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April 24, 2020
- Q1 revenue: $31.6 billion (-1.6% YoY ,-9.2% QoQ, vs. $32.38 billion expected)
- Q1 earnings: $4.3 billion (-16.9% YoY, -15.9% QoQ, above expectations)
- Full-year guidance: Verizon withdrew its revenue guidance and reduced its earnings guidance: It now expects earnings growth of between -2% and 2%.
The big number: Verizon lost 525,000 wireless retail postpaid customers last quarter, which it attributed to the shutdown of most of its retail locations.
People are talking: "We will emerge from this crisis stronger, knowing we provided critical connectivity to our customers," said Hans Vestberg.
Opportunities: Verizon's business segment performed better than the consumer segment, citing higher demand in March as companies moved to remote working.
Threats: Verizon was hit particularly hard between March 15 and April 15 as the coronavirus crisis worsened. The company reported a 49% drop in consumer wireless gross adds year-on-year, although "global enterprise, public sector and other" customer additions increased 163% year-on-year.
The power struggle: Verizon has spent recent years trying to position itself as a media business, but that's made it vulnerable to ad revenue declines. Although Verizon reported monthly active users up 22% year-on-year between March 15 and April 15, it said ad and search revenue is declining.
Shakeel Hashim
Shakeel Hashim ( @shakeelhashim) is a growth manager at Protocol, based in London. He was previously an analyst at Finimize covering business and economics, and a digital journalist at News UK. His writing has appeared in The Economist and its book, Uncommon Knowledge.
Politics
'Woke tech' and 'the new slave power': Conservatives gather for Vegas summit
An agenda for the event, hosted by the Claremont Institute, listed speakers including U.S. CTO Michael Kratsios and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The so-called "Digital Statecraft Summit" was organized by the Claremont Institute. The speakers include U.S. CTO Michael Kratsios and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, as well as a who's-who of far-right provocateurs.
Photo: David Vives/Unsplash
January 16, 2021
Emily Birnbaum ( @birnbaum_e) is a tech policy reporter with Protocol. Her coverage focuses on the U.S. government's attempts to regulate one of the most powerful industries in the world, with a focus on antitrust, privacy and politics. Previously, she worked as a tech policy reporter with The Hill after spending several months as a breaking news reporter. She is a Bethesda, Maryland native and proud Kenyon College alumna.
Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
January 16, 2021
Conservative investors, political operatives, right-wing writers and Trump administration officials are quietly meeting in Las Vegas this weekend to discuss topics including China, "woke tech" and "the new slave power," according to four people who were invited to attend or speak at the event as well as a copy of the agenda obtained by Protocol.
The so-called "Digital Statecraft Summit" was organized by the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank that says its mission is to "restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life." A list of speakers for the event includes a combination of past and current government officials as well as a who's who of far-right provocateurs. One speaker, conservative legal scholar John Eastman, rallied the president's supporters at a White House event before the Capitol Hill riot earlier this month. Some others have been associated with racist ideologies.
<p>Government officials listed on the agenda include United States Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is leading a multi-state antitrust lawsuit against Google and is currently <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2020/11/17/texas-ken-paxton-fbi/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">under federal investigation</a>. A source familiar with Kratsios' planned remarks said he intended to speak about artificial intelligence and China. Also on the agenda: Josh Steinman, the White House National Security Council's recently departed senior director for cyber, who now describes himself as the founder of a "stealth startup" on LinkedIn. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>Newly confirmed FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington was also listed on the agenda, but he told Protocol he did not end up attending. "Despite initial plans to do so, I did not attend or otherwise participate in the Claremont event this weekend, and I did not prepare or submit remarks," Simington said. </p><p>The event is happening as Las Vegas <a href="https://lasvegassun.com/news/2021/jan/13/las-vegas-hospital-capacity-crisis-covid-19-soar/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">experiences a spike in COVID cases</a>.</p><p>Claremont Institute President Ryan Williams refused to answer Protocol's questions about "the new slave power" panel, what COVID-19 safety protocols are in place during the in-person gathering or the range of speaker backgrounds on the agenda.</p><p>"The Claremont Institute has been a leading voice against political censorship by the Big Tech oligarchs, and we have no interest in commenting on an obvious hatchet job by a publication so clearly beholden to the pieties of Silicon Valley," Williams said in an email to Protocol. "Your questions are riddled with false premises, but we welcome the fire."