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TL;DR: A former Netflix employee isn't surprised because films very little business sense for Netflix. Former Netflix employee here--though I left in late 2013

TL;DR: A former Netflix employee isn't surprised because films very little business sense for Netflix. Former Netflix employee here--though I left in late 2013. I remember sitting at a company meeting and Reed Hastings explaining that AAA film content was never going to be the bread-and-butter for Netflix for several reasons. Most importantly: Between traditional, "linear" television and Netflix, the experience that Netflix brings with a combination of a low subscription cost, no commercials, and the ability to watch as many episodes of a show as you want to watch whenever you want to watch them is VASTLY superior. Netflix survives and thrives on binge-watching--and people just don't do that with movies (they have a LOT of data to back up that statement). Combined with the realities of the costs associated with feature film licensing and there's very little incentive for Netflix to put any emphasis on films. The only way they could do it is to tack on a pay-per-view service for films (because their subscription fee alone will absolutely NOT cover the cost of licensing more feature film content) and they are highly averse to such a service. The general feeling is that it's better for the average user if they can open up Netflix and watch whatever is there without ever thinking about whether it's an "included" title or a "PPV" title. When I was there, we regularly revisited this assumption and research always found that it continued to be the prudent move.

jackfrodo 10y ago
What is the definition of "binge-watching"? For me, that would be three episodes of Bojack Horseman, or about 75 minutes of content. On the other hand, I would happily watch a Tarantino film, say 140 minutes, in one sitting. I guess it doesn't count as a "binge" but it keeps me in front of Netflix longer than a television show.
- YuriNiyazov 10y ago
  Not quite. Iirc, Bojack has 10-12 episodes per season. If you watch the first three today, you will watch the next three tomorrow. If you watch django unchained today, that's not a guarantee you will rewatch kill bill tomorrow.
- sp332 10y ago
  Binge-watching is putting on a show and leaving it on for a good chunk of the day. Think watching a whole season of a show over a weekend, so at least 4 hours per day. And you can do this with every original Netflix series from the first day the show is launched - you don't have to wait a week per episode.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 10y ago
    I'm really surprised that this model works for them. I simply get bored! I love the Marco Polo series, but I've only once watched more than two episodes back to back. Likewise for Jennifer Jones. Guess I'm just not a binge watcher. OTOH, I have no problem watching a 2:20 long movie or even two of them back to back. Movies simply draw me in more than episodic TV does.
    - rjbwork 10y ago
      Funny, I'm the exact opposite. I binged on Mr. Robot recently, and did similar for some of the other netflix/prime shows in the past. It's something akin to that Civilization "just-one-more-turn" phenomenon. But i hardly watch movies at all anymore.
- wtetzner 10y ago
  Isn't it more expensive for Netflix if people are spending more time watching it? Obviously they need to watch it enough to be willing to continue paying the subscription, but it seems like movies might be enough to do that.
  - ajanuary 10y ago
    I don't think binge-watching, as many people here are defining it (watching a whole season in a weekend) is useful to Netflix. What is useful to Netflix is watching a whole show over the course of several weeks, a few episodes at a time. The primary way my wife and I consume shows is to watch a few episodes a day, every day, until we've watched from the first to the last available episode. We are currently watching through The Good Wife on Netflix which, at 134 episodes, will take us about 2 months. For me that's a good deal, because it would cost about £35 for a DVD boxset (yes, I could shop around, but only if my time is worthless), while Netflix only costs me £18 for 2 months. For Netflix that's a good deal, because they've got 2 months of subscription from me for 1 show. Once we've finished with The Good Wife, we'll find another show to watch. We watch about the equivalent of a movie each night, but we aren't going to watch enough movies in a month to make it feel worth keeping the subscription. Movies require a larger investment, because the characters and world are new and different with each one. With a TV show the characters are recurring, so you don't have to invest as much, which makes them easier to watch a lot of in a row.
  - bcrescimanno 10y ago
    Bandwidth costs for Netflix, despite the insanely high usage, are a drop in the bucket compared to the licensing of the content (which is not priced per view or per viewer--so the more people watching more of the content, the less the "cost per stream")
