Toby Howell

Netflix used to crank out tons of movies, tons of Netflix originals.

And in Q1 of 2026, they released 23 original movies.

It sounds like a lot of movies.

I mean, 23 and one quarter movies.

Ellison is pledging 30 over the entirety of the year.

But that's actually Netflix's lowest output since 2017.

They've been pulling back on films.

This feeds into their strategy of making better content, not more content.

But if you are an actor or you're a grip or you're anyone who works in the industry and you see Netflix say, hey, we want to make less movies, of course you're a little bit anxious.

What's even worse is that as we're being nickeled and dimed, the customer service experience has gotten ever worse.

Customer service phone time has gone up 60% over the last 20 years because companies are basically betting on the fact that you are going to lose steam, you're gonna lose enthusiasm for whatever issue you brought in,

and just give up, and that actually ends up driving revenue for those companies, because if you go into a call with the intention of canceling a service, and you end up giving up, that's still revenue going into the pockets of the service that you were trying to cancel.

A consumer raid survey found that 74% of customers reported a problem last year, that's up

double the rate that was recorded in 1976.

So people are not happy with their products or services they're receiving.

And yet when they go to customer service lines, they don't get good service there either.

And then a separate study found that company's revenue does tick up 14 to 200% simply by making it harder to cancel subscriptions to their product.

I'm thinking back to Cash App, which was fine last year for providing literally a fake customer service line

that just directed customers to a pre-recorded message.

This is how the companies are treating you right now.