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I'm about to cancel my subscription because their content selection is weak overall. They have a few native shows that are worth watching. Beyond that, their mo

I'm about to cancel my subscription because their content selection is weak overall. They have a few native shows that are worth watching. Beyond that, their movie selection is horrible (they've obviously navigated away from that for many years now). The perpetual price increases are getting annoying. They're trying to relatively gouge the large US market to offset the fact that they're bleeding to death (on a cash generation basis they're losing extreme amounts of money, with no end in sight). Their balance sheet - net tangible assets specifically - tells the future: -$2b 2015, -$4.5b 2016, -$6.7b 2017, -$9.7b 2018, -$15b as of 1Q19 Quarterly debt interest costs have soared from ~$35m in 2016, to $135m+ now. Meanwhile they bury themselves persistently under ever greater debt to fund production that they can't actually afford. It's going to end badly, if they could generate a real profit they would have done so by now (and competition is going to get worse, rather than lighter).

eeeeeeeeeeeee 7y ago
I cancelled but I sign up like once a quarter now, if that, to catch things I want to see like Stranger Things. But the quality of 90% of the content is pretty weak and seems to be getting worse. For that same price I’d rather rent two movies per month from iTunes (and they often have 99 cent rental deals). Netflix is focusing too much on television series that are 10x too long to trick people into feeling they received value. I’d like to see more original movies. The UX decisions are also very anti-user. No user reviews, just a worthless “percentage match” that seems to be randomly generated. Auto playing videos, changing movie covers randomly to trick you into thinking more new content is there than it actually is, etc.
echelon 7y ago
Serious questions: Could Netflix actually go out of business? If so, who buys their IP? Who will be the major players in the streaming entertainment space in 5 years? How will this impact film and tv production/distribution? (Less variety in theaters?) Is consolidation in the media industry something lawmakers would take interest in breaking up? Can we lobby to decrease copyright duration? Can an aggregation service charge a flat fee and provide a single interface to all of the various streaming platforms? Can we fight this somehow? The situation is becoming worse (and more expensive) than cable.
- fullshark 7y ago
  Apple will bail them out
- skinnymuch 7y ago
  Anyone can go out of business. Netflix going out of business right now is highly unlikely. Your comment is asking this in response to some specific stats with no comparison to how competition is doing. If those stats and numbers are making you question Netflix then you should be questioning most if not all media companies much more.
BLKNSLVR 7y ago
As an understatement of epic proportions, those figures don't look sustainable to someone un-trained in large-scale financial accounting. The fact that it's been allowed to increase to those levels, year-on-year, would indicate that there's some likelihood of being able to either pay-back loans or show some amount of return-on-investment at some point in the relatively near future. Where is the money coming from? Why does it keep coming if their balance sheet looks that scary?
- skinnymuch 7y ago
  Compare that debt to the debt of Disney or Comcast or AT&T. It’s nothing.
skinnymuch 7y ago
What about the debt loads of their three Main competitors? Disney, Comcast, AT&T? Their debts are insane. Of course they all are much more diverse companies, but their debts are also many multiples higher than Netflix. It’ll be some time before Netflix debt reaches Disney’s. At that point, the point could be much stronger. But at that point the status of Disney’s streaming service figures and Netflix’s figures would matter just as much.

eeeeeeeeeeeee 7y ago

I cancelled but I sign up like once a quarter now, if that, to catch things I want to see like Stranger Things. But the quality of 90% of the content is pretty weak and seems to be getting worse. For that same price I’d rather rent two movies per month from iTunes (and they often have 99 cent rental deals). Netflix is focusing too much on television series that are 10x too long to trick people into feeling they received value. I’d like to see more original movies. The UX decisions are also very anti-user. No user reviews, just a worthless “percentage match” that seems to be randomly generated. Auto playing videos, changing movie covers randomly to trick you into thinking more new content is there than it actually is, etc.

echelon 7y ago

Serious questions: Could Netflix actually go out of business? If so, who buys their IP? Who will be the major players in the streaming entertainment space in 5 years? How will this impact film and tv production/distribution? (Less variety in theaters?) Is consolidation in the media industry something lawmakers would take interest in breaking up? Can we lobby to decrease copyright duration? Can an aggregation service charge a flat fee and provide a single interface to all of the various streaming platforms? Can we fight this somehow? The situation is becoming worse (and more expensive) than cable.

fullshark 7y ago
Apple will bail them out
skinnymuch 7y ago
Anyone can go out of business. Netflix going out of business right now is highly unlikely. Your comment is asking this in response to some specific stats with no comparison to how competition is doing. If those stats and numbers are making you question Netflix then you should be questioning most if not all media companies much more.

BLKNSLVR 7y ago

As an understatement of epic proportions, those figures don't look sustainable to someone un-trained in large-scale financial accounting. The fact that it's been allowed to increase to those levels, year-on-year, would indicate that there's some likelihood of being able to either pay-back loans or show some amount of return-on-investment at some point in the relatively near future. Where is the money coming from? Why does it keep coming if their balance sheet looks that scary?

skinnymuch 7y ago
Compare that debt to the debt of Disney or Comcast or AT&T. It’s nothing.

skinnymuch 7y ago

What about the debt loads of their three Main competitors? Disney, Comcast, AT&T? Their debts are insane. Of course they all are much more diverse companies, but their debts are also many multiples higher than Netflix. It’ll be some time before Netflix debt reaches Disney’s. At that point, the point could be much stronger. But at that point the status of Disney’s streaming service figures and Netflix’s figures would matter just as much.