</p><p>The list of speakers included several people with controversial pedigrees. One speaker, blogger Curtis Yarvin, otherwise known as Mencius Moldbug, has written that there is "no question that biological differences made Africans better slaves than indigenous Americans" because they were less susceptible to tropical diseases. He also once <a href="https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/11/why-i-am-not-white-nationalist/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">wrote</a> in a blog post, "although I am not a white nationalist, I am not exactly allergic to the stuff." Yarvin was listed to speak on the panel about "the new slave power," along with Michael Anton, former deputy national security adviser under President Trump, who recently wrote an essay in Claremont's The American Mind publication suggesting that Democrats were "openly talking about staging a coup." </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>Another speaker on the agenda, Adam Candeub, is the current acting head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Previously, as a lawyer, he <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/05/trumps-commerce-department-just-hired-a-lawyer-with-ties-to-white-nationalists/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">represented</a> white nationalist Jared Taylor in a lawsuit against Twitter. Eastman recently retired from his position as a law professor at Chapman University amid an <a href="https://www.ocregister.com/2021/01/13/controversial-law-professor-john-eastman-retires-from-chapman-university/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">uproar</a> over a speech he gave alleging election fraud at the pro-Trump rally preceding the Capitol attack on Jan. 6.</p><p>One of the final speakers listed on the agenda, Soylent founder Rob Rhinehart, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/28/technology/politics-tech-start-ups-culture-war.html?" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">made waves earlier this summer</a> with a 5,300-word blog post about why he <a href="https://www.robrhinehart.com/why-i-am-voting-for-kanye-west/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">supported hip-hop artist Kanye West</a> for president. "I am so sick of politics. Politics are suddenly everywhere," he wrote, before jumping into a lengthy post about Joe Biden, why the media is "actually evil" and the importance of biofuels. </p><p>One attendee said they had not been given any information on who would be speaking as of midday Friday, hours before the event was set to kick off, and Claremont Institute did not appear to be promoting the event on social media Saturday as the first panels began. "Maybe they're trying to keep it under wraps," the attendee said. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>The attendee said they understood that the tenor of the weekend would be "very critical of tech, very pro some type of intervention."</p><p>"There's going to be some discrepancy and debate around what intervention looks like," the attendee said.</p><p>The other topics on the agenda include a panel on "restoring law" and a fireside chat titled, "What happened?" The summit takes place 10 days after a violent mob of Trump supporters breached the Capitol Hill complex, resulting in five deaths and forcing a reckoning within the Republican Party over its alignment with Trump and right-wing conspiracy theorists.</p>
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Emily Birnbaum ( @birnbaum_e) is a tech policy reporter with Protocol. Her coverage focuses on the U.S. government's attempts to regulate one of the most powerful industries in the world, with a focus on antitrust, privacy and politics. Previously, she worked as a tech policy reporter with The Hill after spending several months as a breaking news reporter. She is a Bethesda, Maryland native and proud Kenyon College alumna.
Power
Sonos CEO Patrick Spence: There’s money in ad sales for us
The smart speaker maker adds in-house ad sales as radio service continues to grow.
"Given the kind of customer base that we have and given the adoption we've seen in Sonos Radio, there's absolutely advertising revenue there," Patrick Spence says.
Photo: Andrej Sokolow/Picture Alliance via Getty Images
November 18, 2020
Janko Roettgers (@jank0) is a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.
November 18, 2020
Sonos is doubling down on its efforts to monetize services on its platform, and is now looking to build out an in-house ad sales team for its free Sonos Radio service. Sonos CEO Patrick Spence confirmed the news in a conversation with Protocol on Wednesday, saying that in-house ad sales could help the company attract the right kind of brand advertisers to its platform. "Given the kind of customer base that we have and given the adoption we've seen in Sonos Radio, there's absolutely advertising revenue there," he said.
Spence made these remarks ahead of the release of the company's fiscal Q4 2020 earnings results. The company grew its revenue 16% year-over-year, to the tune of $339.8 million for the quarter. Earnings per share came in at $0.15, ahead of the $0.02 that analysts had expected. The company added 1.8 million new households to its customer base in its fiscal 2020, and close to 11 million households now own Sonos products, with an average of 2.9 Sonos products in each of those households.
