Netflix loses more customers than expected

A lightening rod of a company that goofed badly by raising prices and trying to spin off its DVD operations - and is now paying for it. Netflix reported losing 810,000 customers between the second and third quarter - more than had been expected - and it's warning that the last three months of the year won't be any great shakes either. Some analysts are focusing on domestic churn, a measure of subscriber turnover, which jumped to 6.3 percent in the third quarter from 4.2 percent in the prior three months. Despite all the hooha over defections, and a big drop in its after-hours stock price, the company still reported a 60 percent jump in earnings and a 49 percent increase in revenues. In an earlier time, those metrics would have mattered, but not today. Clearly, this is not a company for widows and orphans. (Bloomberg)