Speaker Smoke Signals, Streaming’s Class System, Putin’s K.G.B. Origins

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon dispatch of Puck’s best new reporting.

First up today, streaming guru Julia Alexander details the industry convulsions and strategic initiatives broadening the moat between Netflix and its many hungry competitors. Has Sarandos’s streamer become the new cable TV?

Plus, below the fold: Julia Ioffe singularly captures the nuance and fury surrounding the tragedy in Israel. On The Town, Matt Belloni and Lucas Shaw dig into the controversy involving the latest round of streaming price hikes. In the third installment of her chart-topping About a Boy podcast, Julia explains how judo and the K.G.B. transformed Putin’s prospects as a child in the dvor. And on The Powers That Be, Abby Livingston and Peter Hamby offer an inside look at the central tensions plaguing the untimely House speaker race.

JULIA ALEXANDER

Ted Sarandos once said his goal was to become HBO faster than HBO could become Netflix. Instead, it looks like Netflix is simply becoming cable… leaving every other streamer, once again, racing to catch up.

JULIA IOFFE

Those who talk about a two-state solution are living in a world that hasn’t existed for a decade. Both sides have hardened to an exclusionary extreme that precludes compromise or coexistence. The events of the last week will ensure that even the embers of those hopes are doused cold.

MATTHEW BELLONI

Matt is joined by Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw to discuss yet another round of price hikes for ad-free streaming services like Disney+ and Netflix, how the business is evolving to push people into the ad-supported tiers, the disappearance of the streaming middle class, how much these subscription prices could be, and more.

JULIA IOFFE

Putin grows up as a small, scrawny kid in a poor neighborhood with few ways up. Enter judo and the K.G.B.