Netflix has 180 million more subscribers that Paramount Plus, which probably means 10 times the cash flow, which means it can produce more content, which means it can attract more subscribers.
This is true, but it fails to take into account back catalog the legacy media companies such as Paramount, Disney, NBC Comcast, and to some extent even HBO have to fall back on. They gain subscribers simply to watch the content they made 20+ years ago, and then on top of that, have in many cases just been running sequel and spinoff series on things they already know work. Sure, not every spinoff series works, but it's sort of like they're throwing darts at a known dartboard in a well lit room; Netflix is throwing darts in the general vicinity of where it believes a dartboard to be based on the sounds its heard from getting lucky in the past in a pitch black room. The consequence is that Netflix pays a lot more money finding its hits than its competitors do.
This isn't insurmountable, and Netflix has shown itself to be full of innovative means of handling this reality. But while the bulk of the last 10 years was just gathering subscribers to pay for other peoples' content (remember, until recently, The Office, Friends, Star Trek, and Disney movies were ALL on Netflix), the next 10 will require them to do more in the way of finding original content that works, and acquiring things from smaller/foreign studios (a la Squid Game). They've got practice, but they've lost their money printer.
Rarely does a show get killed halfway through a season unlike network tv where your favourite pilot only lasts 4 weeks.
The problem is rarely does a show last more than a few seasons and that is mostly because of how contracts are written where you pay low for an unknown actors for 2/3 seasons and when those contracts are up for renewal you move on.
On network tv after 4 seasons it can be sold for syndication so many shows get cancelled. For netflix the money spent on new seasons keeps existing customers but does nothing to attract new ones. This forces netflix to create new shows that hopefully attract new subs.
Paramount has done just fine for the last century. If you mean as a streaming platform, they only recently started even trying...and thanks to Star Trek, they've had a pretty decent start.
I feel it goes without saying that big budgets = more (and better odds) opportunities for big success because you can afford to take more cracks at it.
More money in is more rolls of the dice though which is important. It’s also leverage to build/buy brands around successes which is basically the play all the big content publishers have made lately.
