25 ms·

Netflix shares sink 10% as subscriber take-up slows

102 points by osrec 7y ago

oeoeo00 7y ago
Netflix has yet to find a property that can go the distance and really hook people long term. This whole “cancel a show after 3 seasons” is not what users who grew up with 6,7...10 year runs of shows connect to. They need some content with long legs to keep the sort used to Frasier like life spans. That’s who was tuning in during their growth period, for those old shows they can’t hang onto now.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  Agreed although Disney pulled all the Marvel ones I am sure. They didnt come out and say it but all the odd excuses and the fact they all went at once is obvious. The shows were really popular with everyone I know.
- b_tterc_p 7y ago
  Hmm I don’t think this is true. Most of netflix’s Content is story driven whereas never dying sitcoms were just kind of whatever. I’m sure people watched the sitcoms, some even on loop, but I doubt it was the luring factor. Maybe that’s just my personal misconception.
  - oeoeo00 7y ago
    Anecdote; I’ve had family and friends cancel Netflix when their old favorites got pulled. People that are center of the road politically, and very nostalgia/tradition driven. It seems reasonable to me that type of person makes up a pretty large portion of the population (I grew up in the Midwest and feel that basically describes the region pretty well, accepting it’s just my gut sense.) Our brains like routine. That routine can be chasing novel experience or sitting still clinging to nostalgia. Seems pretty clear from the news the majority fall into the latter group.
    - b_tterc_p 7y ago
      Forgetting any particular political whatever, it seems odd to define someone who favors tradition / nostalgia as anything but conservative. Although perhaps current conservatives have kind of co-opted the term to mean something very different. The idea of preferring shows you have already seen is unthinkable to me.
- Rapzid 7y ago
  I'm a fan of well thought out and fleshed out story-lines with planned endings. I don't need a 10 year show, but I neither enjoy being strung along(Lost) or having a show just suddenly pulled.
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 7y ago
  Most people I talk to don’t want to dedicate 70 hours of their life to a mediocre show that is clearly manufactured to last 70 hours. Frasier was from a different time, when there weren’t many choices, so committing to one show for 10 years made more sense. I think people lose attention easier now and there are so many other things to occupy your time in the entertainment space.
- fullshark 7y ago
  Stranger Things seems to be a massive hit. Shelf life is unclear though. House of Cards was a hit and now it’s completely irrelevant it seems for comparison.
  - skinnymuch 7y ago
    Stranger Things is done after 5 seasons. Not that long.
  - kyshoc 7y ago
    House of Cards had to be emergency-landed due to the whole Kevin Spacey thing though, so it's not a good anecdote here.
tobsmagoats 7y ago
Netflix is fast on its way to becoming HBO, when other companies pull their content they'll use the money to pay for more original content. I wouldn't be too worried about their financials at the moment, but rather a year down the road when other subscription services are established.
- echelon 7y ago
  Given Netflix's propensity to burn money in an attempt to solve the problem, they're in for a world of hurt if things don't change. They fund and cancel so many projects it feels like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. They have a few hits, but this won't save them from the content behemoths. I think Netflix should begin lobbying for a greatly retracted copyright period. Studios always need to produce, so this doesn't impact their bottom line. Streaming companies are needed to facilitate interchange. The one thing this does is handicap players with lots of IP and forces them to invest in new content. I think it would be a win for consumers and competition. Lawmakers should take a serious look at Disney, too. They own a large and important swath of American culture, and they can effectively muscle out non-Disney content from both distribution and attention.
  - rlayton2 7y ago
    After a couple of cancellations of shows I was liking, I'm not generally that enthused about starting a new show. Especially given the trend of not resolving anything at the end of the first season, where you get no payoff at all. I don't mind cliffhangers, but resolve the season's main problem first! (ref: The Expanse)
    - quelltext 7y ago
      The Expanse has 3 seasons, a 4th coming. Not sure if Netflix has the rights to air those, though.
      - salemh 7y ago
        S4 of Expanse was actually picked up by Amazon, not Netflix.
natrik 7y ago
Market saturation, advent of many streaming services, etc. I'd say it was to be expected.
Splendor 7y ago
I cancelled my subscription, not because of the price increase, but because the auto-play interface made me stop using the app.
- NickBusey 7y ago
  For everyone telling them you can turn that feature off, for the Xbox app at least, I assure you that you cannot.
  - sigmar 7y ago
    I might be wrong, but I think those replies are confusing "autoplay next episode" with "autoplay show from the main menu". Above comment seems to be complaining about the latter, only the former can be turned off.
  - donmcronald 7y ago
    Unless the Roku app changed, it can't be disabled either. Every time I open Netflix it feels like a battle with the autoplay "feature" and I just close it off. I think I might cancel it in favor of Prime.
    - segmondy 7y ago
      Depends on the Roku app. I have a roku and it never autoplays for Netflix but does autoplay for prime.
      - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
        Roku will autoplay for most shows but they increased the delay before it begins. It's a nice preview now without having to navigate into the show's page.
- Wump 7y ago
  FWIW, you can turn off auto play in the settings.
azernik 7y ago
Earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20463467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20463467
xienze 7y ago
> "Much of our domestic, and eventually global, Disney catalogue, 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," the company said in its statement. That's got to win the award for "spin of the year." I think they're in a world of hurt once Disney+ gets rolling. It's great to have a lot of original content but they just can't seem to come up with original content that has the kind of cultural cachet (established over years or in many cases decades) that these sitcoms, Disney movies, etc. have.
turtlecloud 7y ago
The content was too liberal leaning and alienated way too many of middle America.
- ladberg 7y ago
  What content was too biased for you?
  - dx87 7y ago
    A lot of their stand up comedy specials are very political. You start to hear the crowd cheering a lot more than they're laughing. My wife and I watched the first episode of their new sitcom where Gabriel Iglesias is a teacher, and within the first couple of minutes it has a student saying that American history is just slavery and mistreating minorities, and the teacher makes a joke about our current president being covered in cheeto dust. My wife and I aren't Trump supporters, but it gets old seeing shows rely on political pandering for views instead of good writing. Here's a quote from Rob Schneider about it: "Much late night comedy is less about being funny and more about Indoctrination by comedic disposition," Schneider continued on Twitter. "People aren't really laughing at it as much as cheering on the rhetoric. It no longer resembles a comedy show, it's more like some kind of liberal Klan meeting."
