You Should Pay $19.99 for Netflix

I bet most folks keep cable or satellite for the same reasons we do -- a limited amount of first-run programming and live sports. Throw in an HBO and Showtime and you're easily paying over $100 a month for a small, hardly-filling meal at an overpriced French restaurant.

Netflix needs to find a way to tell this story. And charge more.

As it signs more exclusive deals, like the recent one with Disney (DIS), Netflix gathers pricing power with the consumer.

That, however, does not change its two-pronged predicament. One, big media fleeces Netflix for the content it knows Netflix desperately needs to remain valuable and competitive. Two, at $7.99/month how many more huge, exclusive Disney-like deals can Netflix expect to sign? Programmers do not want their premium content viewed by a growing Netflix subscriber base at a low all-you-can-eat price.

Netflix can't ramp from $7.99 to much more than $10.00 a month (if that) overnight. That's the company's own fault. However, it needs to do something -- sooner rather than later -- to get the revenue it deserves out of its subscriber base. Reed Hastings must get creative.

Follow @rocco_thestreet

--Written by Rocco Pendola in Santa Monica, Calif.

Rocco Pendola is TheStreet's Director of Social Media. Pendola's daily contributions to TheStreet frequently appear on CNBC and at various top online properties, such as Forbes.

« First ‹ Previous 1 2 3