popular Netflix movies and TV shows. WSJ: Though Netflix has up to now focused on mobile games -- which appeal to casual gamers and can be downloaded on a smartphone or tablet -- it is taking steps to expand into higher-end games that can be streamed from TVs or PCs. That approach would put it up against giants such as Sony and Microsoft, which just closed its $75 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and would bring some significant technical challenges.

Over the next several months, Netflix subscribers will be able to play games on their mobile devices based on hits such as Korean thriller "Squid Game" and supernatural comedy "Wednesday," according to people familiar with the situation. Similarly, Netflix is discussing games based on "Extraction," its Sherlock Holmes series and its "Black Mirror" series, the people said. Even as Netflix creates homegrown titles, it will continue to license the well-known games, from "Bloons TD 6" to "Classic Solitaire," that currently make up its catalog. It has discussed plans to release a game within the popular action-adventure series "Grand Theft Auto" from Take-Two Interactive Software through a licensing deal, some of the people said. The strategy rips a page from the streaming giant's playbook in Hollywood, where it built an audience based on reruns from other studios -- such as "Friends," "The Office" and "Breaking Bad" -- while gearing up machinery to churn out originals like "House of Cards" and "Stranger Things."