    - bcassedy 7y ago
      The political comedy stuff is both topical and easy to write which makes it easy to see the appeal. You don't need some deep understanding or keen observation to mock cynical politicians. It's definitely lowest common denominator type stuff though. The Rob Schneider quote is a bit much. His quote is political nonsense from the right instead of the left. He should be talking about the lack of effort or insight in those types of bits instead of harping about liberal indoctrination. But he can't go that route because he's a hack whose entire claim to fame is that he's good friends with Adam Sandler.
    - b_tterc_p 7y ago
      I don’t think Rob Schneider is a particularly useful opinion to share. But the observation isn’t wrong. I’m definitely liberal, but a lot of liberal media content is pretty bland and annoying. Not Netflix, but the Twilight Zone remake suffered terribly from this. I’ve no doubt that there’s a ton of aggressively left comedians because... most stand up is bad? That being said... I don’t really expect to watch even a majority of netflix’s catalog so idk if it matters if some low quality content exists.
wolco 7y ago
The content selection has changed. Less variety overall, simple original movie plots. They spend too much for a few A listers.. [100 million for three specials is crazy] and less on shows produced by other networks. They should buy some older networks like turner.
baby 7y ago
I strongly believe in Netflix, there is just no way they will go down because they were the first ones and the fastest to get into the market. They're already producing a lot of masterpieces and soon it'll be a hard loss not to have your content there.
- fullshark 7y ago
  First mover disadvantage is a thing
tyingq 7y ago
I suspect they will also get hit by people subscribing for a month to see something specific, then unsubscribing until something new worth watching appears. Now that good content is so fragmented across services, it will likely be common to cancel often. I paid for a month of HBO mostly to watch Chernobyl, then cancelled.
- hbosch 7y ago
  In a meeting room somewhere, a young PM rubs hand sanitizer on his palms and loads up his latest deck: Okay guys, what we have here is something we’re calling Loyalty Seasons. Our recommendation is to make season 4 of Stranger Things, as well as the new Will Smith movie, available only to customers who have been subscribed for 3 or more months.
  - schlumpf 7y ago
    This would in turn cause a different group of PMs (portfolio managers, in this case) to borrow Netflix stock and sell short. Paying up-front production costs on an asset being provided only to users whose revenues the company has already captured is a suboptimal use of equity capital -- to put it gently.
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 7y ago
  This is what I do now and I enjoy the services a lot more now because I don’t browse. I just make lists of things I want to watch and subscribe accordingly.
joeblow21 7y ago
They were priced for perfectionn at a PE ratio something like 150. Disney competion coming this Fall.
OrgNet 7y ago
10% is nothing for netflix
- powerslacker 7y ago
  Seriously. Wake me up when it hits $250 a share again.
  - OrgNet 7y ago
    it is way over valued... since we know that the list of available content keeps getting smaller.
JauntyHatAngle 7y ago
As someone who recently cancelled my Netflix subscription after idly flipping through it and realising nothing here holds my interest anymore, I feel like many of the reasons people pirated TV/Film content in the past (and Netflix helped to reduce by many-fold) have now returned with a vengeance. I'm on Australian Netflix, and the selection of titles has steadily diminished from an already reduced catalogue to the sad state it is now. There isn't much to hold my interest anymore. Piracy for me, since becoming an adult and being able to pay my way through life, is mostly a question of convenience and availability. Netflix made it convenient and reasonably available. But now, with the steadily more and more fragmented state of streaming services, to watch the things I want to watch I have to either sign up for 3-4 different services. This makes the piracy route become more and more attractive again - and I don't like that this is the case. I want to pay people for their content. But ultimately, it's ended up just pushing me away from tv/film content altogether. I can easily get a wide selection of books on my kindle, a game from gog or steam (that I don't need a subscription for) or just watch youtube. For the stuff I really want to watch, I look around, see if there it is worth the dosh/hassle for the legal version (it rarely is) and usually just give up (and in rare cases, pirate).
- PebblesHD 7y ago
  I have largely the same issue. As opposed to a year or two ago when I regularly used both Netflix and Prime Video, these days I have subscriptions to those as well as the Foxtel and Stan offerings just to keep the same sort of depth of library. I’ve drawn the line at 4 services, with a total spend very close to what I was spending previously on cable, such that if a new show airs on something I’m not subscribed to, I’ll either cancel one or just skip it. Competition only works when all players have the same content, if everything is an island of exclusive offerings then I’d suggest thats something entirely different, and probably not something that’s sustainable since customers have only a finite monthly budget for entertainment.
  - derekp7 7y ago
    Since streaming services keep shows in their library for quite a while, and with binge watching being popular, it may be a good strategy to cycle through the services periodically. The problem is that they don't have a way for you to just "pause" a service, and if you have multiple family members in the household you have to get buy in from everyone.
neural_thing 7y ago
I'm not short Netflix because of subscriber count. I'm short Netflix because of their accounting. Capitalizing Stranger things season 1? Sure, makes sense, why not. But Stranger things season 3 is a lot closer to COGS. Their real income statement at this point in their growth curve (full saturation in the US) should be a lot closer to their cash flow statement, which is horrendous.
- testfoobar 7y ago
  Get outta here with your old-fashioned fundamental analysis. But seriously, 10+ years of central bank intervention has dumped so much liquidity into the market that the old saying "“The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent" might as well be "The market can stay irrational."
- riffraff 7y ago
  What's COGS?
  - neural_thing 7y ago
    Cost of goods sold
chank 7y ago
I like many others struggle to find something of interest on Netflix. I also don't want to subscribe just for one movie/show. With all the other services popping up, I really think this market is starting to become too fragmented.
xwdv 7y ago
