CNN+ Host Brian Stelter Throws Stones at Netflix: ‘They Were High on Their Own Supply’
CNN and CNN+ host Brian Stelter weighed in on beleaguered streamer Netflix over their recent stock decline, quipping to anchor Kate Bolduan that the company became “high on their own supply” of content.
Netflix’s stock price fell off a cliff this week after the company reported it had lost subscribers for the first time in its 10-year-plus history. Stelter was a guest on Wednesday morning’s edition of CNN’s At This Hour With Kate Bolduan, and discussed the situation with his fellow CNN+ host.
Stelter chalked some of the loss up to competition from companies like “Disney, our parent company Warner Brothers Discovery, other big players, all with gigantic streaming services,” among other factors.
The pair also talked about password-sharing, which Netflix estimates accounts for 100 million freeloading households, and Stelter ratted out his own family.
“I mean, my brothers, they still share my password in Maryland,” Stelter said. “But that’s not going to last for much longer. It’s not going to last much longer because Netflix needs people like my brothers to go ahead and start to pay.”
MR. STELTER: The new conventional wisdom is that you can gain more folks, you can get more people to come in at a lower price point. Frankly, in media, everything old is new again, everything new is old again. And the truth about media, the truth I think some of those others don’t want to admit is that the answer is everything. All the above. Television didn’t kill radio, streaming doesn’t kill television. It’s all additive. I think what happened for Netflix, for a while, they were high on their own supply. They believed they were the future of everything. Everything was going to be streaming all the time. And maybe that’s not quite true. Maybe the future is all of the above.
MS. BOLDUAN: There’s a live look at the stock price right now, and this is after a bad day, you know, but it was as bad overnight and it’s bad right now.
MR. STELTER: The stock was up at six hundred a few months ago.
MS. BOLDUAN: It’s amazing. I mean, as our colleague Frank Pallotta put it, it cannot be overstated just how bad of a report this is for the king of streaming right now. They actually thought they were going to be adding subscribers like, How did you… How did you miss it so much?
They went on to note that Netflix still boasts 221 million subscribers, a number for CNN+ to shoot for in about a hundred years, if their current pace holds. Longer if Stelter’s brothers get ahold of his CNN+ password.
Watch above via CNN.