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</div></p><p>Sonos saw overall listening hours increase by 33% for the full year. Sonos Radio seems to have played a significant role in that growth, and became the fourth most-used service on the platform, as well as the most popular radio service, <a href="https://www.protocol.com/sonos-radio-free-ad-supported-streaming-stations" target="_self">just months after its launch in April.</a> The free service did not cannibalize other services on the company's platform, Spence said. "This is not a zero sum game in any way," he said. "People are listening to Spotify, Apple Music and [other] on-demand services in addition to what's happening on radio."</p><p>The company <a href="https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/next-up/sonos-radio-hd-paid-subscription-service?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1" target="_self">introduced a paid tier, dubbed Sonos Radio HD</a>, last week. Spence said that Sonos was still learning how to perfect both free and paid services after having solely focused on hardware products for so long. "We're kind of excited about having another part of the business that is experience-based, feels very Sonos, but is more iterative in nature," he said. "We'll learn and we'll grow it from there."</p><p>Sonos is forecasting between 9% and 13% revenue growth for its fiscal 2021, compared to 5% growth in 2020. Spence expressed confidence in hitting those numbers despite increased competition from companies like Google, Amazon and Apple, all of which have introduced new smart speakers this fall. "Our business continued to grow in scale in the face of those introductions," he said. "We're always watching and seeing what's out there. But I feel like we've shown that we can grow. We're going to continue to innovate and execute in the face of whatever anybody else does."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p><em><strong>Update: </strong>This post was updated to more clearly identify full-year vs. quarterly growth.</em></p>
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Janko Roettgers (@jank0) is a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.
Power
Investors didn’t like Ubisoft and Activision’s earnings
Both stocks plunged on the companies' forecasts.
The outlook is good for console manufacturers, but not so much on the software side.
Image: Protocol
October 30, 2020
Shakeel Hashim ( @shakeelhashim) is a growth manager at Protocol, based in London. He was previously an analyst at Finimize covering business and economics, and a digital journalist at News UK. His writing has appeared in The Economist and its book, Uncommon Knowledge.
October 30, 2020
Big Tech companies weren't the only ones reporting earnings this week; some of the biggest players in the gaming industry were, too. And there was a sharp divide: While the outlook's good for console manufacturers, things are less peachy on the software side.
Sony and Microsoft both reported earlier in the week, and both companies' gaming divisions had pretty good quarters. While PS4 sales dropped, unsurprisingly, software and subscription revenue soared. And an optimistic outlook for the PS5 — Sony's hoping to sell 7.6 million by the end of March — and the subscription and software sales that should entail, led Sony to raise its full-year operating income forecast by 13%.
<ul class="ee-ul"><li>It was a similar state of affairs for Xbox. <a href="https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https://c.s-microsoft.com/en-us/CMSFiles/SlidesFY21Q1.pptx?version=745c4648-a7a7-5640-a515-8195e7b5b6b6" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Overall gaming revenue</a> was up 22% year-on-year, driven by a 30% boost in gaming content and services. Both companies' results were a reminder that as game purchases shift toward digital, console manufacturers stand to win big.</li><li>Facebook, the newest entrant to the console wars, is also doing well: It said Oculus Quest 2 preorders were <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/30/21541535/oculus-quest-2-preorders-sales-developers-zuckerberg" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">five times higher</a> than the original Quest's, <a href="https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/gaming/is-vr-finally-going-mainstream?rebelltitem=4#rebelltitem4" target="_self">confirming Protocol reporting</a> that the new VR headset is a huge hit.</li></ul><p><strong>But buried in Microsoft's release was one worrying number.</strong> While a 30% boost in content and services revenue is good, it's a far cry from the 65% growth it reported in the previous quarter. That's reflective of a broader trend: Gaming's COVID-accelerated growth is slowing down.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><ul class="ee-ul"><li>Take Activision, for instance. Though it <a href="https://venturebeat.com/2020/10/29/activision-blizzard-beats-expectations-with-1-95-billion-in-revenue-for-q3-2020/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">beat expectations</a>, its monthly active user numbers were down from 125 million in Q2 to 111 million in Q3. And its "tepid forecast," <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-29/activision-falls-after-issuing-cautious-fourth-quarter-outlook?sref=18veDlX6" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">as Bloomberg put it</a>, led to a sizable stock drop Friday.</li><li>Ubisoft's situation is even worse, thanks to <a href="https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-10-29-ubisoft-delays-far-cry-6-and-rainbow-six-quarantine-in-latest-financial-report" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">COVID-linked delays</a> of the new Rainbow Six and Far Cry games. It <a href="https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/ubisoft-cuts-full-guidance-covid-193705495.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">cut its full-year forecast</a> as a result, and its stock plunged 7%.</li></ul><p>To be sure, the situation isn't awful: Growth is still strong. But it does seem that the huge boom from earlier in the year is coming to an end, and we're approaching something more like normality again. In a market with consistently high expectations, normal often isn't good enough.</p><p><em>This story will feature in Protocol Gaming, our weekly guide to the business of gaming. </em><a href="http://protocol.com/newsletters" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Subscribe here</em></a><em>.</em></p>
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Shakeel Hashim ( @shakeelhashim) is a growth manager at Protocol, based in London. He was previously an analyst at Finimize covering business and economics, and a digital journalist at News UK. His writing has appeared in The Economist and its book, Uncommon Knowledge.
