Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things’ is dangerously close to becoming ‘Sponsored Things’

I worked in advertising. Now I work in television.

It doesn't bother me one bit. As a consumer, the economics of it are this: Either you pay for content, or advertisers do.

Netflix was a company operating in the black until they started launching original content, which put them in the red. They knew they had to do it, because the longview was that the companies making the content they were licensing would eventually launch their own streaming services and pull their content (which has indeed happened), but it's extremely expensive to make shows. When Netflix raised their prices, no one said, "Hey, yeah, this seems fair." Everyone bitched. But the fact is that the options are continue to raise their prices, or find corporate sponsors.

We can't have cheap streaming services AND no corporate sponsors. The money has to come from somewhere.

/r/television Thread Parent Link - fastcompany.com