Another great post, dude.
I mentioned it before on another thread, but I agree: people are fickle and there's nothing special Apple can do to make their movie/tv productions any more well produced or popular than another media giant's content. Amazon had a show this past fall with JULIA ROBERTS... that no one watched. And they've been producing shows longer than Apple has.
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The difference between HBO and Netflix (at least, before AT&T acquired Time Warner), is that HBO actually is profitable (they still are, although AT&T is now swamped in debt), while Netflix is famously not. They owe $8 billion, and have already stated that they will be in the black -$3B at the end of 2019... for the 2nd year in a row. If large amounts of young people turn off the service during the school year, they are in big trouble (not to mention losing all the Disney/WB/HBO/NBC content in the next year or so).