Netflix thinks that the solution to its financial woes is a deal with Microsoft to put ads into your TV shows.

Netflix thinks that the solution to its financial woes is a deal with Microsoft to put ads into your TV shows.

Netflix is in major financial crisis. They’re doing huge layoffs. They’ve spent years mismanaging the platform and have only themselves to blame.

Even though the DRM is malicious, and encourages people to be jerks who can’t share with their friends, it’s not the cause of their financial problems.

Back when it wasn’t so expensive and had shows that people wanted to watch, people would pay the money to subscribe and then keep paying, usually even if there wasn’t anything on that they wanted to watch that month.

However, with the state of the economy being pretty lousy, and hyperinflation causing people to struggle to put food on the table, and gas in the gas tank, Netflix seems to have figured out what the solution is to losing a million subscribers per annum.

No, the solution is not canceling all the good shows, it’s not raising the price another $3-4 a month every year; it couldn’t possibly be paying $50 million for a documentary about Michelle Obama that nobody wants to see. But they’ve done all of this.

Michelle Obama’s main accomplishment as FLOTUS appears to be ruining school lunches to the point where what I had to eat as a child in school was a gourmet restaurant by comparison (and it was basically on par with what they fed Indiana prisoners back then!).

Then there’s the fact that streaming has become a highly competitive market with lots of contenders that have gigantic war chests dumping cash into programming investments, and that people simply aren’t going to subscribe to the company (Netflix) with the weakest content portfolio when there’s nothing on and the price is spiraling out of control.

(Sarcasm) No, no, what people really want is this horrible streaming company with nothing to watch except a documentary about Michelle Obama, plus advertisements from Microsoft. (/Sarcasm)

CNBC: Netflix partners with Microsoft on ad-supported subscription plan

Web / Gemini (NewsWaffle)

Microsoft is in a position to spy on the majority of desktop and laptop computer users through spyware that they have built into Windows, Edge, and Bing.

Of course, that’s the mistake of the people who use these things, but “interest-based advertising” built upon what Microsoft learns by spying on you elsewhere will almost certainly pop up during your Netflix shows, if you subscribe to this tier.

Seeing has how there’s rarely been a business partnership with Microsoft in the tech world that ended well (AOL, Novell, Nokia, SEGA, Spyglass, etc.) and when Microsoft can’t corrupt, they do a hostile takeover, patent litigation threats (Samsung), or just make some crappy cloned and stolen product (Windows NT is essentially stolen from DEC and IBM, and they twisted and contorted their agreement with Spyglass for Internet Explorer, and then both got settled out of court for undisclosed sums…), I think that a Microsoft partnership is just yet another sign that Netflix is a company in serious trouble.

It’s not good to be a tech company that is not earning a profit during a bubble, during a period of high inflation, during a downturn in the business cycle, and during rising interest rates. Netflix and others now find themselves here.

Either they’ll go to bankruptcy court and be sold for scrap (patents, etc.) or someone buys them for scrap. Maybe even to Microsoft. They’ve bought worse.

Netflix is probably heading this way, though it may take a few years.

I don’t see how putting ads in Netflix is going to do anything for their bottom line though. Consumers are pinched.

Consumer discretionary is going through Hell at the moment.

Amazon has quietly killed warehouse construction all over the place, sometimes with half a building standing.

TheRealDeal: Amazon binge ends in hangover, halt on warehouse deals amid $4B loss

Web / Gemini (NewsWaffle

Walmart and Target don’t even want their returns back.

CNN: Just keep your returns: Stores weigh paying you not to bring back unwanted items

Web / Gemini (NewsWaffle)

What’s bound to happen is the same thing that happened in the early 2000s. Ad revenues are going to crash in a major way. They’re going to start paying pretty much nothing after years of running hot based on the notion that the consumer would spend a bunch of money that turned out to not really be there in the end.

Yes, companies like Microsoft, Facebook, and Google have sharpened their knives and have better ways to target and psychologically manipulate consumers than the relatively blunt instruments there were before, but a broke working class is a broke working class and a tightening Fed is a tightening Fed.

TechRights has noticed that on Phoronix, a site about “Linux” news which has always been the subject of ridicule over the ad bombardment that takes place if you turn off your ad blocker, Michael Larabel has additionally started taking “free gifts” worth many thousands from companies like AMD, his to keep.

And he’s been writing incredibly favorable “reviews”. So it’s clear that he’s diversified away from obvious advertising and straight into “sponsored content”.

Worse yet, now many articles are not even about “Linux”. They’re about Microsoft. Leading us to call him “Microsoft Larabel”.

This came after years of entire articles begging people to subscribe to read his content churn.

Perpetual Comedian Jim Cramer (“Buy Bear Stearns!”) said today that he thinks that despite the fact that the government’s inflation figure for the year went from 8.6% to 9.1% after the latest monthly report, that the Federal Reserve “Is getting a handle on inflation.” and that we’ll see it soon. Also, that the bottom for the market is close.

Of course, there’s an investment strategy I call the “Reverse Jim Cramer”. If you listen to Cramer and do the exact opposite of what he just said, you usually make a lot of money, and if you do what he says, you usually lose money, while he’s reversed his position a couple weeks later and acts like he never said to do that.

Right now, Cramer is urging people to buy and hold Netflix and has been repeating that for many months as the company continues to fail.