Holiday Cheer Heats Up Netflix

After spending millions on marketing to draw in hundreds of thousands of new subscribers to its Total Access plan, Blockbuster chased many of them away by scaling it down. Now it will surely drive away others with the new prices.

There was apparently something in Blockbuster's moves to cheer investors of both stocks: Blockbuster sheds customers it was losing money on, while Netflix picks up new subscribers, provided they don't mind standing in line behind less-active customers. Both stocks are up 20% in the past five trading days.

But as the above chart shows, those gains leave Netflix up 11% this year and Blockbuster down 21%, as of Wednesday. Once both companies disclose their fourth-quarter subscriber numbers, that gap could yawn even wider.

It may be too early to declare a winner in this bloody, drawn-out fistfight, but for now it belongs to Netflix.

After all, who do you know who got a Blockbuster Total Access subscription for Christmas?