I’m a Netflix investor. I’ve posted my tech portfolio here before, Netflix was a big part of it. Not anymore. I’ve decided to sell off in the after hours and be content with my 25%+ gain before things get worse. Or better. I don’t care. I’ve had a bad feeling about NFLX for some time, but this earnings only confirmed it. And if they’re counting on a Stranger Things, they’re screwed. I felt season 3 was garbage, and so do many other people, the latest season of Black Mirror was also terrible. There’s just nothing here for me anymore, and because of that I can’t sleep soundly being invested in this company.
JoshTko 7y ago
Netflix content these days feels like Madlibs. Take actor X in setting Y with the problem Z.
bsharitt 7y ago
I've not cancelled Netflix yet, but I'm looking to pare down my streaming services, and Netflix is the top of the list to go. Amazon and Hulu seem to be getting better for non-original content than Netflix. Rising prices and and a shrinking library aren't a good combo for me and while some shows are okay, the original content isn't worth it at older prices, but less the recent price hikes. The biggest thing about all these content owners making their own me too streaming service is that I'm more likely to subscribe to a few services and I'll go back to torrents for the rest.
Waterluvian 7y ago
Once I realized that VLC on my phone does chromecast to my TV without issue, and that I can torrent directly to my phone, I began downloading old TV shows again. I would pay $15/mo for ONE service that has a ton of old content. Also nothing is more irritating than a show with only a few seasons. Don't even bother, Netflix.
- apexalpha 7y ago
  >I would pay $15/mo for ONE service that has a ton of old content. Exactly, this is why I love Spotify and am worried that players like Apple will use their cash to break of the market and buy songs exclusive to them. Jay-Z tried it by only releasing his new album on Tidal, Apple bought exlusive rights to a song named 'Freedom' (lol). I really hope we don't import this exclusivity to the music streaming business.
stock_toaster 7y ago
Pretty much all of Netflix's interfaces that I use, I find awful to use, and they seem to only get worse over time. I actually can't wait for another company to eat their lunch.
rco8786 7y ago
I’ve realized in the last few months that I basically watch nothing on Netflix anymore. I’ve been considering canceling.
luhego 7y ago
I am not surprised. I am still a subscriber because I like some series like Mad Men and Dark. But their catalogue is shrinking and new content is mostly bad(with few exceptions like Death, Love and Robots).
Lucadg 7y ago
I also cancelled lately when I realized some data may be shared. I watched "back to the future" on Netflix and YouTube started suggesting related content immediately.
refurb 7y ago
My uneducated prediction: The next recession is triggered by a number of major Silicon Valley business models failing (e.g. Netflix, Uber, etc).
- axaxs 7y ago
  But the models haven't failed. If anything, they've proven success. Netflix's success has spawned what, 8 or so competitors now? Uber, 4 or so. I may be off, just what I'm thinking of in my head. So, it may be fair to say that SV businesses will fail, but definitely not their business models.
  - flukus 7y ago
    The SV business model is to take investors money to grow big fast, lose billions a year in the hope that you either dominate and become profitable our get bought out before you go bankrupt. That's what is under threat.
  - refurb 7y ago
    I don’t think anyone has proven the Uber/Lyft business models can be profitable. I don’t know enough about Netflix to make that claim. My thought is if we see major SV business models fail, you’ll see capital pretty quickly dry up, the stock market take a hit, which will cause more capital to pull out, lower confidence in the economy, etc.
paul7986 7y ago
There's too much content making it feel nothing special. Disney+ will have original shows from legacy IP (star war shows, marvel shows, pixar, etc) and HBO Max if WarnerMedia is smart will create live DC character TV shows or fold the DC Universe into HBO Max, along with Friends and all their 100 or more year old legacy content they can pull from. Though so far HBO Max the shows announced looks Warner isn't following Disney+ playbook which seems dumb. Personally Netflix can nor will ever compare or have that type of strong legacy content needed to compete against Disney+. I only use friends or family accounts and again when i do there is so much content Ive never heard of with popular actors that i just sign out/do not even use it for free. Clips on Youtube suffice(mac mini connected to TV) and it's forever playing things I like works for me.
Semaphor 7y ago
The reason I like Netflix less and less is their atrocious browsing interface: No customizability. I want "continue watching" always at the top and have an easy way to remove shows from there. I never want to see "Watch it again" anywhere. I don't want any movies on the Index. And I want a clear sign which shows are dubbed. (Well, and I'd like Japanese shows to have English subs, but that's not a UI problem) Over the years their interface got worse and worse that it's now at a point I need to use third party sites. So as they make discovery as hard as possible for me, I might as well cancel it whenever there isn't a release I want to watch.
- mokus 7y ago
  The final nail in their UX coffin, for me, was autoplaying previews in the browsing interface and playing trailers (AKA ads) for Netflix-produced shows. I finally got fed up with that recently, re-evaluated Hulu, and decided I was now a Hulu customer.
- pcurve 7y ago
  You know what would save Neflix? A table view with columns Custom play lists Reviews and star rating. Boolean search. They can build and roll these out in a month. I really think their toxic UI is damaging them. My hunch is, they can't roll these out because they don't want people noticing how little content there is on Netflix.
  - gabrielizaias 7y ago
    They had reviews and star ratings before. Now they don't have reviews and only like/dislike ratings.
- rv-de 7y ago
  Or show a flick under "continue watching" that you deliberately stopped watching because you didn't like it. Even disliking doesn't help - it's still wasting a tile - just greyed out.
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 7y ago
  Also, why do they always show you items you’ve already watched alongside things you haven’t? How many people are watching the same movie or tv series multiple times each month? The UI is definitely a big reason I cancelled.
quotemstr 7y ago
I cancelled Netflix when I realized I never used it anymore. There's practically no good third-party content left and the first-party content all seems to come from one particular worldview that I find grating and repulsive.
dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
> "From what we've seen in the past when we drop strong catalogue content... our members shift over to enjoying our other great content." Or just give up on you, as they're doing right now. When I see "Netflix Original", my expectations drop in an instant.
Fej 7y ago
The writing is on the wall. Netflix isn't doomed to fail, but it might be doomed to comparative (i.e. not a third of US internet traffic) irrelevancy. Every rightsholder has realized that it can make more money than Netflix will/can pay, either by making its own service or by licensing it to someone who will pay more (perhaps Hulu?). The content will continue to trickle out of Netflix until it's left with just some TV shows, B-movies, and of course their original content (which judging by other comments and my own experience is very hit-or-miss). The question is whether people will stay subscribed just for the original content (inertia is a powerful thing!) which is, as far as I can tell, a toss-up (which is why I wrote might).
