Netflix just won't chill. The streaming service reported better than expected first-quarter earnings on Monday.
"It's primarily driven by the quality," said Kyle Robertson, the founder and editor-in-chief of StartU, a digital publication covering start-ups. He said the streaming service's 7.4 million new subscribers in the first quarter were likely attracted by content more than the volume of Netflix's titles.
The Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has said the company will spend between $7.5 and $8 billion on original content this year as it prepares to do battle with Disney's new streaming service.
"They have competition coming from all quarters," said Paul Verna, principal analyst at eMarketer, said in an interview on Cheddar. "It's only a matter of time before Apple starts to seriously get into the streaming video world with a subscription service."
In recent news, Netflix has been battling an international feud with the Cannes Film Festival, resulting in the streaming platform pulling its movies from the festival. In the earnings note, Hastings explains a new rule that means a film competition at Cannes cannot be watched on Netflix in France for the next three years. Never wanting to do that to its international users, Netflix will continue to sit out until further notice.
Netflix also announced expectations for the second quarter, when it aims to add nearly 1 million domestic subscribers and more than 4 million new international users.
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/netflix-wont-chill).
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
