In this week's Buffering: A look at the good and not-so-good news lurking in Netflix's future. TVMoJoe reports
Netflix’s Heartstopper. Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photo by Netflix In Mel Brooks’ classic 1960s NBC comedy Get Smart, secret agent Maxwell Smart would reliably utter five words whenever his weekly bumbling miraculously avoided a calamitous outcome: “Missed it by that much,” he’d deadpan. Netflix co-CEOs Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos are a lot more competent than Don Adams’ iconic character, but this week the duo are probably feeling about as lucky.
What’s more, things look even less sunny when you drill down into Netflix’s earnings report. The streamer parted ways with a whopping 1.3 million subscribers in the U.S./Canada market between April and July — nearly two percent of its total member base in what’s known as the UCAN region. And in the Europe/Middle East/Africa region , Netflix lost roughly 800,000 subscribers. Until relatively recently, many analysts still thought UCAN and EMEA both had room for robust growth.
As annoyingly cocky as Hastings’ death-to-linear comments are, particularly given his own company’s present situation, I don’t think he or Sarandos are actually expecting they can “win” the streaming wars by putting linear TV out of business, at least not anymore. Instead, the recent waves of layoffs, the sudden move to finally agree to advertising, the decision to basically freeze spending vs.
But in the letter to shareholders which accompanied this week’s earnings report, Netflix seemed to scoff at the suggestion it needs to change any more of its core practices. It specifically pointed to its distinct ways of doing business as advantages, not liabilities.
Similarly, centering members might mean admitting that as groundbreaking as the binge model was, many real people actually do like watching shows which release episodes weekly, particularly if those shows also churn out 20+ episodes every year.
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