- thoth 10y ago
  To me, "binge-watching" is along the lines of watching a season of a TV show over a weekend. I don't think of watching several movies in a row as binging them, I'd call that a "movie marathon" especially if they were a series (e.g. watching a trilogy like Lord of the Rings one after another).
paol 10y ago
If that's the case, that leaves the problem (from the consumer's point of view) of where to get access to a complete(ish) catalog of films. Netflix actually achieved this back in the disc-by-mail days. So we're actually moving backwards. I'm not particularly ashamed to say I turn to unlicensed torrents for this purpose, but I would prefer if it weren't necessary.
- manuelflara 10y ago
  Well, there's iTunes (a PPV service, of course). I'd like to know how big of a catalog iTunes have in terms of % of the 1,000 most popular movies they have.
  - coldcode 10y ago
    Not all movies on iTunes are rentable. Been waiting for the third Hobbit movie forever.
    - whatusername 10y ago
      I'm pretty sure that's streaming on Netflix. (Australian catalogue)
- pmoriarty 10y ago
  "Netflix actually achieved this back in the disc-by-mail days." Netflix's DVD service still exists.[1] They have a fantastic selection, compared to their streaming service. [1] - https://dvd.netflix.com/ https://dvd.netflix.com/
  - hobofan 10y ago
    (In the USA)
  - Nelson69 10y ago
    Is there anything that competes with that in terms of catalog? Redbox has replaced all the local rental places around here (Colorado) If something isn't streamed then dvd.netflix.com is the only option I know of.
dragonwriter 10y ago
Do people not binge watch movies on Netflix because of something inherent in the form, or because Netflix doesn't make continuous play of related sets of movjrs, especially serial franchises (where it would make sense just as it does for TV series) possible, both because it doesn't support it as the default (or even an optional) mode in the UI as it does for TV series and because it also rarely has whole franchises in its library to support it even manually? I suspect it's as much the latter as the former.
- achr2 10y ago
  It's definitely more in the first category, and the psychology behind watching shows vs movies: 1) We live in a multitasking world where people are half watching netflix and half on their phone. TV plots typically develop in smaller chunks, requiring less attention. 2) Most people do not set out to binge watch multiple hours of netflix, but instead get caught up in the shows. Movies feel like a larger commitment, even though many times people watch for the same total length of time. 3) Binge watching often happens because the TV show model is to often end on a cliff hanger.
- GavinMcG 10y ago
  There aren't that many film series or sets where you can easily jump in and out of attentiveness, like you can with a TV show once you're familiar with the characters. I do remember having the James Bond marathons on TV all day, but anything less formulaic means having to make a substantial investment of attention when starting a new "chunk".
- empath75 10y ago
  Serialized fiction has a fundamentally different structure from feature films. Even in film series, you don't typically have the sort of multi-layered narrative with cliffhangers that keeps people going from one to the next. Star Wars ends with the good guys winning and the death star blowing up. There's no reason to straight to Empire Strikes Back.
- blakeyrat 10y ago
  I really wish Netflix had the YouTube-esque ability for users to make and share playlists. All the Star Trek series and films are on Netflix. Wouldn't it be great to have a playlist of every episode by original air date? (So you don't get confused when Deep Space 9 refers to an event in First Contact?) Wouldn't it be awesome to have a playlist of only the top 20 Voyager episodes, so you don't have to suffer through the awful ones? It surprises me they haven't implemented this. If they did, any user could solve your problem of putting a movie series in order. Of course I also wish they had a "back 30 seconds" button for when you miss a line of dialog, and that's never been done either. Sigh. It seems like all their revenue is going into making Marvel shows and zero into software development.
IshKebab 10y ago
People may spend more time binge watching TV than watching films on Netflix. But they should be concentrating on customer satisfaction, not racking up viewers. My girlfriend already jokes that if you search for a film on Netflix they realise and immediately remove it. Then you get the dreaded "Films related to X" search result. It's really really bad if Netflix gets a reputation for having a small catalogue, even if most of it is rarely watched. It's kind of like Linux vs Windows. Linux has 90% of the apps you need. But when you need Solidworks or Altium or GTA 5 or whatever you think "pff screw this I will use windows". With Netflix it has lots of stuff but when you search for Die Hard or 12 Angry Men or whatever... well let's just say I treat Netflix as a moral way of paying for Bittorrent.
- sqeaky 10y ago