gaucheph 7y ago
I remember when Netflix started automatically playing trailers (or their own version of one) whenever you rested on a title for longer than a few seconds. And I remember looking up how to disable this feature but you can't. I'm sure there will be "well actually"'s for this but when I checked, you couldn't and I don't bother every day checking to see if it's there. I noticed the Netflix app on some older smart televisions don't have this feature which I can only speculate why but it's like an upgrade watching on those old versions. I think it's clever, it gets the content they paid for playing on television sets sooner. Trailers can draw people in to watch something they might not have the same way the beginning of a book can suck you in sometimes. And for users that don't like this feature, it keeps them scrolling. Cause every time you scroll over to the next title, the trailer stops and you reliably get about 2 seconds before the next trailer starts playing. So I started scrolling faster. I think what happened next was that I realized there was nothing interesting to watch much sooner than I would if I wasn't scrolling as fast to avoid the automatically playing trailers. Their original content comes out so fast and different people in my social circles are so excited about completely different ones and recommending them to me all the time that they just all seem the "same". Something about not having months of hype and advertisements, big reveals, franchises, etc. makes the Netflix originals feel like the product of an assembly line than legitimate inspiration. Like they're doing sprints for creative work. There was a thread a while back on HN about "Bright" when it came out. I remember there was a comment suggesting that the plot/setting/actors/world seems like it was generated with neural nets or something. That's how they all feel to me. Also the recommendation algorithm gets some things right about me. Most things probably. But it's noticeably more exciting to use when scrolling through someone else's profile. Because it's all new stuff. It's completely tailored for someone else. You're likely to find titles you wouldn't bother to search for specifically (typing in the title) but you're surprised it's on their and you want to watch it immediately. I like The Incredibles but I don't want to watch the Emoji Movie. So I think they're getting eaten from a couple of angles. original programming is soylent green, other media companies are taking their balls home, the interface is designed in a way that reveals the lack of interesting stuff quicker, their price went up.
richliss 7y ago
I'd not touch Netflix shares with a barge pole. They're a great tech company but their original content, on the whole, doesn't do it for me to keep the subscription any more. I think I'll be subscribing again in the winter and watching everything at once then cancelling again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_distributed_by_Netflix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_dist... Out of the 22 drama shows on that list that are still on-going I'm definitely interested in 4 of them and probably will watch 2 others. That would probably take 2 weekends and the weeknights to watch all of it.
yur3i__ 7y ago
Yo ho ho, a pirates life for me
afarviral 7y ago
I doubt this is the average person's experience but the Netflix interface is so geared toward user engagement that it is actually not productive or convenient to use. Its merely designed to keep you searching and stumbling. Rather than performing the function that I pay for which is simple convenience. Its an inconvenience and an absolute burden. I make it usable with a few firefox plugins but theres no way to get it to a no-nonsense state where you can just select the show you want to watch and watch it. They seem to have an imperrative which is to distract and misdirect you and it is pivotal to the platform, given they cannot magically show you more content. They rehash the existing content to fool and entice you.
lm28469 7y ago
Not surprising, on demand video services became the same thing as cable TV. Dozens of services, each having their own content... I wouldn’t be surprised if they started bundling them in the future; something like an internet provider offering Netflix + Disney + Mubi for slightly cheaper than getting the 3 separately. That would mean we went full circle and a new cycle can start.
empath75 7y ago
It’ll be interesting to see if other streaming services also lose subscribers. Might be an early sign of recession as consumers cut costs.
WomanCanCode 7y ago
I'm noticing that my child doesn't even like or watch anything on Netflix kids. Youtube actually has a more appealing kid contents. I think what Netflix is missing is the daytime talk show/news reporting/ sports. They don't have good movie selections. And their sofware/app is terrible. You cannot find anything anymore. They keep on changing the order of my list and they also put different poster for the same title/content. This gets confusing, when you start watching something, only realizing you already did, a couple of months ago. Just the poster of the show/movie has changed!
distant_hat 7y ago
Additionally, one of the reasons for signing up for Netflix in India was that they were not into the silly government censorship rules. But then they folded like a cheap lawn chair when government made some noises, so why bother with them when the good international series make no sense or have important bits chopped out? https://www.businessinsider.in/As-it-seeks-to-grow-in-India-Netflix-will-censor-itself-to-avoid-a-crackdown-on-offensive-content/articleshow/67577890.cms https://www.businessinsider.in/As-it-seeks-to-grow-in-India-...
ChamindaV 7y ago
Surprise nobody talked about bland PC content that Netflix, Hollywood etc., are now stuck with. Netflix audience is too big and wide, they can't make any non-mainstream Hollywood content without offending some group of people who will use social platform to quickly kill any show.
superasn 7y ago
The best part about Netflix was their recommendation engine at least in the beginning. Now they have their own shows which they want to force down our throats match or no match. I think their USP at least to me was their great recommendations which is totally lost now because of their ulterior motives. Coincidentally I too am going to cancel my subscription this month.
- albanread 7y ago
  I am staying subscribed; I don't have the spare time to watch all of their shows; so getting bored of it; is not a problem; I like that they don't have adverts; and you can just play what you choose when you do have the time. This morning I got a letter from the BBC thanking me for paying my mandatory license fee; for owning a `colour television`. Netflix is good value; because I actually watch it; and the fact that people can legally cancel the subscription should keep them on their toes. Not that long ago there were only one or two channels of government propaganda to watch; that displayed a commercial test card transmission through most of the day. Life is good.

