Hi! Netflix is reportedly considering moving away from the "binge model", towards episodic weekly releases. Everything old is new again. Welcome to episode 289 of the Chartr newsletter, today we explore:
Spooked
"It's not what you don't know that gets you in trouble, it's what you know that just ain't so". Those words from Mark Twain were relevant again yesterday as markets digested the latest inflation data. Investors were expecting inflation in August to follow the good news in July and continue to cool off. Instead, consumer prices actually rose 0.1% relative to July and core inflation, which strips out energy and food, rose 0.6% in the month.
That rise caught investors off guard, as higher inflation gives the Fed a stronger incentive to keep raising interest rates, sending US stocks (S&P 500 Index) down more than 4% yesterday. As visualized above, that was the worst day of the year so far and you have to go back to the highly volatile 2020 to find a sharper one-day decline for US equities.
A silver lining
There was some good news out in the report — average gas prices across the country were down 26% since June. Unfortunately, the savings you make at the gas station are likely to go towards your groceries. Food prices jumped again, meaning that they are up 11.4% on the year, the sharpest rise since 1979. With every inflation report that comes and goes, Costco's famous $1.50 hot dogs just look better and better.
Queen Elizabeth's sad passing last week was one of those breaking news stories that you might remember where you were when you heard it.
Indeed, global interest in the monarch's passing was remarkable, with more than 8 million hits to the Wikipedia article for Elizabeth II last Thursday. That's the most traffic any Wikipedia article has received on any single day this year, per data from Pageviews.
A year of news
Intrigued by the Wikipedia data, we collated the pageviews for the most viewed English-language articles on any given day. Perhaps predictably — and sadly — traffic for the online encyclopedia tends to spike for the passing away of notable people. Articles on hollywood stars Anne Heche and Bob Saget, drummer Taylor Hawkins and former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe have been among the most-viewed — all of whom have passed away this year.
Outside of obituaries, articles on Roe v. Wade, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Jada Pinkett Smith and Amber Heard have been among the most read.Go deeper: check out the full list of the most read articles on Wikipedia for last year or 2020.
The big awards for the small screen
On Monday night some 5.9 million Americans tuned in to watch a TV award show about TV shows. The 74th Emmy Awards crowned a Chartr-office favorite, Succession, for Outstanding Drama Series, while Apple TV's Ted Lasso took Outstanding Comedy Series.
Viewership for the Emmy Awards show itself was down 20% on last year, marking the 7th year out of the last 10 in which viewership has fallen. That decline follows in the footsteps of The Academy Awards, which has also seen waning TV viewership in the last decade.
Competition in TV has arguably never been more fierce. Last year there were 559 English-language scripted shows, a record high and more than double the number produced just a decade ago, when 266 shows were made.
HBO, including its streaming effort HBO Max, had a lot to celebrate. The network took home a total of 38 Emmys across its shows, more than its main streaming rival Netflix, which brought home 26. Claiming more Emmy Awards isn't the only way Netflix wants to copy their rivals in future. In addition to introducing ads, the company is also reportedly thinking about ditching the "binge model" that they popularized over the last decade. Going forward the company may look to slow down its episode releases, presumably in a bid to encourage subscribers to stick around.
Check out the full list of 2022 Emmy results here.
• What proportion of an average salary does a new iPhone cost in different countries.
• Queen Elizabeth II oversaw massive changes in society during her 70 year-reign. These 10 charts from the FT explore how Britain changed from 1952-2022.
• Which states are getting younger.• What makes a good cold call? Gong crunched the numbers on 100,000+ conversations, distilling their findings into one free e-book: the 9 elements of highly effective cold calls.**
• The child poverty rate in the US hit a record low of 5.2% last year, according to new data.• Feel like you always land on “Go to Jail” when playing Monopoly? There's math behind why. A heatmap based off more than 100,000 games shows it's one of the most frequently landed-on tiles.
• Cytonics has developed CYT-108, a variant of the A2M protein, that preclinical research shows has the potential to reverse the progression of cartilage damage in arthritic joints. Help beat osteoarthritis, the most prolific joint disease in the world — invest in Cytonics today.**
• Some interesting takeaways from listening to 223 startups pitch their innovative ideas at Y Combinator.
• When will we hit "peak human" on Earth? Most estimates land somewhere around 2075, when the human population on Earth will hit between 9.4bn and 10.4bn.
**This is sponsored content.
