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Netflix drops 10% after missing on global paid subscribers
- lanrh1836 7y agoYikes. A little more than half the estimate. I’m pretty sure that is the worst miss the company has ever had. With recent news that reruns like the Office and Friends are leaving next year, it would be really funny if a large chunk of Netflix subscribers are literally subscribing just to watch decades old reruns. It could be a bit of an Emperor Has No Clothes situation for them.
- apocalyptic0n3 7y agoThat is definitely what their concern has been the last 7 or 8 years and why they've made such a massive push with original content. With so many content producers starting their own streaming services, they have to lure and keep customers the same way the other content producers will be: with original content not sourced from elsewhere. It's the only way forward for them and fortunately for them, they were aware enough to realize it almost a decade ahead of time.
- lanrh1836 7y agoPersonally I haven’t found the quality of Netflix originals to be anywhere close to the same level as HBO. Their approach is more “consistently release a ton of average quality shows” and hope a few stick. Will be interesting to see if that actually work long term.
- apocalyptic0n3 7y agoI agree for the most part. They definitely have their great content (Dark, Stranger Things, first few seasons of House of Cards, OITNB, I Am Mother, etc.) but it is incredibly inconsistent overall. I think they were more focused on beefing up their library so they had _something_ when the third-party content left the service, and hopefully get a few hits like Stranger Things in the process. With reports that they intend to slow down their investment in original content, I'm hoping they start focusing more on quality than quantity now.
- wvenable 7y agoNetflix is a heavily data-oriented company; if a large chunk of Netflix subscribers just watch decades old reruns then they know it. What Netflix needs to do is build content specifically for these people and I don't believe they're doing that. My anecdote on this: My collage age daughter watches Friends on Netflix basically continuously -- she's probably watched every season a dozen times now -- when she gets to last episode it just cycles around again. This is because she keeps on it in the background when she's studying or doing school work.
- dangrossman 7y agoWhat can you build for those people except reboots of those old shows, which they're doing (e.g. Sabrina, Fuller House)? They can't force NBC to license them the old reruns forever if NBC doesn't want to. There's no amount of money they can offer that will work once a studio decides it's going to reserve the content for its own streaming service.
- wvenable 7y agoMake new shows that appeal to that market. Netflix content is a reflection of it's desire to compete with HBO, not NBC.
- ceejayoz 7y agoIt's hard to make shows that appeal to the "leave 10-20 seasons of a show on infinite loop" demographic in a short period of time. You need 10-20 years to do it.
- jbob2000 7y agoYou can’t make a new Office or Friends. Those were created by really special groups of people and I’m not confident today’s society allows groups like this to form. This decade of outrage that we’re coming out of (hopefully) has crushed an entire generation of comedians and actors. Look at late night talk shows for example; they’re totally stale. Nobody has the balls to say anything, fearing the tweet storm will be turned against their production company. It’ll take another generation before we’ll be in a place to create good shit again. Or maybe it will never happen again and the golden age is over?
- julienreszka 7y agoI immediately unsubscribed when they said they would endorse pro abortion policies. I encourage every conservative to do the same.
- stcredzero 7y agoIf I were Disney, I'd be aiming for a market positioning of, "Netflix, but with content from places like Disney and Marvel and without all of the 2019 political craziness."
- rcfox 7y agoIsn't Disney a poster child of political craziness? Copyright laws, workers rights, Walt Disney racism stuff, etc.
- stcredzero 7y agoYou're conflating the company with the product. I'm talking about whether or not politics is manifested in the product.
- lern_too_spel 7y agoThe same people who are going nuts over the entertainment companies' (including Disney's) abortion stands were also going nuts over Disney's Ellen coming out stand many years ago.
- stcredzero 7y agoPeople who want the injection of politics into product generally aren't good customers. In many cases, they don't have that much money to spend, and in other cases, they're too much trouble when less demanding customer's money is just as good.
- lern_too_spel 7y ago
- tschellenbach 7y agoI'm a subscriber, but there isn't much to watch now that i'm done with 3%, stranger things and moneyheist. Still they have word party, which is excellent
- ghostbrainalpha 7y agoOzarks, Narcos, The Octonauts ?
- mythz 7y agoI thought Netflix was lacking in content for a long time so I ended up watching fringe shows outside of my typical viewing habits and was pleasantly surprised with the high quality production from: - The OA - Dark - Sense 8 - Black Spot I'm looking forward to the next seasons of Altered Carbon and Lost in Space the most which seem to have been delayed. Other than Netflix's popular block busters, my other favorite shows I can recommend include: Narcos, Lucifer, Travelers, Outlander, Better Call Saul, Ozark, Sabrina and Dirk Gently's.