102 points by osrec 7y ago

Netflix has yet to find a property that can go the distance and really hook people long term. This whole “cancel a show after 3 seasons” is not what users who grew up with 6,7...10 year runs of shows connect to. They need some content with long legs to keep the sort used to Frasier like life spans. That’s who was tuning in during their growth period, for those old shows they can’t hang onto now.

giancarlostoro 7y ago
Agreed although Disney pulled all the Marvel ones I am sure. They didnt come out and say it but all the odd excuses and the fact they all went at once is obvious. The shows were really popular with everyone I know.
b_tterc_p 7y ago
Hmm I don’t think this is true. Most of netflix’s Content is story driven whereas never dying sitcoms were just kind of whatever. I’m sure people watched the sitcoms, some even on loop, but I doubt it was the luring factor. Maybe that’s just my personal misconception.
- oeoeo00 7y ago
  Anecdote; I’ve had family and friends cancel Netflix when their old favorites got pulled. People that are center of the road politically, and very nostalgia/tradition driven. It seems reasonable to me that type of person makes up a pretty large portion of the population (I grew up in the Midwest and feel that basically describes the region pretty well, accepting it’s just my gut sense.) Our brains like routine. That routine can be chasing novel experience or sitting still clinging to nostalgia. Seems pretty clear from the news the majority fall into the latter group.
  - b_tterc_p 7y ago
    Forgetting any particular political whatever, it seems odd to define someone who favors tradition / nostalgia as anything but conservative. Although perhaps current conservatives have kind of co-opted the term to mean something very different. The idea of preferring shows you have already seen is unthinkable to me.
Rapzid 7y ago
I'm a fan of well thought out and fleshed out story-lines with planned endings. I don't need a 10 year show, but I neither enjoy being strung along(Lost) or having a show just suddenly pulled.
eeeeeeeeeeeee 7y ago
Most people I talk to don’t want to dedicate 70 hours of their life to a mediocre show that is clearly manufactured to last 70 hours. Frasier was from a different time, when there weren’t many choices, so committing to one show for 10 years made more sense. I think people lose attention easier now and there are so many other things to occupy your time in the entertainment space.
fullshark 7y ago
Stranger Things seems to be a massive hit. Shelf life is unclear though. House of Cards was a hit and now it’s completely irrelevant it seems for comparison.
- skinnymuch 7y ago
  Stranger Things is done after 5 seasons. Not that long.
- kyshoc 7y ago
  House of Cards had to be emergency-landed due to the whole Kevin Spacey thing though, so it's not a good anecdote here.

tobsmagoats 7y ago

Netflix is fast on its way to becoming HBO, when other companies pull their content they'll use the money to pay for more original content. I wouldn't be too worried about their financials at the moment, but rather a year down the road when other subscription services are established.

echelon 7y ago
Given Netflix's propensity to burn money in an attempt to solve the problem, they're in for a world of hurt if things don't change. They fund and cancel so many projects it feels like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. They have a few hits, but this won't save them from the content behemoths. I think Netflix should begin lobbying for a greatly retracted copyright period. Studios always need to produce, so this doesn't impact their bottom line. Streaming companies are needed to facilitate interchange. The one thing this does is handicap players with lots of IP and forces them to invest in new content. I think it would be a win for consumers and competition. Lawmakers should take a serious look at Disney, too. They own a large and important swath of American culture, and they can effectively muscle out non-Disney content from both distribution and attention.
- rlayton2 7y ago
  After a couple of cancellations of shows I was liking, I'm not generally that enthused about starting a new show. Especially given the trend of not resolving anything at the end of the first season, where you get no payoff at all. I don't mind cliffhangers, but resolve the season's main problem first! (ref: The Expanse)
  - quelltext 7y ago
    The Expanse has 3 seasons, a 4th coming. Not sure if Netflix has the rights to air those, though.
    - salemh 7y ago
      S4 of Expanse was actually picked up by Amazon, not Netflix.

natrik 7y ago

Market saturation, advent of many streaming services, etc. I'd say it was to be expected.

Splendor 7y ago

I cancelled my subscription, not because of the price increase, but because the auto-play interface made me stop using the app.

NickBusey 7y ago
For everyone telling them you can turn that feature off, for the Xbox app at least, I assure you that you cannot.
- sigmar 7y ago
  I might be wrong, but I think those replies are confusing "autoplay next episode" with "autoplay show from the main menu". Above comment seems to be complaining about the latter, only the former can be turned off.
- donmcronald 7y ago
  Unless the Roku app changed, it can't be disabled either. Every time I open Netflix it feels like a battle with the autoplay "feature" and I just close it off. I think I might cancel it in favor of Prime.
  - segmondy 7y ago
    Depends on the Roku app. I have a roku and it never autoplays for Netflix but does autoplay for prime.
    - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
      Roku will autoplay for most shows but they increased the delay before it begins. It's a nice preview now without having to navigate into the show's page.
Wump 7y ago
FWIW, you can turn off auto play in the settings.

azernik 7y ago

Earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20463467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20463467

xienze 7y ago

> "Much of our domestic, and eventually global, Disney catalogue, 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," the company said in its statement. That's got to win the award for "spin of the year." I think they're in a world of hurt once Disney+ gets rolling. It's great to have a lot of original content but they just can't seem to come up with original content that has the kind of cultural cachet (established over years or in many cases decades) that these sitcoms, Disney movies, etc. have.

turtlecloud 7y ago

The content was too liberal leaning and alienated way too many of middle America.