  I think there is merit to you netflix windows analogy, but Netflix is just entertainment. Comparing it to something with financial leverage is not a clean comparison. I will never be forced to own a video streaming account with access to a specific or lose my house. I am routinely forced to own a windows pc for some specific piece of shitware or I will lose my house.
- bcrescimanno 10y ago
  > But they should be concentrating on customer satisfaction, not racking up viewers. I assure you; they are. Despite the very vocal people around the HN community to talk a lot about hating the selection, the data says that most people are pretty happy with it--and only getting happier.
  - IshKebab 10y ago
    Where is this data? Are you talking about the hilarious statistic that 94% of subscribers are happy with the service? I tried to watch a film last night and searched for all of these very popular films. * Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels * 28 Days Later * Go * Gladiator * American Beauty * Speed Then I gave up. When you try 6 very well known films and none of them are on there it changes how you think of the service from "most stuff is on there" (like Spotify for example) to "I have to search Netflix to find something I like" (like a normal TV channel). It's very different.
sunstone 10y ago
Works for me. Decent content with no advertising is really the killer combination. Doesn't have to be movies.
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
"Bread and butter" - there's no differential income stream from anything on Netflix. It's just two bits' worth - streaming yes/no, DVD yes/no. I'd be hard pressed to find the link to support this, but my understanding is that DVD/BluRay sales are the mechanism by which the "last mile" of movie finance is accomplished. My wife and I recently made the decision to stop Netflix. We'd kept a tally and Amazon Video was used more than 10:1 than Netflix. We do have Amazon Prime ( which I suspect Amazon cannot keep up forever ). But for movie movies, we still DVR them from cable. The Netflix experience is like giving up on the new releases portion of Blockbuster and trolling through the back of the store for older titles, leaving disappointed. From here, it smells like artificial scarcity. But I'm not buying too many more titles on physical media - I don't want to store them and if I ever get a buyer figured out, I'll sell a lot of what we already have. Most of what we'd buy are the TCM offerings of classic movies.
- dimino 10y ago
  It's $10/month, peanuts considering what you're getting. Your careful analysis of a purchase that's doable using the literal change falling out of your pocket is not representative of the folks who purchase Netflix (not representative of any purchasing group, really). They're not catering to the folks like yourself.
  - wtetzner 10y ago
    > It's $10/month, peanuts considering what you're getting. It's not peanuts if you don't think you're getting much value (e.g. it doesn't have the stuff you wanna watch).
    - dimino 10y ago
      What is the point in talking about that, though? Giving your anecdote that you don't want to watch anything on Netflix falsely implies your anecdote is statistically significant, when in reality it isn't.
  - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
    > They're not catering to the folks like yourself. Obviously :) We didn't miss the $10/M for a couple of years before we summoned the energy to unsubscribe.
dwc 10y ago
Another point is that it's good to encourage viewers to watch popular shows, so that caching at the edge works better. Having a rotating, small number of AAA movies at a time encourages this. Multiple browse categories based on current popularity encourage this. While Netflix offers tons of choices, the network is most efficient if everyone is watching the same thing, and and it's not at all surprising if Netflix guides people toward that behavior.
user5994461 10y ago
> the ability to watch as many episodes of a show as you want to watch whenever you want to watch them is VASTLY superior. Only true for shows that are not in the top 250 shows. Netflix: Offering cheap & unlimited access for everytone to shows that noone wants to watch.
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  Over the years, I've watched all of Daredevil, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space 9, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise. They have all of: Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The West Wing, Cosmos, Planet Earth, Sherlock, House, Friends, The Office, Parks and Recreation, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and more. Plus tons of their in-house and supposedly top-quality shows: House of Cards, Daredevil, Narcos, Orange is the New Black, Making a Murderer, and more. Netflix is a steal for $10 a month.
deegles 10y ago
Has Netflix considered providing video hosting services for content owners? It could even be with no Netflix branding. Customers would still have to sign up for multiple services but at least all the content would be available.

