US Netflix users are about to see a price hike across its three plans.
The basic single stream, SD plan: Was $8, now $9.
The general 4-stream, HD plan (the most popular one): Was $11, now $13
The high end fancy-pants Ultra HD: Was $14, now $16.
The new prices are in effect now, with Wall Street sending stock prices up more than 6%. The new prices will also affect 40 Latin America markets who are billed in US$.
Great news Grace & Frankie fans - the show was just commissioned for its 6th season by Netflix. Your hard-earned Netflix dollars at work.
The next Sophia Coppola movie is coming to Apple. Starring Bill Murray and Rashida Jones, On The Rocks is about a young mother who reconnects with her larger-than-life playboy father on an adventure through New York.
It began with a tweet:
This activated online lobby group Sleeping Giants, which has waged multiple successful campaigns in motivating advertisers from sponsoring TV shows, notably on Fox News. Within the first 24 hours, Roku have said that they are a neutral platform. Meanwhile, competitor platforms like Amazon don’t carry the channel.
Amazon, meanwhile, has just launched its $40 low-cost Fire TV streaming device with an upgraded remote control. The company has also reported that it now has 30 million people using Fire TV - that is 3 million more users than Roku currently have.
Let’s see what Roku’s stance is over the coming days and whether they withstand the pressure from Sleeping Giants. Think an action group like Sleeping Giants who primarily target advertisers can’t impact upon Roku? Consider the new Roku Channel - Roku’s new ad-supported streaming channel.
NBC has announced plans for its own streaming service. It will be free for people who can authenticate a cable TV account, but $12 for everybody else.
As Red Dead Redemption 2 players will know, the antagonists in the game are The Pinkerton National Detective Agency. What I didn’t realise is that the Pinkertons are real and is still a company trading today. They’re not happy with their portrayal as the bad guys in the game (which is weird, because the main characters are actually outlaws robbing banks and murdering people, which actually makes the Pinkertons the good guys) and are suing Rockstar Games.
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And finally…
I’m going to be doing a bit more movie stuff in the newsletter going forward. There’s so much bleed with movies being produced for streaming platforms that it seems that I can’t ignore it completely.
And so, with that, here’s the brand new Spider-Man: Far From Home trailer, which thrilled me greatly this morning.
