Time Warner’s Jeff Bewkes Pretends Netflix Is No Threat

admin — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 17:49:21 -0400

Over the last year Netflix has emerged as the dominant force in the world of streaming video, accounting for 20% of all the internet data consumed in the U.S. during primetime.

But Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes isn't worried about Netflix's growing presence in the media landscape.

“It’s a little bit like, is the Albanian army going to take over the world?” Bewkes told The New York Times in an interview last week. “I don’t think so.”

Actually, at this point Netflix is roughly 7 times larger than the entire nation of Albania. What's more, as a new report from Forrester shows, the Internet is now as popular as television in the United States.

Bewkes hopes the high price of licensing content will turn Netflix into an entertainment ghetto. “At $8 to $10, it doesn’t have the economics to support high-value programming,” he said.

Will skyrocketing costs for digital licensing cripple Netflix? Doubtful. It is already trimming expenses by transitioning from physical DVD rentals to streaming only plans.

Even folks who use Hulu prefer Netflix. A recent study found just 4 percent of Hulu users pay the monthly fee for Hulu Plus, while 88 percent were Netflix subscribers.

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Time Warner’s Jeff Bewkes Pretends Netflix Is No Threat