- thiagomgd 7y agoTravelers is awesome, but I wanted another season. Dirk Gently's too
- bluetidepro 7y agoI just recently cancelled my Netflix subscription after 10+ years of being a customer (after they raised the prices, yet again). For me, the problem is they are just throwing too many darts at the wall at this point. There is just sooo much garbage original content being added monthly, it seems. They are almost over optimizing/testing their shows, in my opinion. Instead of focusing on the good shows (obviously opinionated), and building up on them with new seasons, it seems like they are just investing more into new content to see what happens. Sadly, they have also been ending a lot of what I thought were popular shows on there (some of my favorites). Their catalog outside of Netflix original shows has also been dropping significantly, which many very popular shows leaving here soon (Office/Friends). I used to spend about 80/20% time on Netflix/Hulu, now it's 100% Hulu after cancelling Netflix. The content on Hulu has been ramping up significantly for their TV department (non-originals). Plus, I love having my HBO through Hulu, and it's all in one place under 1 subscription payment. I'll most likely re-subscribe to Netflix again in a few years just for a month or two to watch a few seasons of new content that will actually interest me (then cancel again), but until then, no need to pay them so they can produce the copious amounts of BS half-assed content like they seem to only be doing lately.
- justaguyhere 7y agoI was bummed when they canceled Marco Polo, I liked that show. They seem to be canceling way too many shows. Kinda reminds me of Google canceling products left and right, even those with tons of users...
- bluetidepro 7y agoExactly. It discourages you to invest time in shows that seem to be cancelled so quickly. A lot of them having very abrupt/poor endings, as well.
- asark 7y agoIt's pushing me to a "I'll watch it when it's done. The whole thing, not the season. Maybe, if I still feel like it by then" stance, which isn't where they want me for a monthly subscription. Cancellation imminent for that and other reasons.
- tus88 7y agoHas the movie roster improved much over the years? I looked at it a few years ago and I could barely find a single movie I wanted to watch.
- ra7 7y agoThe movie lineup is still as disappointing as it was a few years ago.
- save_ferris 7y agoNo. If anything, it's getting worse with all of the other streaming options out there. A while back, I realized that HBO on average had about as many movies I wanted to watch as Netflix, with a total library size that was a fraction of what Netflix was, which made it easier to find something to watch. I don't really want to know how much time I've spent in my life scrolling through Netflix thinking "meh".
- misterprime 7y agoThis is a useful tool for determining if a streaming service has any movies you want to watch: https://flickmetrix.com/ https://flickmetrix.com/ But no. Netflix's value seems to be in its original shows. So, if they come out with a new season show I'm interested in, such as The Last Kingdom, they can have my subscription for the month. The trend of show seasons becoming progressively worse, a la House of Cards, should be a concern for them. Disney+ is really going to give them a challenge once it is available.
- medecau 7y agoI have a bunch of series in "my list" waiting for "new episodes". Favorite anime series audio is not available in English. Nor is most other originally non-English content. Why should I renew?
- deogeo 7y agoYou watch anime.. dubbed? I don't think they want your kind, and I don't blame them.
- kodz4 7y agoDirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
- cannonedhamster 7y agoWhich is available on Hulu in it's entirety with way more good content for the same price.
- JaimeThompson 7y agoI may be canceling soon simply over the annoying auto-play trailers when I dare stay on a show for more than 5 seconds. Really annoying at night.
- rbritton 7y agoI feel their Apple TV app is the worst it's ever been. I hate the autoplay trailers, and the use and feel of the app is incredibly sluggish.
- rexf 7y agoTheir auto-playing trailers seems to be something that I've only seen negative feedback about online. The assumption is that their internal metrics show auto-playing trailers has a positive impact (on their metrics) so they're keeping them?
- jonshariat 7y agoThis might be a case of trackable vs un-trackable. Where the thing that is trackable tells you one thing and the full reality (the untrackable) is missed.
- majjam 7y agoSame here, I find it a very bullying feature.
- asark 7y agoYeah, I'm cancelling as soon as I get a couple things watched. Will just re-sub every now and then... maybe. Would leave it on—even with the hikes it's not that much money, though they definitely serve as reminders to maybe-cancel—but seriously, what's pushing me over the edge is the damn auto-play-while-browsing crap. I hate it. It's reduced Netflix's utility since I never browse now like I used to, and only go on when I have something specific I know they have that I want to watch so I can go straight to it. It's the worst when trying to browse with someone else. You stop to talk for a second and the TV starts yelling at you. WTF.
- emerongi 7y ago
- kgwgk 7y ago“Much of our domestic, and eventually global, Disney catalog, as well as Friends, The Office, and some other licensed content will wind down over the coming years, freeing up budget for more original content. [...] From what we’ve seen in the past when we drop strong catalog content (Starz and Epix with Sony, Disney, and Paramount films, or 2nd run series from Fox, for example) our members shift over to enjoying our other great content.”
- notimetorelax 7y agoSome of their original content is OK, but they do have some spectacularly bad shows.
- smacktoward 7y ago> freeing up budget for more original content This is an impressive bit of spin, seeing as how creating new original programming is always going to be more expensive than licensing older/original programming. So yeah, losing the licensed programming "frees up budget," but the end result will be a smaller catalog.
- kgwgk 7y agoMaking a virtue of necessity.