ladberg 7y ago
What content was too biased for you?
- dx87 7y ago
  A lot of their stand up comedy specials are very political. You start to hear the crowd cheering a lot more than they're laughing. My wife and I watched the first episode of their new sitcom where Gabriel Iglesias is a teacher, and within the first couple of minutes it has a student saying that American history is just slavery and mistreating minorities, and the teacher makes a joke about our current president being covered in cheeto dust. My wife and I aren't Trump supporters, but it gets old seeing shows rely on political pandering for views instead of good writing. Here's a quote from Rob Schneider about it: "Much late night comedy is less about being funny and more about Indoctrination by comedic disposition," Schneider continued on Twitter. "People aren't really laughing at it as much as cheering on the rhetoric. It no longer resembles a comedy show, it's more like some kind of liberal Klan meeting."
  - bcassedy 7y ago
    The political comedy stuff is both topical and easy to write which makes it easy to see the appeal. You don't need some deep understanding or keen observation to mock cynical politicians. It's definitely lowest common denominator type stuff though. The Rob Schneider quote is a bit much. His quote is political nonsense from the right instead of the left. He should be talking about the lack of effort or insight in those types of bits instead of harping about liberal indoctrination. But he can't go that route because he's a hack whose entire claim to fame is that he's good friends with Adam Sandler.
  - b_tterc_p 7y ago
    I don’t think Rob Schneider is a particularly useful opinion to share. But the observation isn’t wrong. I’m definitely liberal, but a lot of liberal media content is pretty bland and annoying. Not Netflix, but the Twilight Zone remake suffered terribly from this. I’ve no doubt that there’s a ton of aggressively left comedians because... most stand up is bad? That being said... I don’t really expect to watch even a majority of netflix’s catalog so idk if it matters if some low quality content exists.

wolco 7y ago

The content selection has changed. Less variety overall, simple original movie plots. They spend too much for a few A listers.. [100 million for three specials is crazy] and less on shows produced by other networks. They should buy some older networks like turner.

baby 7y ago

I strongly believe in Netflix, there is just no way they will go down because they were the first ones and the fastest to get into the market. They're already producing a lot of masterpieces and soon it'll be a hard loss not to have your content there.

fullshark 7y ago
First mover disadvantage is a thing

tyingq 7y ago

I suspect they will also get hit by people subscribing for a month to see something specific, then unsubscribing until something new worth watching appears. Now that good content is so fragmented across services, it will likely be common to cancel often. I paid for a month of HBO mostly to watch Chernobyl, then cancelled.

hbosch 7y ago
In a meeting room somewhere, a young PM rubs hand sanitizer on his palms and loads up his latest deck: Okay guys, what we have here is something we’re calling Loyalty Seasons. Our recommendation is to make season 4 of Stranger Things, as well as the new Will Smith movie, available only to customers who have been subscribed for 3 or more months.
- schlumpf 7y ago
  This would in turn cause a different group of PMs (portfolio managers, in this case) to borrow Netflix stock and sell short. Paying up-front production costs on an asset being provided only to users whose revenues the company has already captured is a suboptimal use of equity capital -- to put it gently.
eeeeeeeeeeeee 7y ago
This is what I do now and I enjoy the services a lot more now because I don’t browse. I just make lists of things I want to watch and subscribe accordingly.

joeblow21 7y ago

They were priced for perfectionn at a PE ratio something like 150. Disney competion coming this Fall.

OrgNet 7y ago

10% is nothing for netflix

powerslacker 7y ago
Seriously. Wake me up when it hits $250 a share again.
- OrgNet 7y ago
  it is way over valued... since we know that the list of available content keeps getting smaller.

JauntyHatAngle 7y ago

As someone who recently cancelled my Netflix subscription after idly flipping through it and realising nothing here holds my interest anymore, I feel like many of the reasons people pirated TV/Film content in the past (and Netflix helped to reduce by many-fold) have now returned with a vengeance. I'm on Australian Netflix, and the selection of titles has steadily diminished from an already reduced catalogue to the sad state it is now. There isn't much to hold my interest anymore. Piracy for me, since becoming an adult and being able to pay my way through life, is mostly a question of convenience and availability. Netflix made it convenient and reasonably available. But now, with the steadily more and more fragmented state of streaming services, to watch the things I want to watch I have to either sign up for 3-4 different services. This makes the piracy route become more and more attractive again - and I don't like that this is the case. I want to pay people for their content. But ultimately, it's ended up just pushing me away from tv/film content altogether. I can easily get a wide selection of books on my kindle, a game from gog or steam (that I don't need a subscription for) or just watch youtube. For the stuff I really want to watch, I look around, see if there it is worth the dosh/hassle for the legal version (it rarely is) and usually just give up (and in rare cases, pirate).

PebblesHD 7y ago
I have largely the same issue. As opposed to a year or two ago when I regularly used both Netflix and Prime Video, these days I have subscriptions to those as well as the Foxtel and Stan offerings just to keep the same sort of depth of library. I’ve drawn the line at 4 services, with a total spend very close to what I was spending previously on cable, such that if a new show airs on something I’m not subscribed to, I’ll either cancel one or just skip it. Competition only works when all players have the same content, if everything is an island of exclusive offerings then I’d suggest thats something entirely different, and probably not something that’s sustainable since customers have only a finite monthly budget for entertainment.
- derekp7 7y ago
  Since streaming services keep shows in their library for quite a while, and with binge watching being popular, it may be a good strategy to cycle through the services periodically. The problem is that they don't have a way for you to just "pause" a service, and if you have multiple family members in the household you have to get buy in from everyone.

neural_thing 7y ago

I'm not short Netflix because of subscriber count. I'm short Netflix because of their accounting. Capitalizing Stranger things season 1? Sure, makes sense, why not. But Stranger things season 3 is a lot closer to COGS. Their real income statement at this point in their growth curve (full saturation in the US) should be a lot closer to their cash flow statement, which is horrendous.

testfoobar 7y ago
Get outta here with your old-fashioned fundamental analysis. But seriously, 10+ years of central bank intervention has dumped so much liquidity into the market that the old saying "“The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent" might as well be "The market can stay irrational."
riffraff 7y ago
What's COGS?
- neural_thing 7y ago
  Cost of goods sold

chank 7y ago

I like many others struggle to find something of interest on Netflix. I also don't want to subscribe just for one movie/show. With all the other services popping up, I really think this market is starting to become too fragmented.

xwdv 7y ago

I’m a Netflix investor. I’ve posted my tech portfolio here before, Netflix was a big part of it. Not anymore. I’ve decided to sell off in the after hours and be content with my 25%+ gain before things get worse. Or better. I don’t care. I’ve had a bad feeling about NFLX for some time, but this earnings only confirmed it. And if they’re counting on a Stranger Things, they’re screwed. I felt season 3 was garbage, and so do many other people, the latest season of Black Mirror was also terrible. There’s just nothing here for me anymore, and because of that I can’t sleep soundly being invested in this company.

