Netflix, the video-streaming service, released its first quarter earnings on Monday. As TechCrunch notes ^[1] in its write-up, “Depending on how many subscribers Comcast reports this quarter, Netflix might surpass it to become the largest entertainment subscription business in the U.S.” The company added 3.6 million total subscribers for the quarter, with 3.3 million of them coming from within the U.S. (That’s a bit more than the total population of Iowa.) In all, the company’s subscriber base has grown by almost 70 percent in the past year, CNNMoney reports ^[2].In terms of dollars and cents, Netflix grossed $719 million in the quarter, and booked $60 million in net income. Founder Reed Hastings has been on a PR roll of late. He made headlines, for example, when it announced plans for Netflix to produce its own original miniseries, a reboot of the BBC’s ^[3] venerable House of Cards ^[4] franchise, this time starring Kevin Spacey in the role Ian Richardson made famous. In a short essay that accompanies the just-out Time 100 ^[5] list, Spacey noted uncharitably that “Blockbuster was sold at auction in April. Meanwhile, Reed has figured out that giving consumers what they want and how they want it — or even better, how they never even knew they could have it — is the business model of the future.” It never hurts to call the boss a genius.