I forgot that detail lol. Let’s take energy weapon technology that can shoot in a perfectly straight line…and artificially limit its range and utility.
Netflix’s model makes the individual business case for a specific show really complicated to make. What’s the marginal return on investment for a moderately successful show? If it’s not quite popular enough to get people to subscribe just for that show, then it’s basically a total loss (existing customers only are watching it, who were paying anyways). Looking at the financials of that one show in isolation, all they’ve got are costs with no revenue gain.
There is the broader argument to be made about how a show contributes to the overall catalog quality and how that ultimately drives subscriber growth, but this is a far more roundabout way of talking about value.
There’s no point asking questions like this. Star Trek has routinely featured technology that is so powerful that it’s world-breaking, and then promptly ignored it. The greatest modern example is the spore drive from discovery, but TNG has several as well.
With a recurring fee model, it’s in the business’s interest to make you use their service less while still paying, because if you use it too much they lose money, and if they price it according to how the power users use it then it won’t be a competitive deal.
You know I never thought of streaming services this way, but you’re absolutely right. Any service running on a regular subscription model falls into the “gym business model” where the ideal customer is one who is paying but never showing up. That way, their operational costs stay constant while revenue goes up.
The level of the NFT craze was kind of wild though. I remember watching this Hot Ones interview with Mila Kunis where she mentioned “connecting with the audience through NFTs” and “the audience owns the art to the show”.
At the time I remember thinking that I don’t really understand how that would work in practice or what value NFTs really bring to this situation. I just assumed I didn’t understand. Turns out…nobody did. It’s just a bunch of bullshit.