I'd say that Netflix's model is much more traditional, and look at non-American pay-TV operators, such as Sky in Europe.
Sky ran at an enormous defect for years, because building out a satellite platform and buying sports rights is very expensive. And it started out fairly cheaply.
But it has ratcheted up costs for customers over the course of thirty years very successfully with that platform, and become a tremendously profitable business off the back of it.
So I don't think data is actually the telling difference. Netflix's plan surely is simply to become so large and to have exclusive content so they can rapidly increase pricing, and leverage their scale globally to try and reduce content costs somewhat, and hope it all meets in the middle. I'm personally less convinced by this plan, because I think Sky built a technical moat with their capital (which is only now dissipating), whereas Netflix generally spends theirs on content, which depreciates in value very quickly for customers and does not block competitors so effectively.
The history of television (and indeed AV in general) distribution is very rarely about the best technology. It's generally about having understanding shareholders who are willing to throw enormous amounts of capital at a target for twenty years with little sign of return, until you win.
Sky ran at an enormous defect for years, because building out a satellite platform and buying sports rights is very expensive. And it started out fairly cheaply.
But it has ratcheted up costs for customers over the course of thirty years very successfully with that platform, and become a tremendously profitable business off the back of it.
So I don't think data is actually the telling difference. Netflix's plan surely is simply to become so large and to have exclusive content so they can rapidly increase pricing, and leverage their scale globally to try and reduce content costs somewhat, and hope it all meets in the middle. I'm personally less convinced by this plan, because I think Sky built a technical moat with their capital (which is only now dissipating), whereas Netflix generally spends theirs on content, which depreciates in value very quickly for customers and does not block competitors so effectively.
The history of television (and indeed AV in general) distribution is very rarely about the best technology. It's generally about having understanding shareholders who are willing to throw enormous amounts of capital at a target for twenty years with little sign of return, until you win.