JoshTko 7y ago

Netflix content these days feels like Madlibs. Take actor X in setting Y with the problem Z.

bsharitt 7y ago

I've not cancelled Netflix yet, but I'm looking to pare down my streaming services, and Netflix is the top of the list to go. Amazon and Hulu seem to be getting better for non-original content than Netflix. Rising prices and and a shrinking library aren't a good combo for me and while some shows are okay, the original content isn't worth it at older prices, but less the recent price hikes. The biggest thing about all these content owners making their own me too streaming service is that I'm more likely to subscribe to a few services and I'll go back to torrents for the rest.

Waterluvian 7y ago

Once I realized that VLC on my phone does chromecast to my TV without issue, and that I can torrent directly to my phone, I began downloading old TV shows again. I would pay $15/mo for ONE service that has a ton of old content. Also nothing is more irritating than a show with only a few seasons. Don't even bother, Netflix.

apexalpha 7y ago
>I would pay $15/mo for ONE service that has a ton of old content. Exactly, this is why I love Spotify and am worried that players like Apple will use their cash to break of the market and buy songs exclusive to them. Jay-Z tried it by only releasing his new album on Tidal, Apple bought exlusive rights to a song named 'Freedom' (lol). I really hope we don't import this exclusivity to the music streaming business.

stock_toaster 7y ago

Pretty much all of Netflix's interfaces that I use, I find awful to use, and they seem to only get worse over time. I actually can't wait for another company to eat their lunch.

rco8786 7y ago

I’ve realized in the last few months that I basically watch nothing on Netflix anymore. I’ve been considering canceling.

luhego 7y ago

I am not surprised. I am still a subscriber because I like some series like Mad Men and Dark. But their catalogue is shrinking and new content is mostly bad(with few exceptions like Death, Love and Robots).

Lucadg 7y ago

I also cancelled lately when I realized some data may be shared. I watched "back to the future" on Netflix and YouTube started suggesting related content immediately.

refurb 7y ago

My uneducated prediction: The next recession is triggered by a number of major Silicon Valley business models failing (e.g. Netflix, Uber, etc).

axaxs 7y ago
But the models haven't failed. If anything, they've proven success. Netflix's success has spawned what, 8 or so competitors now? Uber, 4 or so. I may be off, just what I'm thinking of in my head. So, it may be fair to say that SV businesses will fail, but definitely not their business models.
- flukus 7y ago
  The SV business model is to take investors money to grow big fast, lose billions a year in the hope that you either dominate and become profitable our get bought out before you go bankrupt. That's what is under threat.
- refurb 7y ago
  I don’t think anyone has proven the Uber/Lyft business models can be profitable. I don’t know enough about Netflix to make that claim. My thought is if we see major SV business models fail, you’ll see capital pretty quickly dry up, the stock market take a hit, which will cause more capital to pull out, lower confidence in the economy, etc.

paul7986 7y ago

There's too much content making it feel nothing special. Disney+ will have original shows from legacy IP (star war shows, marvel shows, pixar, etc) and HBO Max if WarnerMedia is smart will create live DC character TV shows or fold the DC Universe into HBO Max, along with Friends and all their 100 or more year old legacy content they can pull from. Though so far HBO Max the shows announced looks Warner isn't following Disney+ playbook which seems dumb. Personally Netflix can nor will ever compare or have that type of strong legacy content needed to compete against Disney+. I only use friends or family accounts and again when i do there is so much content Ive never heard of with popular actors that i just sign out/do not even use it for free. Clips on Youtube suffice(mac mini connected to TV) and it's forever playing things I like works for me.

Semaphor 7y ago

The reason I like Netflix less and less is their atrocious browsing interface: No customizability. I want "continue watching" always at the top and have an easy way to remove shows from there. I never want to see "Watch it again" anywhere. I don't want any movies on the Index. And I want a clear sign which shows are dubbed. (Well, and I'd like Japanese shows to have English subs, but that's not a UI problem) Over the years their interface got worse and worse that it's now at a point I need to use third party sites. So as they make discovery as hard as possible for me, I might as well cancel it whenever there isn't a release I want to watch.

mokus 7y ago
The final nail in their UX coffin, for me, was autoplaying previews in the browsing interface and playing trailers (AKA ads) for Netflix-produced shows. I finally got fed up with that recently, re-evaluated Hulu, and decided I was now a Hulu customer.
pcurve 7y ago
You know what would save Neflix? A table view with columns Custom play lists Reviews and star rating. Boolean search. They can build and roll these out in a month. I really think their toxic UI is damaging them. My hunch is, they can't roll these out because they don't want people noticing how little content there is on Netflix.
- gabrielizaias 7y ago
  They had reviews and star ratings before. Now they don't have reviews and only like/dislike ratings.
rv-de 7y ago
Or show a flick under "continue watching" that you deliberately stopped watching because you didn't like it. Even disliking doesn't help - it's still wasting a tile - just greyed out.
eeeeeeeeeeeee 7y ago
Also, why do they always show you items you’ve already watched alongside things you haven’t? How many people are watching the same movie or tv series multiple times each month? The UI is definitely a big reason I cancelled.

quotemstr 7y ago

I cancelled Netflix when I realized I never used it anymore. There's practically no good third-party content left and the first-party content all seems to come from one particular worldview that I find grating and repulsive.

dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago

> "From what we've seen in the past when we drop strong catalogue content... our members shift over to enjoying our other great content." Or just give up on you, as they're doing right now. When I see "Netflix Original", my expectations drop in an instant.

