A lot of expass spin-offs have resulted from the MoviePass idea. I was working with a comedy club for a while that they were doing laugh pass to have tickets to comedy shows all over the country. To get there, we needed more people in the Midwest than we needed more of the average consumer. And that takes time because you get those heavy users and those users in expensive markets. That was the biggest kind of determinant is, you know, you need more time in those all you can eat programs.
Mitch Lowe has been a significant disruptor of Hollywood's distribution models over the past two decades, promoting all-you-can-eat subscription models on personal devices and at the box office. Netflix famously redefined consumer video distribution while Movie Pass infamously imploded in 2019. Today, Mitch speaks openly with James about why his companies ended up on their trajectories while describing the analytics that factor into their business plans.
For a deeper dive into the dramatic evolution of the entertainment business, read or listen to Mitch's new memoir: Watch and Learn: How I Turned Hollywood Upside Down with Netflix, Redbox, and MoviePass―Lessons in Disruption
Other topics include:
- How Netflix's DVD queue saved the company (11:12)
- The genius of Netflix's auto-play feature (12:46)
- Content business models: ad sales vs. subscription (14:29)
- What led to Movie Pass' downfall? (17:46)
- Movie studios' stranglehold on movie theater pricing models (21:52)
- How Movie Pass used 'the float' in its business operations (29:22)
- The cost of acquiring digital distribution film rights (33:44)
- When does streaming become a commodity? (38:01)
- What will Netflix do to overcome the commoditization of the streaming market? (39:47)
- TikTok's algorithm vs streaming services (52:26)
(Editor’s note: Topic times don’t account for sponsor ads and may appear a few minutes later in the episode on your podcast player)
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