Netflix raising prices again...

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Submitted by Mike 'Ace' Maillaro on Thu, 10/05/2017 - 11:59

From Variety:

Netflix has again raised the monthly price of its most popular streaming plan in the U.S., with the two-stream HD tier now $10.99 per month for new subscribers — while existing customers will be moved to the new rate over the next several months. That’s up $1 per month from the previous $9.99 monthly fee.

The company also increased the monthly fee for its four-stream “family plan,” from $11.99 to $13.99 per month. That “premium” tier also includes select content in Ultra HD 4K format.

Shares of Netflix hit a new all-time high on news of the price hikes, climbing more than 4% and peaking at $192.80 per share in Thursday morning trading.

Wall Street analysts have speculated that Netflix would ratchet up its pricing, as content costs continue to balloon. The company is spending around $6 billion on programming this year, projected to rise to $7 billion in 2017. Netflix says it expects to operate with negative free cash flow for several years, and has turned to debt markets to help fund content expenses.

Source: Variety

Commentary: Typically, I would get pretty annoyed at raising prices like this, but Netflix is still managing to provide a great product for a fairly low price, all things considered. I will admit I don't follow a lot of Netflix original series (mostly just the Marvel stuff), but we still find plenty to watch on Netflix. My wife will pop on random episodes of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION as background noise, and my kids pretty much have older cartoons and kids' shows running constantly. Other than WWE Network, Netflix is the only streaming service I pay for, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.