- nkkollaw 7y agoI've personally cancelled because of the virtue signalling/progressive agenda being pushed so gratuitously in pretty much every single one of their productions. Bird Box was pretty blatant, with the single mother drinking while pregnant, all the white guys being bad, the Trump supporter pissed off guy, the mixed-race gay couple, the single mother ending up in a mixed-race relationship, etc. It just gets so annoying to have to see politics being pushed the whole time when you just want to relax and watch a movie.
- dannykwells 7y agoI think the biggest issue with netflix is precisely the lack of things like Friends, Seinfeld, The Office - shows you can watch casually and not have to binge. My wife hates Netflix precisely because she hates binging. She wants to watch sitcoms and shows where you don't have to invest heavily. And you know, so do I. Life is hard enough without having to following tons of different plots lines and having tons of characters always die. Anyway, we have Hulu now which has gotten quite good. I can imagine cancelling Netflix pretty soon honestly.
- thomaslkjeldsen 7y ago> I think the biggest issue with netflix is precisely the lack of things like Friends, Seinfeld, The Office Technically, it seems unnecessary to stream the same content repeatedly, and financially it seems wasteful to pay a monthly fee for access to the same content. How about buying the particular shows once (e.g. iTunes) and have the data stored locally (e.g. appleTV)?
- lordnacho 7y agoAs a former quant fund manager Netflix presents an interesting problem. If you read about the quant space, a whole load of people reckon they can use ML to make money. The problem for them is much like for Netflix. Having a way to predict the future is not the whole story of how to decide what to do. Netflix having a whole load of data about what people watched, for how long, their demographics, etc, is probably very useful. But it is not an obvious step to go from knowing what people saw, even predicting it, to deciding what to produce and what to present to them. Add to that the likely fact that people often want something fresh and innovative, and you have quite some stretched assumptions in statistical terms. Not saying this is the end, I don't know enough about the business. Just that it's an interesting jump that I rarely hear anyone talk about.
- sgt101 7y agoWell, driving by using the rear view mirror isn't a wildly successful strategy. Many people are surprised by the difference between testing strategies for ML working to predict physical phenoma and complex systems like the markets; you can backtest market strategies to bits and it matters not even a bit, it means nothing.
- kelnos 7y agoNote that earnings were released after the close of trading, so the ~10% drop is in after-hours trading, which is not necessarily representative of what tomorrow's open (and trading) will look like.
- mythz 7y agoI'm likely going to remain a permanent subscriber even if there's nothing I like to watch because I never want to return to the pre-Netflix days of normal TV which I haven't watched in more than a decade but get a glimpse of it every-time I visit my folks who have both Cable and normal over-the-air TV, both of which I find unwatchable - ad-laced, cringeworthy, opinionated, political, dated and of low-effort quality. Netflix's on-demand streaming is basically the only way I can watch long-form media content these days. Also the economics of paying a low monthly fee for access to billion dollars worth of content per year is insane value and something I'd definitely like to see more of, so I'd like to see the Netflix model continue to succeed.
- apta 7y agoYou can opt into the no-TV lifestyle as well :-)
- simonebrunozzi 7y agoThe big question is what happens when the big Disney initiative lands (I think end of 2019). I used to be very skeptical about Disney, but what I've heard so far seems interesting.
- jdhn 7y agoI honestly think that Disney is going to clean house. The amount of IP that they have is just staggering, and for some reason my generation (millenials) absolutely love everything that they put out (Avengers, Star Wars, etc). Disney also seems to place a lot of emphasis on UX, so I bet that the app that they come out with will be fantastic.
- doodliego 7y agoI'm cancelling my sub because the back catalog is non-existent in my region. It is impossible to find anything older than 2000 anymore. On top of that, their UI and search functions are straight-up garbage that deliberately steer you to their own trash.
- eugene2012 7y agoHas anyone here seen the show What/If, about a biotech start-up? This is one of those shows that was one of Netflix's "dart thrown at the wall"--terrible acting, unrealistic representation of start-up/VC world, etc. Just really, really bad.
- Yossarian69 7y agoIf Netflix would bring back Marco Polo and cancel 13 Reasons Why I might actually renew my subscription again, instead of comfortably moving over to Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Go etc. as I already have. I have used Netflix since back in the days when they would send you discs in the mail; now all they send us garbage content over the net.
- victorkilo1 7y agoIMHO, the problem with Netflix is: 1. Too few shows that I actually want to watch: The office, Futurama etc are no longer on Netflix 2. The original content is very hit and miss, and mostly misses. By the time I find out about a series and start watching, they cancel it. They need to realize that it takes time for people to find out about series and at times it can take two to three years. You can do agile dev with content 3. Binging one or two series is fine, but there is very little "weekly programming".Sometimes, I just want to catch one episode of something a week 4. The movie catalog is abysmal, with the exception of the Monty Python stuff 5. The UI is just actively hostile. Let me set my defaults across all shows (no intro, thirty seconds between shows etc)