Netflix just dropped its Q4 2025 earnings, and the numbers are suitably astronomical: 325 million paid subscribers globally, up from 301.2 million a year ago. They're now "serving an audience approaching one billion people globally," according to the company. Oh, and they're planning to boost content spending by 10% to $20 billion in 2026.
Which raises the obvious question nobody at Netflix headquarters seems to be asking: Have you tried making better shows?
Don't get me wrong - the numbers are impressive. Revenue hit $12.05 billion in Q4 (up 17.6%), net income surged to $2.41 billion (up 29.4%), and their ad business more than doubled to $1.5 billion for the year. Wall Street is thrilled. Subscribers keep piling on. The machine is humming.
But here's the thing about spending more money: it doesn't automatically translate to quality. Netflix has been playing the volume game for years now - throw everything at the wall, see what sticks, cancel it after two seasons anyway. Their library is an ocean of content where genuinely great shows like The Queen's Gambit or Beef drown alongside forgettable dreck that gets quietly memory-holed.
The spending increase is particularly notable because it's front-loaded into the first half of 2026, which Netflix says will result in "higher operating income growth in the second half." Translation: they're buying a bunch of stuff now, hoping some of it works, and planning to coast on whatever hits by summer.
Meanwhile, their ad-supported tier is becoming a significant revenue driver - they're projecting to double ad revenue in 2026. Which is great for the bottom line, but let's be honest about what this means: Netflix is becoming regular TV. You know, the thing we all left cable to escape.
The irony is almost too perfect. Netflix disrupted the entire entertainment industry by offering unlimited, ad-free content for a flat fee. Now they're circling back to the ad-supported model while spending record amounts to fill their platform with... more stuff. Not necessarily better stuff. Just more.
Look, I want Netflix to succeed. When they're firing on all cylinders - when they give Bong Joon-ho money for whatever he wants, or let Rian Johnson make Glass Onion sequels, or greenlight genuinely weird passion projects - they can be incredible. But for every Squid Game, there are dozens of shows that feel algorithmically generated to hit demographic targets without actually saying anything.
With $20 billion to spend in 2026, Netflix could commission the next generation of prestige television. They could take real creative risks. They could let shows breathe past two seasons. They could prioritize storytelling over endless expansion.
Or they could just make more stuff, cancel it arbitrarily, and count their subscribers.
Guess which one seems more likely.
Hollywood used to have a saying: "Nobody knows anything." Netflix seems determined to prove that even with all the data in the world, that's still true.
