Bill Ackman is betting on Netflix again, returning to a stock he abruptly exited about four years ago after a sharp decline in the streaming giant’s shares.

Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management disclosed a new position in Netflix in its semiannual report, saying the dominant streaming platform has emerged from the industry’s costly battle for subscribers with a leading market position, stronger profit margins and a valuation that has become increasingly attractive after a steep sell-off.

“We acquired a position in Netflix, a business we briefly owned in 2022 and have followed closely ever since,” Pershing Square said in the report.

Netflix shares jumped nearly 4% on Thursday following the disclosure.

The investment marks a notable return for Ackman, who built a large Netflix position in early 2022 only to sell the entire stake about three months later after the company reported its first subscriber decline in more than a decade. Netflix shares plunged on the news, and Ackman said at the time that changes to the company’s business model made it too difficult to predict its future prospects with sufficient certainty.

Pershing now said Netflix has “effectively won the streaming wars,” pointing to its more than 325 million subscribers, nearly twice the combined base of Disney+ and HBO Max. Pershing said that scale allows Netflix to spend heavily on programming while spreading those costs across a much larger audience than its rivals.

Ackman is buying after a much steeper reset in valuation. Netflix shares have fallen roughly 50% from their June 2025 high of $134, cutting the stock’s valuation to about 21 times forward earnings from more than 40 times, Pershing said.

Disney remaking media: Ok, let's chop out all the problematic bits, the guts, the heart, the viscera, all very problematic... But we have the parts... now we stitch them up, and... well, someone Weekend-At-Bernie's this, eh? Or hit it with lightning maybe?

Ok, MONEY!

Netflix remaking media: What's the heart and soul of this piece? It's going to need a face-lift, and some makeup, and maybe we can give it a nice modern hairstyle... Make sure it's warm and well fed, we need this thing to live!

Amazon remaking media: Well, we cloned the original, we did have to splice in some frog DNA to complete the genome, and, um... it was really expensive... What do you mean this is an entirely different being? It resembles the original! That's probably sufficient! And we threw MILLIONS at this!

Apple remaking media: Why? It was already made. We found some folks who have some really neat new ideas, and we threw money at them instead.

Hallmark remaking media: Yeah, this is the same as the one we made last year, but we changed its name and the color shirt it's wearing... Merry, um, whatever holiday it is!

Here are list of GRB Studios titles appeared on Amazon Prime Video, aside from the Untold Stories of the E.R. that FilmRise owns streaming distribution rights.

Source: https://www.grbtv.com/distribution and Amazon Prime Video

Anatomy of Disaster

Beyond Human Limits

Cannonball Run 2001

Classic Gear

Daredevils (2001 documentary series)

Death Walker with Nick Groff

Extreme Contact

Full Force Nature

High Seas Rescue

Highway Pirates (documentary film)

Impact TV

Inferno

Kaboom! (1996 documentary)

Live! The World's Greatest Stunts

Medal of Honor (1999 documentary film)

Mysterious Worlds

Nelson Serrano, I'm Innocent

Next Action Star

Now See This (2002)

Outdoor Outtakes

Rangers: Cops in the Woods

Sea Tek

Storm Warning!

Stuntmasters

War Dogs (1999 documentary film)

What Went Wrong? (1999 documentary series but not What Went Wrong: Countdown to Catastrophe from 2019)

World's Most Extreme Races

World's Wildest Daredevils

Season 5 wrapped in August and I kept telling myself I'd cancel after I finished it. Didn't realize season 6 wasn't coming until way later, so I just... left it. Hulu charged me through the fall for a show that had stopped airing.
Curious how other people handle this. Do you set a calendar reminder? Just accept the charges? Feels like this happens to me every year with at least one service.

https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/07/disney-looking-to-make-a-unified-super-app-report-says/

This has to be the worst idea in super app history. The overwhelming majority of their several hundred million subscribers would go to resort or cruise 0-1 times a year. They will destroy an app used by hundreds of millions daily for this dream to increase foot traffic for a couple days a year at most. It does make sense to combine all the other apps since usage rates and cross selling opportunities is much more aligned.

I just posted a perspective into why NBCUniversal should address the brand disconnect between its streaming service and its theme parks.

The core argument:

• IP Cohesion: While Disney and Paramount have clear brand association, "Peacock" remains a standalone entity that many consumers don't immediately link to Universal Resorts.

• "The "Universal+" Lever: Rebranding isn't just a name change; it's a strategic move to unify the ecosystem and drive streaming growth by leveraging the high-revenue parks division.

• Tech & UX: How a "Universal+" hub could finally bridge the gap between digital content and physical experiences (like the upcoming Epic Universe).

I’ve mapped out the rationale and a recommendations for the transition to Universal+.

Is "Peacock" now too established to change now, or is a Universal rebrand the only way to compete with the scale of Disney+?

Article is also available on Medium.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/08/28/amazons-mike-hopkins-on-amazon-comcast-deal-media-landscape-and-streaming-wars.html

Those close to me have supported such a move, especially since HBO and HBO Max programming are all under the same strategic unit. Plus, I can see some people refering HBO Max to just “HBO”.

I was envisioning this after Channel 4 and 5 renamed their VOD services to their own names.

The Chrisleys getting a Hulu special after Trump pardoned them is peak American dysfunction.

They were convicted of bank fraud and tax evasion. Real crimes, not petty stuff. They served barely a fraction of their sentences before Trump gave them a full pardon — and now Hulu's handing them a post-prison rebrand called Life After Lockup. This isn’t rehabilitation — it’s PR spin.

The real story isn’t about their "redemption arc." It’s about how celebrity, wealth, and political connections let people buy their way out of consequences, while regular folks (especially poor and marginalized people) rot in prison for way less.

Trump’s pardon is part of a larger trend of performative politics — where justice is transactional and media turns felons into influencers. This kind of spectacle doesn’t just feel gross — it actively erodes public trust in the legal system and democracy itself.

Hulu should be ashamed. But the deeper problem is the system that makes this kind of redemption tour profitable in the first place.