With a market capitalization currently north of $ 27 Billion Wall Street darling Netflix has a few options your average TV production company does not: Debt issuance. Netflix just issued another $1.5 BILLION in debt, which according to Stream Daily will be used at least in part to help fund new original content. After all, bringing House of Cards back for a third season certainly won’t come cheaply. Variety has the details.

by Todd Spangler, Variety:

Netflix is raising $1.5 billion in additional long-term debt — up from its original $1 billion target, announced earlier Monday — the proceeds from which the company said it plans to use for content acquisitions and other general purposes, including potential acquisitions.

The company late Monday announced the pricing of an offering of $700 million aggregate principal amount of 5.50% senior notes due 2022 and $800 million aggregate principal amount of 5.875% senior notes due 2025.

Netflix said the sale of the debt is expected to close Feb. 5, 2015, subject to usual closing conditions.

Read More @ Variety.com

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Since going public just over a decade ago, Netflix has changed the rules about where, how and when TV shows and movies get watched. And more recently by making huge bets producing some of the most creative, dynamic and critically acclaimed series on “television”  in-house, Netflix has also redefined how shows gets made in the first place. In a field as competitive and risky as producing world-class original broadcast content, how has such a young company managed to find so much success?  It’s all in the algorithm. And its name is Ted.

by Tim Wu, The New Yorker:

[excerpt] … Studios and television networks have long made decisions about what to produce based on the intuitions of a limited number of executives. Television studios have Nielson ratings, and movie studios have box-office sales, to help guide them. But those are relatively simple metrics, and notoriously unreliable; as the screenwriter William Goldman famously said, “nobody, nobody—not now, not ever—knows the least goddamn thing about what is or isn’t going to work at the box office.” As with the arrival of sabermetrics in baseball or the rise of pollsters in politics, the potential for the quants to change the industry—to really figure out what people want to watch—is clear.

Netflix and its chief content officer, Ted Sarandos, have been the most outspoken proponents of data-driven programming, which they say was behind the company’s biggest successes, such as “House of Cards” and “Orange is the New Black.” Soon after the début of “House of Cards,” David Carr, writing in the Times, pronounced that “Big bets are now being informed by Big Data.” In 2013, Kevin Spacey, the star of the show, said that Netflix had come to him and said, “We believe in you. We’ve run our data and it tells us that our audience would watch this series. We don’t need you to do a pilot. How many do you wanna do?”

Read More @ The New Yorker.com

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The Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday night yielded few real surprises but it was still well worth a watch.

We’re big fans of Netflix’s House of Cards however when Kevin Spacey won the SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series but wasn’t present to accept it, there was a piece of me that wished the award had gone to Peter Dinklage for Game Of Thrones instead.

Of course I’m hardly objective when it comes to Game. As I’ve written before it just happens to be the best series on TV. Or maybe ever (just one man’s opinion)… See: Hollywood Is Losing The Battle to Epic TV – Like Game of Thrones

In fact, despite also being a huge fan of Downton Abbey, when the popular and soapy Masterpiece Theater drama also beat out Game of Thrones for the Best Ensemble in a Drama Series prize, I was once again vexed. I love Downton Abbey and have watched every episode, but c’mon you tell me which is more difficult;  delivering a great performance in a controlled, air-conditioned studio – or delivering an outstanding performance on location in the frozen tundra of Iceland?

Again, objectivity aside, you know I’m right. Which brings me to this latest little Game of Thrones news nugget. According to Stumble Upon, the lovely Sophie Turner who plays the cool-under-fire and rapidly maturing Sansa Stark on Game, will be taking over the role of psychic mutant Jean Grey in 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse.

You can read all about it here.

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