jackfrodo 10y ago

What is the definition of "binge-watching"? For me, that would be three episodes of Bojack Horseman, or about 75 minutes of content. On the other hand, I would happily watch a Tarantino film, say 140 minutes, in one sitting. I guess it doesn't count as a "binge" but it keeps me in front of Netflix longer than a television show.

YuriNiyazov 10y ago
Not quite. Iirc, Bojack has 10-12 episodes per season. If you watch the first three today, you will watch the next three tomorrow. If you watch django unchained today, that's not a guarantee you will rewatch kill bill tomorrow.
sp332 10y ago
Binge-watching is putting on a show and leaving it on for a good chunk of the day. Think watching a whole season of a show over a weekend, so at least 4 hours per day. And you can do this with every original Netflix series from the first day the show is launched - you don't have to wait a week per episode.
- HeyLaughingBoy 10y ago
  I'm really surprised that this model works for them. I simply get bored! I love the Marco Polo series, but I've only once watched more than two episodes back to back. Likewise for Jennifer Jones. Guess I'm just not a binge watcher. OTOH, I have no problem watching a 2:20 long movie or even two of them back to back. Movies simply draw me in more than episodic TV does.
  - rjbwork 10y ago
    Funny, I'm the exact opposite. I binged on Mr. Robot recently, and did similar for some of the other netflix/prime shows in the past. It's something akin to that Civilization "just-one-more-turn" phenomenon. But i hardly watch movies at all anymore.
wtetzner 10y ago
Isn't it more expensive for Netflix if people are spending more time watching it? Obviously they need to watch it enough to be willing to continue paying the subscription, but it seems like movies might be enough to do that.
- ajanuary 10y ago
  I don't think binge-watching, as many people here are defining it (watching a whole season in a weekend) is useful to Netflix. What is useful to Netflix is watching a whole show over the course of several weeks, a few episodes at a time. The primary way my wife and I consume shows is to watch a few episodes a day, every day, until we've watched from the first to the last available episode. We are currently watching through The Good Wife on Netflix which, at 134 episodes, will take us about 2 months. For me that's a good deal, because it would cost about £35 for a DVD boxset (yes, I could shop around, but only if my time is worthless), while Netflix only costs me £18 for 2 months. For Netflix that's a good deal, because they've got 2 months of subscription from me for 1 show. Once we've finished with The Good Wife, we'll find another show to watch. We watch about the equivalent of a movie each night, but we aren't going to watch enough movies in a month to make it feel worth keeping the subscription. Movies require a larger investment, because the characters and world are new and different with each one. With a TV show the characters are recurring, so you don't have to invest as much, which makes them easier to watch a lot of in a row.
- bcrescimanno 10y ago
  Bandwidth costs for Netflix, despite the insanely high usage, are a drop in the bucket compared to the licensing of the content (which is not priced per view or per viewer--so the more people watching more of the content, the less the "cost per stream")
thoth 10y ago
To me, "binge-watching" is along the lines of watching a season of a TV show over a weekend. I don't think of watching several movies in a row as binging them, I'd call that a "movie marathon" especially if they were a series (e.g. watching a trilogy like Lord of the Rings one after another).

