Pricing power is the reason a $25-a-month subscription survives when a free alternative sits one tap away. It comes from being different enough that leaving feels like a loss — and it’s exactly what Netflix built its entire business on.
According to a July 9 Wall Street Journal report, the streamer that spent fifteen years convincing the world to abandon scheduled TV is now discussing bringing it back: always-on, genre-based channels that just keep playing, plus a possible bundle with NBCUniversal’s Peacock inside the app. Neither idea is confirmed. Both are internal conversations. The timing is pointed — this surfaced weeks after co-founder Reed Hastings stepped down from the board.
The reason is a number sliding the wrong way. Netflix’s share of total U.S. TV viewing sat at 7.8% in April, a multi-year low, per Nielsen data cited in the report. Big original series — Avatar: The Last Airbender, One Piece, Beef — all lost viewers in their second seasons. The stock is down roughly 40% over twelve months. When a subscription business can’t grow by adding new watchers, the next lever is getting existing ones to watch more.
That’s where the trouble starts. Live channels mean unskippable ads — the exact model free rivals like Tubi and Pluto TV already run, the same audiences now chipping away at Netflix’s viewing share. A Peacock bundle means reselling someone else’s product, the move Amazon and Apple have run for years. Neither is fatal by itself. But a premium brand that starts behaving like the free, ad-supported services nipping at its market share risks losing the one thing pricing power actually depends on: being unmistakably not that.
Netflix isn’t in trouble. It’s defending a throne — and defense is where every advantage quietly turns into a cost.
My take: Slay the DIABLO, absorb its soulstone, become the Wanderer… then Diablo II happens. Then III. Then IV.
Not advice. Just how I see it.