The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 37 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Evans: Netflix is a TV company, while YouTube actually disrupts television
“Netflix is a TV company, not a tech company, because all the questions that it poses, the TV industry questions, and it hasn't actually changed what a TV show is. It's just bought more of them and made more of them. Mr. Beast clearly is not a TV show. It's som…”
Evans: Netflix using algorithms to commission shows is "all bullshit"
“So all this stuff I read about how Netflix is using algorithms and software and artificial intelligence to work out what shows to commission, it's all bullshit. You're not paying somebody twenty million dollars a year if you've got a machine that tells you wha…”
Evans: US regulators would block Chinese acquisitions of Netflix over narrative control.
“You wouldn't allow a Chinese company to buy Time Warner, or to buy Warner Discovery. You wouldn't allow a Chinese company to buy Netflix. Not because of privacy, not because you're afraid the Netflix app is going to spy on you, but because you don't want Chine…”
Evans: MrBeast transforms TV more fundamentally than Netflix
“Mr. Beast is changing what TV is in a way that Netflix is not. You know, Netflix is a TV company. It's a TV company with a different distribution model. Mr. Beast is, is, is a much more fundamental change in what TV means than Netflix paying TV people to make …”
Evans: MrBeast viewing time rivals a top 10 to 15 Netflix show
“Depending on whether you think he gets like one minute Per view, or six or seven minutes per view, it looks like Mr. Beast in total would sort of count as like a top 10 to top 15 Netflix show on a weekly, rolling weekly basis, and sometimes more than that.”
FTX Was a Wall Street Failure, Not a Software Failure
“The thing that strikes me, and it's a kind of a general thesis that someone told me the other day, I bore on about too much, but I bore on about it because I think it's fascinating, is that there's no software questions here. That this is like, you know, as fo…”
Evans: Streaming platform scale is driven by content budget, not network effects
“The challenge is like, there's no network effect there. It's a budget effect. It's not like Facebook where everyone, it's not that, it's not like Facebook where everyone has to use WhatsApp because everyone's on WhatsApp.”
Netflix is a TV company using tech as a crowbar
“Netflix is not a tech company. It's a TV company that's using tech, this new technology channel as an entry market and a crowbar to break into the market.”
Evans: Streaming lacks winner-take-all dynamics, protecting Disney and HBO
“This is like, there's not a winner takes all dynamic here. They're just one of many TV companies. And getting bigger and having more money does not mean that they can blow Netflix, that they can blow Disney and HBO out of the water.”
Evans: Telcos are infrastructure and Netflix is TV, not software companies
“Telcos aren't a technology business. They're infrastructure business. Netflix isn't a software company. It's a TV company. On the other hand, Airbnb, but Airbnb isn't a hotel company. It is a software company.”
Catton-Brown: Sports copying F1's Netflix boom ignore the pandemic's role
“All of these other sports are trying to recreate this magical Netflix strive to survive moment. But they seem to omit the fact that we had a pandemic. Everyone was stuck at home. Everyone was dying for content. The first season of Drive to Survive was actually…”
Evans: Netflix outspends all broadcasters in top five European markets combined
“Netflix's content budget, which is what's the number? 15,000,000,016 billion dollars a year. Last time I looked, that was more than all broadcasters spent in the top five European markets combined.”
Evans: Netflix is fundamentally a television company, not a tech company.
“I think Netflix is a TV company, not a tech company, because all the questions are TV questions. They go to LA and they buy them. They buy LA stuff from LA people. It's a TV company.”
Evans: YouTube creator payouts rival major TV studio programming budgets
“And then of course they pay out 45% of the ad revenue to the creators, which makes, puts their budget somewhere sort of Makes them sort of top three, top four. If you count that as programming budget, comparable to the US media companies, that would put them s…”
Evans: Content model, not software, gave Netflix scale over Hulu
“The reason that Hulu doesn't have two hundred and fifty million subscribers and Netflix does is not because Netflix has better video compression or Netflix has a slightly better app or a different recommendation engine. It's because Netflix changed the model o…”
Evans: All questions that matter for Netflix are TV industry questions
“All questions that matter for Netflix are TV industry questions. What rights? What shows? What happens as the incumbents pull their shows off Netflix? What budget should they have? What stars? What kind of, they're all TV questions. There's no technology quest…”
Netflix relies on traditional Hollywood show-picking executives rather than software
“All these planted PR stories on how this amazing use of data that Netflix had, and it turns out it's, you've got somebody who's paid twenty million dollars and they're picking shows. Like, that's how Hollywood works. I mean, it can work very well, but that's n…”
Evans: Netflix gaming expansion is an ineffective brand extension
“Games, I'm really skeptical of the idea that, like, I just feel like a brand extension too far. I mean, I know, like, the whole, like, yes, everyone's a gamer now thing, but, like, I'm gonna sign up to Netflix, and I hear, like, they're spending a fortune, lik…”
Evans: Netflix benefits from economies of scale rather than network effects
“Whereas I don't think Netflix has that. You know, I think Netflix has economy of scale, which we can come back to.”