paol 10y ago

If that's the case, that leaves the problem (from the consumer's point of view) of where to get access to a complete(ish) catalog of films. Netflix actually achieved this back in the disc-by-mail days. So we're actually moving backwards. I'm not particularly ashamed to say I turn to unlicensed torrents for this purpose, but I would prefer if it weren't necessary.

manuelflara 10y ago
Well, there's iTunes (a PPV service, of course). I'd like to know how big of a catalog iTunes have in terms of % of the 1,000 most popular movies they have.
- coldcode 10y ago
  Not all movies on iTunes are rentable. Been waiting for the third Hobbit movie forever.
  - whatusername 10y ago
    I'm pretty sure that's streaming on Netflix. (Australian catalogue)
pmoriarty 10y ago
"Netflix actually achieved this back in the disc-by-mail days." Netflix's DVD service still exists.[1] They have a fantastic selection, compared to their streaming service. [1] - https://dvd.netflix.com/ https://dvd.netflix.com/
- hobofan 10y ago
  (In the USA)
- Nelson69 10y ago
  Is there anything that competes with that in terms of catalog? Redbox has replaced all the local rental places around here (Colorado) If something isn't streamed then dvd.netflix.com is the only option I know of.

dragonwriter 10y ago

Do people not binge watch movies on Netflix because of something inherent in the form, or because Netflix doesn't make continuous play of related sets of movjrs, especially serial franchises (where it would make sense just as it does for TV series) possible, both because it doesn't support it as the default (or even an optional) mode in the UI as it does for TV series and because it also rarely has whole franchises in its library to support it even manually? I suspect it's as much the latter as the former.

achr2 10y ago
It's definitely more in the first category, and the psychology behind watching shows vs movies: 1) We live in a multitasking world where people are half watching netflix and half on their phone. TV plots typically develop in smaller chunks, requiring less attention. 2) Most people do not set out to binge watch multiple hours of netflix, but instead get caught up in the shows. Movies feel like a larger commitment, even though many times people watch for the same total length of time. 3) Binge watching often happens because the TV show model is to often end on a cliff hanger.
GavinMcG 10y ago
There aren't that many film series or sets where you can easily jump in and out of attentiveness, like you can with a TV show once you're familiar with the characters. I do remember having the James Bond marathons on TV all day, but anything less formulaic means having to make a substantial investment of attention when starting a new "chunk".
empath75 10y ago
Serialized fiction has a fundamentally different structure from feature films. Even in film series, you don't typically have the sort of multi-layered narrative with cliffhangers that keeps people going from one to the next. Star Wars ends with the good guys winning and the death star blowing up. There's no reason to straight to Empire Strikes Back.
blakeyrat 10y ago
I really wish Netflix had the YouTube-esque ability for users to make and share playlists. All the Star Trek series and films are on Netflix. Wouldn't it be great to have a playlist of every episode by original air date? (So you don't get confused when Deep Space 9 refers to an event in First Contact?) Wouldn't it be awesome to have a playlist of only the top 20 Voyager episodes, so you don't have to suffer through the awful ones? It surprises me they haven't implemented this. If they did, any user could solve your problem of putting a movie series in order. Of course I also wish they had a "back 30 seconds" button for when you miss a line of dialog, and that's never been done either. Sigh. It seems like all their revenue is going into making Marvel shows and zero into software development.

IshKebab 10y ago

People may spend more time binge watching TV than watching films on Netflix. But they should be concentrating on customer satisfaction, not racking up viewers. My girlfriend already jokes that if you search for a film on Netflix they realise and immediately remove it. Then you get the dreaded "Films related to X" search result. It's really really bad if Netflix gets a reputation for having a small catalogue, even if most of it is rarely watched. It's kind of like Linux vs Windows. Linux has 90% of the apps you need. But when you need Solidworks or Altium or GTA 5 or whatever you think "pff screw this I will use windows". With Netflix it has lots of stuff but when you search for Die Hard or 12 Angry Men or whatever... well let's just say I treat Netflix as a moral way of paying for Bittorrent.

