Netflix is acting in bad faith with a lot of contracts. It's just the pot calling the kettle at this point, which never stopped any big ego entity from huffing and puffing.
In this case, what does NBC have to lose? They lose short money on these projects, make up later with whatever service provider and still sell their shit on another platform to make up any prior losses. They will be ahead no matter what.
Whereas Netflix loses subs for one reason or another, they are holding the bag on whatever content they own and take losses on. The only way Netflix can hedge their content, is to basically give up to the next #1 or #2 big service or hope there is a small rival that can make a dent to work with.
As far as chess moves go, Netflix now has the least amount of options without making a drastic change in the next 18 months, or line up a solid merger(which buys them more time). Steady decline, and yes, they will have growth oscillations within that decline.
Netflix can't buy Roku, becomes a conflict, short term surge at best.
They can't buy Tubi, completely different model, all free with ads content is littered with non-exclusive licenses. No advantage.
They can't buy someone that has a good premium library, because that will essentially cancel a lot of contracts. So buying Starz would be a net loss.
And NBC wont buy Netflix unless they are undervalued heavily. Well, what is a good way to undervalue a company that is arguably at the front of the pack for subscription services? Compete with them, dilute, favor competitors for a while, then NBC-Universal does what it does best, merge. And the only thing stopping that is the one other company that can do the same, merge with Disney, Netflix's final hedge against NBC acquiring them. And if you think NBC is the dinosaur in this race, just look at who NBC has overcome and purchased over the last 40 years, they seem to always swallow up the hot shots.
Hulu is in a decent spot because they snatched up a lot of licenses for a great rate early on, but that those contracts will expire. So they have a great opportunity to make a move and stay in position for decades, possibly. But act too conservatively, they can die just as fast.