The Reformed Broker

Netflix vs. its content

Netflix stock is skyrocketing – leaving behind the stocks of Time Warner and other producers of the content that Netflix distributes.

Photo illustration / Paul Sakuma / AP / File

Companies who create the films and television shows that Netflix profits from have started to grumble about the success of Netflix stock.

By Joshua M. Brown Guest blogger

Dec. 14, 2010, 3:20 p.m. ET

Imagine a world in which Coca-Cola ($KO) barely scrapes by while the guy who refills the soda machines is on the cover of Fortune Magazine with a cigar dangling out of his mouth, his boot atop a case of Diet Coke.

It is almost exactly like the world that Netflix ($NFLX) currently inhabits. The company is on a tear while the studios and content producers watch with growing jealousy and malice in their eyes. Time Warner ($TWX) is now verbalizing what many of these media giants are itching to say.

Here's the money quote from Tim Arango's NYT piece on the grumbling:

Now many of the companies that make the shows and movies that Netflix delivers to mailboxes, computer screens and televisions — companies whose stocks have not enjoyed the same frothy rise, and whose chief executives have not won the same accolades — are pushing back, arguing that the company is overhyped, and vowing to charge much more to license their content.

“It’s a little bit like, is the Albanian army going to take over the world?” said Jeffrey L. Bewkes, the chief executive of Time Warner, in an interview last week. “I don’t think so.”

Oh boy...

Source:

Time Warner Takes a Shot at Netflix (NYT)