sqeaky 10y ago
I think there is merit to you netflix windows analogy, but Netflix is just entertainment. Comparing it to something with financial leverage is not a clean comparison. I will never be forced to own a video streaming account with access to a specific or lose my house. I am routinely forced to own a windows pc for some specific piece of shitware or I will lose my house.
bcrescimanno 10y ago
> But they should be concentrating on customer satisfaction, not racking up viewers. I assure you; they are. Despite the very vocal people around the HN community to talk a lot about hating the selection, the data says that most people are pretty happy with it--and only getting happier.
- IshKebab 10y ago
  Where is this data? Are you talking about the hilarious statistic that 94% of subscribers are happy with the service? I tried to watch a film last night and searched for all of these very popular films. * Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels * 28 Days Later * Go * Gladiator * American Beauty * Speed Then I gave up. When you try 6 very well known films and none of them are on there it changes how you think of the service from "most stuff is on there" (like Spotify for example) to "I have to search Netflix to find something I like" (like a normal TV channel). It's very different.

sunstone 10y ago

Works for me. Decent content with no advertising is really the killer combination. Doesn't have to be movies.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago

"Bread and butter" - there's no differential income stream from anything on Netflix. It's just two bits' worth - streaming yes/no, DVD yes/no. I'd be hard pressed to find the link to support this, but my understanding is that DVD/BluRay sales are the mechanism by which the "last mile" of movie finance is accomplished. My wife and I recently made the decision to stop Netflix. We'd kept a tally and Amazon Video was used more than 10:1 than Netflix. We do have Amazon Prime ( which I suspect Amazon cannot keep up forever ). But for movie movies, we still DVR them from cable. The Netflix experience is like giving up on the new releases portion of Blockbuster and trolling through the back of the store for older titles, leaving disappointed. From here, it smells like artificial scarcity. But I'm not buying too many more titles on physical media - I don't want to store them and if I ever get a buyer figured out, I'll sell a lot of what we already have. Most of what we'd buy are the TCM offerings of classic movies.

dimino 10y ago
It's $10/month, peanuts considering what you're getting. Your careful analysis of a purchase that's doable using the literal change falling out of your pocket is not representative of the folks who purchase Netflix (not representative of any purchasing group, really). They're not catering to the folks like yourself.
- wtetzner 10y ago
  > It's $10/month, peanuts considering what you're getting. It's not peanuts if you don't think you're getting much value (e.g. it doesn't have the stuff you wanna watch).
  - dimino 10y ago
    What is the point in talking about that, though? Giving your anecdote that you don't want to watch anything on Netflix falsely implies your anecdote is statistically significant, when in reality it isn't.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  > They're not catering to the folks like yourself. Obviously :) We didn't miss the $10/M for a couple of years before we summoned the energy to unsubscribe.

dwc 10y ago

Another point is that it's good to encourage viewers to watch popular shows, so that caching at the edge works better. Having a rotating, small number of AAA movies at a time encourages this. Multiple browse categories based on current popularity encourage this. While Netflix offers tons of choices, the network is most efficient if everyone is watching the same thing, and and it's not at all surprising if Netflix guides people toward that behavior.

user5994461 10y ago

> the ability to watch as many episodes of a show as you want to watch whenever you want to watch them is VASTLY superior. Only true for shows that are not in the top 250 shows. Netflix: Offering cheap & unlimited access for everytone to shows that noone wants to watch.

marcoperaza 10y ago
Over the years, I've watched all of Daredevil, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space 9, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise. They have all of: Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The West Wing, Cosmos, Planet Earth, Sherlock, House, Friends, The Office, Parks and Recreation, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and more. Plus tons of their in-house and supposedly top-quality shows: House of Cards, Daredevil, Narcos, Orange is the New Black, Making a Murderer, and more. Netflix is a steal for $10 a month.

deegles 10y ago

Has Netflix considered providing video hosting services for content owners? It could even be with no Netflix branding. Customers would still have to sign up for multiple services but at least all the content would be available.