Power
Despite an early-week scare, cloud earnings finish strong
SAP's disappointing results had investors worried that a weak economy had finally caught up with the titans of enterprise tech, but AWS, Microsoft and Google are still going strong.
All three major vendors reported strong revenue growth this week.
Image: Protocol and Gonza
October 30, 2020
Tom Krazit ( @tomkrazit) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering cloud computing and enterprise technology out of the Pacific Northwest. He has written and edited stories about the technology industry for almost two decades for publications such as IDG, CNET, paidContent, and GeekWire. He served as executive editor of Gigaom and Structure, and most recently produced a leading cloud computing newsletter called Mostly Cloudy.
October 30, 2020
At a moment of great uncertainty for the world economy, with a new wave of the pandemic looming and one of the most consequential U.S. elections in decades around the corner, it's still a pretty good time to be in the cloud computing business.
AWS, Microsoft and Google all continued to benefit from the generational shift away from self-managed data centers to at least some degree of cloud computing during the third quarter of 2020. All three major vendors reported strong revenue growth this week but appear to be very closely watching an unsteady economy that could be forced into lockdown once again this winter.
<p>AWS continues to lead this pack, <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201029006208/en/Amazon.com-Announces-Quarter-Results" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">recording $11.6 billion in revenue</a>, a 29% jump compared to the previous year. On a conference call following the release of its results, Amazon Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky pointed out that a notable number of customers are looking to cut short-term costs by optimizing their usage of AWS' cloud services, but that the long-term growth trend seems unchanged.</p>
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</div></p><p>Microsoft also continues to reap the benefits of its decision five years ago to completely reorient the company around cloud computing even as it refuses to disclose the amount of revenue generated by Azure, its flagship cloud infrastructure service. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-azure-cloud-revenue-estimates-2020-10" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Back-of-the-envelope math suggests</a> that Azure pulled in around $6.3 billion, a significant chunk of the $15.2 billion in quarterly revenue Microsoft attributed to its "commercial cloud" business and a 48% increase compared to last year, the strongest growth rate of the three.</p>
<p>For its part, while Google was "later than peers" to capitalize on cloud computing, as Alphabet Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat put it on the company's earnings call, <a href="https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2020Q3_alphabet_earnings_release.pdf?cache=514fb58" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">it recorded a 44% jump in overall Google Cloud revenue</a>. That number — $3.4 billion — includes revenue from the newly rechristened Google Workspace office productivity service as well as Google Cloud Platform.</p>
<p>"The point that Sundar [Pichai, Alphabet CEO] and I have underscored is that we are investing aggressively" in the future of Google Cloud, Porat said. To that effect, Google plans to disclose additional details about Google Cloud's financial performance when the company reports fourth-quarter earnings, including historical performance, she said.</p>
<p>No one can predict with any certainty how the economy will fare if widespread lockdowns become the norm again during the winter months in the Northern Hemisphere, which could force businesses to delay capital spending projects like tech infrastructure upgrades. While cloud infrastructure computing users tend to save money over the long run compared to running their own servers, they often see a short-term increase in computing costs as they transition their applications and learn how to use cloud services efficiently.</p>
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</div></p><p>That could be enough to put potential cloud buyers off making any big purchases for the next six months until the extent of the latest wave of the pandemic is better understood. But, in a way, extended work-from-home orders are also good for cloud computing; after all, if you're managing your own equipment, somebody's going to have to go into the office to replace that broken hard drive or fix that configuration error.</p>
<p>"What we have learned over the last nine months or so is the best way for any business to ensure both resilience, as well as pivot and transform and reimagine how to work with some of the constraints, is digital tech," said Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, on his own conference call earlier in the week. </p>
<p>Enterprise vendors that have been slower to embrace the cloud may have had a rougher time during the third quarter, as data center customers put off spending decisions. <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-26/sap-s-disappointing-results-are-warning-for-u-s-tech-earnings?sref=18veDlX6" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">SAP's disappointing results</a> Sunday evening had many investors worried that the broader enterprise market was in for a slowdown, but that doesn't appear to be the case; ServiceNow (led by former SAP CEO Bill McDermott) <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/29/servicenows-mcdermott-firms-planning-for-remote-work-through-2021.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">recorded strong demand</a> for its cloud-based automation software during the third quarter.</p>
