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A Fool Looks Back

By Rick Aristotle Munarriz | More Articles
March 26, 2011 | Comments (0)

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It's Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX  ) against the world.

CBS's (NYSE: CBS  ) Showtime is the latest turncoat, with the premium movie channel apparently gearing up to pull early episodes of Dexter, Californication, and other shows from Netflix's digital library.

The channel is getting ready to launch Showtime Anytime, a streaming service that it will make available to its subscribers at no additional cost. If Showtime wants the digital offering to help retain traditional subscribers, then being the exclusive source is in the channel's best interest.

The rub is that Netflix will still offer all of these seasons as rentals on DVD, so Showtime's decision to rein in streams may benefit Netflix as a DVD-delivery service. In other words, Netflix is being saved by its old-school fleet of regional distribution centers.

I guess you can teach a new-media company some old-media tricks.

Briefly in the news
And now let's take a quick look at some of the other stories that shaped our week.

  • Red Hat (NYSE: RHT  ) gets a tip of the hat for posting a better-than-expected quarterly report. Bookings climbed 30%, Red Hat's best quarterly showing in three years. Yes, there's some serious money to be made in open source.
  • Carnival (NYSE: CCL  ) is paying the price for costly bunker fuel. The world's largest cruise-ship operator slashed its profit guidance. Bookings are holding up, but pesky fuel prices are raining on the pool-deck party.
  • Sirius XM Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI  ) has initiated a tender offer to buy back all of its 3.25% convertible notes that were due later this year. The satellite-radio giant had its brush with mortality two years ago, but now it's making sure that it doesn't have any major debt-repayment milestones for a long time.
  • Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU  ) is working on a fast-booting operating system based on a simple search box. I guess you can say that China's leading search engine is thinking inside the box.

Until next week, I remain,

Rick Munarriz

Want to read more about Netflix? Add it to My Watchlist, which will find all of our Foolish analysis on this stock.

The Steve Jobs Betrayal
You may already know that in the final year of his life, Jobs revealed a stunning betrayal — and told his biographer, "I will spend my last dying breath... and every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank to right this wrong." What was it that made Jobs so irate — and why could it make a few in-the-know investors some major profits over the coming months and years?

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Baidu is a Motley Fool Rule Breakers recommendation. Netflix is a Motley Fool Stock Advisor selection. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools don't all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors.

Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz recommends windshield wiper fluid when trying to look back. He owns shares of Netflix and is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early. The Fool has a disclosure policy.


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Related Tickers

5/25/2012 4:00 PM
NFLX $70.22 Down -0.05 -0.07%
Netflix CAPS Rating: **
RHT $52.09 Down -0.53 -1.01%
Red Hat, Inc. CAPS Rating: **
SIRI $1.93 Down -0.06 -3.02%
Sirius XM Radio CAPS Rating: **
BIDU $117.59 Down -0.67 -0.57%
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CBS $31.56 Down -0.07 -0.22%
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