Fej 7y ago

The writing is on the wall. Netflix isn't doomed to fail, but it might be doomed to comparative (i.e. not a third of US internet traffic) irrelevancy. Every rightsholder has realized that it can make more money than Netflix will/can pay, either by making its own service or by licensing it to someone who will pay more (perhaps Hulu?). The content will continue to trickle out of Netflix until it's left with just some TV shows, B-movies, and of course their original content (which judging by other comments and my own experience is very hit-or-miss). The question is whether people will stay subscribed just for the original content (inertia is a powerful thing!) which is, as far as I can tell, a toss-up (which is why I wrote might).

gaucheph 7y ago

I remember when Netflix started automatically playing trailers (or their own version of one) whenever you rested on a title for longer than a few seconds. And I remember looking up how to disable this feature but you can't. I'm sure there will be "well actually"'s for this but when I checked, you couldn't and I don't bother every day checking to see if it's there. I noticed the Netflix app on some older smart televisions don't have this feature which I can only speculate why but it's like an upgrade watching on those old versions. I think it's clever, it gets the content they paid for playing on television sets sooner. Trailers can draw people in to watch something they might not have the same way the beginning of a book can suck you in sometimes. And for users that don't like this feature, it keeps them scrolling. Cause every time you scroll over to the next title, the trailer stops and you reliably get about 2 seconds before the next trailer starts playing. So I started scrolling faster. I think what happened next was that I realized there was nothing interesting to watch much sooner than I would if I wasn't scrolling as fast to avoid the automatically playing trailers. Their original content comes out so fast and different people in my social circles are so excited about completely different ones and recommending them to me all the time that they just all seem the "same". Something about not having months of hype and advertisements, big reveals, franchises, etc. makes the Netflix originals feel like the product of an assembly line than legitimate inspiration. Like they're doing sprints for creative work. There was a thread a while back on HN about "Bright" when it came out. I remember there was a comment suggesting that the plot/setting/actors/world seems like it was generated with neural nets or something. That's how they all feel to me. Also the recommendation algorithm gets some things right about me. Most things probably. But it's noticeably more exciting to use when scrolling through someone else's profile. Because it's all new stuff. It's completely tailored for someone else. You're likely to find titles you wouldn't bother to search for specifically (typing in the title) but you're surprised it's on their and you want to watch it immediately. I like The Incredibles but I don't want to watch the Emoji Movie. So I think they're getting eaten from a couple of angles. original programming is soylent green, other media companies are taking their balls home, the interface is designed in a way that reveals the lack of interesting stuff quicker, their price went up.

richliss 7y ago

I'd not touch Netflix shares with a barge pole. They're a great tech company but their original content, on the whole, doesn't do it for me to keep the subscription any more. I think I'll be subscribing again in the winter and watching everything at once then cancelling again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_distributed_by_Netflix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_dist... Out of the 22 drama shows on that list that are still on-going I'm definitely interested in 4 of them and probably will watch 2 others. That would probably take 2 weekends and the weeknights to watch all of it.

yur3i__ 7y ago

Yo ho ho, a pirates life for me

afarviral 7y ago

I doubt this is the average person's experience but the Netflix interface is so geared toward user engagement that it is actually not productive or convenient to use. Its merely designed to keep you searching and stumbling. Rather than performing the function that I pay for which is simple convenience. Its an inconvenience and an absolute burden. I make it usable with a few firefox plugins but theres no way to get it to a no-nonsense state where you can just select the show you want to watch and watch it. They seem to have an imperrative which is to distract and misdirect you and it is pivotal to the platform, given they cannot magically show you more content. They rehash the existing content to fool and entice you.

lm28469 7y ago

Not surprising, on demand video services became the same thing as cable TV. Dozens of services, each having their own content... I wouldn’t be surprised if they started bundling them in the future; something like an internet provider offering Netflix + Disney + Mubi for slightly cheaper than getting the 3 separately. That would mean we went full circle and a new cycle can start.

empath75 7y ago

It’ll be interesting to see if other streaming services also lose subscribers. Might be an early sign of recession as consumers cut costs.

WomanCanCode 7y ago

I'm noticing that my child doesn't even like or watch anything on Netflix kids. Youtube actually has a more appealing kid contents. I think what Netflix is missing is the daytime talk show/news reporting/ sports. They don't have good movie selections. And their sofware/app is terrible. You cannot find anything anymore. They keep on changing the order of my list and they also put different poster for the same title/content. This gets confusing, when you start watching something, only realizing you already did, a couple of months ago. Just the poster of the show/movie has changed!

distant_hat 7y ago

Additionally, one of the reasons for signing up for Netflix in India was that they were not into the silly government censorship rules. But then they folded like a cheap lawn chair when government made some noises, so why bother with them when the good international series make no sense or have important bits chopped out? https://www.businessinsider.in/As-it-seeks-to-grow-in-India-Netflix-will-censor-itself-to-avoid-a-crackdown-on-offensive-content/articleshow/67577890.cms https://www.businessinsider.in/As-it-seeks-to-grow-in-India-...

ChamindaV 7y ago

Surprise nobody talked about bland PC content that Netflix, Hollywood etc., are now stuck with. Netflix audience is too big and wide, they can't make any non-mainstream Hollywood content without offending some group of people who will use social platform to quickly kill any show.

superasn 7y ago

The best part about Netflix was their recommendation engine at least in the beginning. Now they have their own shows which they want to force down our throats match or no match. I think their USP at least to me was their great recommendations which is totally lost now because of their ulterior motives. Coincidentally I too am going to cancel my subscription this month.

albanread 7y ago
I am staying subscribed; I don't have the spare time to watch all of their shows; so getting bored of it; is not a problem; I like that they don't have adverts; and you can just play what you choose when you do have the time. This morning I got a letter from the BBC thanking me for paying my mandatory license fee; for owning a `colour television`. Netflix is good value; because I actually watch it; and the fact that people can legally cancel the subscription should keep them on their toes. Not that long ago there were only one or two channels of government propaganda to watch; that displayed a commercial test card transmission through most of the day. Life is good.