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Analysis conducted by Thomson Financial Group predicts second-quarter earnings of around 18 cents per share and revenue of around $242 million for the online rental giant. Overall, Netflix expects to exceed earning expectations, due in part to recently observed favorable rental trends and high online-rental-based web activity.

This news should come as a relief to investors who are worried that online rental companies like Netflix will be all but finished by sites that allow for instantaneous movie downloads. What is holding these potential competitors back are complicated legal and technical issues regarding liscensing, download speeds, and required hardware, as well as the fact that most people don’t want to watch their movies at their desks or in their offices).

Netflix investors should be leery of this new technology, however, as companies like Google and Apple get themselves involved in developing it. Investors should also be leery of the widespread use of innovative cable television based movie rental programs like Comcast’s “On Demand.” Remember, people are lazy–and even though Netflix eliminates the need to actually leave the house, On Demand elminates the need to even leave the couch. Now if only someone could just implant the memory of watching a movie in my mind, I wouldn’t even have to open my eyes….

See businessweek for a more detailed analysis of the Netflix’s fiscal situation.

Let’s face it. The network sitcom died with the ending of Seinfeld. Everyone of its succesors fall into one of two categories: watered-down ‘feld-like observational humor but with really attractive people (see “Friends”) or direct, based-on-a-regular-guy’s-observation-based-stand-up-routine copycats that even go as far rehashing Seinfeld characters under different names (see the appearance of Uncle Leo on “Everybody Loves Raymond” and the occasional episode dominace of Old Man Costanza on “King of Queens”). The sucess of cable-driven serial dramas with high production costs like “The Sopranos” and “Oz” made the networks realize that these addictive movie-like series’ are the wave of the future. Hence the success (and quality) of imaginative shows like “Lost” and “24,” as well as the return of primetime teen soap operas like the “OC.”

The success of these shows requires a large viewer base that is hooked early, and is enthused enough about the show to generate word-of-mouth-based popularity. The higher cost of these sorts of shows makes networks less likely to take long-term wait-and-see-if-this-picks-up approaches with their ratings (hence the financial failure of the wonderful “Arrested Development”). The importance of proper marketing is thus higher than ever before.

In comes NBC’s trendsetting new arrangement with Netflix. Starting August 5th, Netflix will be releasing promotional episodes of the new series’ “Kidnapped” and “Studio 60 and the Sunset Strip” on DVD, well before the series’ air dates in September. The ideas behind this are to get people hooked on the shows as early as possible and to gather marketing information. Netflix will release demographic information to NBC so that the network knows who its target audience is.

I dont know what is sadder: that putting out quality, imaginative programming is never a guarantee of at least moderate success, or that the marketing people at the networks are too inept and clueless to understand what the target audience for a particular show is (so much so that they are basically ENSURING that a large chunk of it will NOT watch the first episode because they’ve already seen it). See monstersandcritics and cinemablend for details of the deal.