Description: Say “so long” to the good old days of commercial-free viewing on Amazon Prime. The streaming giant announced that starting Monday, clients will start seeing commercials unless they cough up an added fee of $2.99 each month. Bloomberg’s Geetha Ranganathan notes that “It’s very difficult in the streaming world to make money.” This streaming transition appears to be one more example where tech upended a traditional business model, only to find that the transformed landscape was not the profit generator investors were after.

Date:  February 2, 2024

Source:  cbc.ca

 Link: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/cheap-ad-free-streaming-is-probably-gone-1.7102266

Discussion points:

1) How do you and your classmates feel about the insertion of ads into your streaming services?

2) What can consumers do to protest this format change?

3) The CBC article tells us about the profit margin on streaming services as compared to advertising. How do you calculate profit margin (Hint: See page 12-31 of Wiley’s Understanding Financial Accounting?