Evans: Netflix is a media company, not a tech company
“Well, so I have a pretty strong opinion that Netflix is a media company, and the reason I say this is that all the questions that actually matter are TV questions, like how many shows, what kind of shows, what price, what mix, how long do they last, how often …”
Evans: Netflix faces television industry problems, not tech problems
“Netflix, all the questions are TV questions, like what shows, what light structures, what talent, how do they compete with Disney, what's HBO going to do, you know, what's their share of production in the UK, what happens if France starts regulating them, not …”
Evans: Netflix is a TV company, not a software company
“I think Tesla is pretty clearly, sorry, Netflix is a TV company. All the questions that matter are TV industry questions.”
Netflix Is a TV Company, Not a Tech Company
“Is Netflix a tech company? No. Netflix is a TV company.”
Evans: Netflix Replicated Sky's Playbook of Outspending on Content to Drive Subscriptions
“Sky realized that they could pay massively more than anyone had ever thought reasonable to pay for football, and put that on a, this new channel, which is a subscription satellite channel, also subscription cable, but pay free, premium subscription TV service,…”
Evans: Streaming challenges are domain entertainment problems, not technology problems
“The obvious place you can see this now is with Hollywood and streaming, where yes, Netflix is a participant, but Netflix is a participant as a TV company, And all the questions are TV questions or maybe questions of rights and production and, you know, what wr…”
Evans: Crypto resembles early 1990s internet before foundational protocols existed
“Whereas it seems to me the kind of creative energy around crypto was sort of, like, it was more like the creative energy of the internet in, like, the late eighties and early nineties.
In that there was no HTTP.
There was no SSL.
There was no SMTP.
Yes, there …”
Evans: Streaming eliminates syndication lottery tickets for creators
“It used to be that when you did a TV show, if it became a hit, then it would go into syndication, and so you had kind of a lottery ticket, and this is why Jerry Seinfeld is worth half a billion dollars, because it's all the syndication money, but a Netflix sho…”
Evans: Shein applies the Netflix operating paradigm to fast fashion
“Shein, which is a sort of, you know, would be the Netflix paradigm in the clothing fast fashion. It's the hero. They are using this new channel to create the product basically close, but in a new way at a new volume with a new model, just as Netflix is creatin…”
Evans: Shein and TikTok differ from Zara and Netflix via rapid feedback loops
“But it's also the feedback loop, and I think that's the change from ASOS, and certainly from Zara and H&M, and in some ways the change from Netflix, but it's what you have on TikTok, and what you have on on Shein is, is you have that very quick feedback cycle.”
UK youth watch more Netflix than all BBC content combined
“UK to 16 to 34 are watching more Netflix and all BBC content combined.”
Top US streamers individually outspend all major European broadcasters combined
“Fifteen billion dollars a year, which is what Netflix, for the sake of argument, what Netflix spends, and close to what Amazon spends. It's also what Disney spend, if you exclude sport. That's more than production budgets for the top, all broadcasters in the t…”
Evans: Lack of backend syndication in streaming drives up upfront talent costs
“The point is, traditional TV, there was syndication. Whereas we're streaming, there isn't. Netflix buys the show, and it's the show. And so, as a Performer or producer or writer, you get the money that you get, and that's it. You don't get a show at the back e…”
Cowan-Brown: Netflix's 'Drive to Survive' made Formula One tech-relevant
“All of a sudden everywhere I look now tech people are wanting to write about Formula One, and I think that that is because Formula One has become part of pop culture because of Netflix that has created this series”
Evans: Streaming leverage depends on content catalog, not player software
“All of the actual money and the leverage and the strategic positioning in TV is in what shows you have. It's a little bit around how nice your player is, but like the reason Hulu isn't Netflix is not because the player isn't as good as Netflix's player, it's b…”
Evans: UK 16-to-34s watch more streaming video than all legacy TV combined
“And so you look at the stats from Ofcom, the UK regulator and UK, 16 to 24 watch more subscription video than everything from the PSB and some public service broadcasters, which is the traditional analog broadcasters. More 16 to 34 watch more stuff from basica…”