I'd like to solicit opinions on this issue. Let's say I'm a super genius who has come up with some great new way to attract new subscribers, perhaps I've gotten Steven Spielberg to create and direct all the episodes of a new TV series exclusively for The 101.
Steven says, "Hey, get DirecTV to put up a $10 Million total budget for my show, and I'm in".
Question:
Since there's really no way to determine if a new subscriber has joined DirecTV solely because of Spielberg's new show, DirecTV has no way to specifically determine what the investment returns are on the show.
The best I can do is to say: The ARPU of a subscriber is about $80. If you back out the direct costs attributable to a subscriber, you net out about $50 per subscriber per month. Given that the churn rate is about 1.5%, doesn't this suggest that it won't take very many of these unidentifiable subscribers to turn the show a healthy profit, given the low rate of churn?
Obviously, this scenario ignores many other issues, but at the core, what are people's thoughts?