<p>Indeed, sales of traditional IT equipment seem to be faring the worst at the moment. Microsoft's server operating system business actually declined during the third quarter, although it faced a tough comparison against last year when <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2019/looming-end-support-deadline-windows-server-2008-everyone-excited-huge-cloud-migration-opportunity/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">an end-of-support deadline</a> for older Windows Server software loomed. And Intel <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/21/intel-intc-earnings-q3-2020.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">reported a decline in revenue from its data center group</a> during the third quarter, with a shocking 47% slump in chip revenue from customers other than the cloud providers themselves.</p>
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</div></p><p>One truth exposed by this challenging year is that companies that have invested in modern enterprise tech have fared better than peers that have dragged their heels over the past few years. They've been able to adapt more quickly to upheavals in their business models and better manage remote workforces, among lots of other things.</p>
<p>Whatever happens over the next six months, that will still be true on the other side of this historic period. And as the cloud market starts to mature, the competition will start to get interesting.</p>
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Tom Krazit ( @tomkrazit) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering cloud computing and enterprise technology out of the Pacific Northwest. He has written and edited stories about the technology industry for almost two decades for publications such as IDG, CNET, paidContent, and GeekWire. He served as executive editor of Gigaom and Structure, and most recently produced a leading cloud computing newsletter called Mostly Cloudy.
People
After discontinuing free trials, Netflix plans StreamFest promotion
The streaming service is looking to first test a free weekend in India.
Anyone who wants to keep watching after the conclusion of the two-day event will have to sign up for a regular account.
Photo: Thibault Penin
October 20, 2020
Janko Roettgers (@jank0) is a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.
October 20, 2020
Netflix is looking to promote its service with a 48-hour free streaming event, confirmed COO Greg Peters during the company's Q3 2020 earnings call Tuesday afternoon. Netflix is looking to first test the free streaming offer in India, and may bring it to other countries in the following months.
"We think that giving everyone in a country access to Netflix for free for a weekend could be a great way to expose a bunch of new people to the amazing stories that we have," Peters said. "Really creating an event, and hopefully get a bunch of those folks to sign up."
<p>Protocol was first to report earlier Tuesday that a recent version of the company's Android app includes mentions of a promotional event called StreamFest that's scheduled for Dec. 4 (hat tip to <a href="https://twitter.com/MishaalRahman" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Mishaal Rahman</a>). A Netflix spokesperson confirmed the plans for the event Tuesday morning, telling Protocol: "We're always looking at different marketing promotions to attract new members and give them a great Netflix experience."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>If it happens as teased in the app's code, StreamFest will be accessible via any device that Netflix is currently available on, and users won't have to enter their credit card number to access free streaming. "We don't need any payment details — just your love and undivided attention," according to a text string found in the app. However, anyone who wants to keep watching after the conclusion of the two-day event will have to sign up for a regular account.</p><p>There seems to be some limitation on the number of people able to access the promotion, as one of the in-app text string informs users that "Netflix StreamFest is at capacity." Netflix frequently tests new features with a subset of its audience; limiting access could be one way to test StreamFest metrics against other forms of promotion.</p><p>Netflix's plans to launch StreamFest surface just days after the company <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/13/21514661/netflix-free-trial-us-cancel-content-sampling-streaming" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">discontinued 30-day free trials</a> in the U.S. The event is similar to the way premium TV networks like HBO and Showtime have been promoting their programming for years. Showtime, for instance, was available for free <a href="https://www.freepreview.tv/showtime-free-preview-on-xfinity-3465" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">to Comcast Xfinity cable subscribers</a> for 48 hours in August.</p><p>Netflix's Q3 results came in below the company's already-cautious forecast. During the quarter, Netflix added 2.2 million paying subscribers worldwide, including less than 200,000 in North America. Executives attributed much of that to the company's outsized growth during the early months of COVID, and said that Netflix already had added more subscribers during the first nine months of 2020 than during all of 2019.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>The pandemic also affected Netflix's production schedule, but co-CEO Ted Sarandos said that the company was on schedule to finish 150 productions by the end of the year. "We're back to near-steady state in physical production," Sarandos said. "Materially, we're back in business."</p><p><em>This post was updated throughout following Netflix's Q3 2020 earnings call.</em></p>
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Janko Roettgers (@jank0) is a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.
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January 15, 2021 13:45 EST
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