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The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

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Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#861
post #775

All the handwringing over Netflix subscriber loss seems to be overlooking the fact that they raised their prices - significantly. Of course they could lose subscribers from doing that. But 200k subscribers out of 150 million? Combined with the end of the pandemic and sky high inflation meaning many people have less opportunity to watch and less money to spend. The fact they raised their prices something like 20% and…

Definitely a part of it for some. Me, I cancelled due to the low quality of their catalog. A decade or so ago, they had a really strong library of media. Now they don't. What they spend their money on, I find to be severely lacking.

They published some shareholder statement years back saying "The quality of the programming does not seem to correlate with how much most users consume".

So there you go. I found the same, 10 years back I would read about something amazing and critically acclaimed -- and they'd have it!

Now rarely do they. But, my wife and I still watch a lot of Netflix. It is the service which seems to have many things she wants to watch and a good amount of things we both want to watch.

Things only I want to watch I mostly find on Hulu and HBOMax. Or I have to watch them the old fashioned way because they are too obscure to be on a streaming platform.

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#862
post #271

"The woke mind virus is making Netflix unwatchable" Elon Musk, April 2022. Accurate.

"the blue bus travels over denmark" rnd0, April 2022. Also gibberish. I mean, as long as we're going to be spewing content-free sentences I might as well get mine in. "Woke" isn't a useful term because today in 2022 it basically means "anything a conservative doesn't like". "Woke mind virus" is particularly egregious -that's pure hyperbole without even a pretense of meaning. The problem with Netflix in the main isn't…

Saying that "woke" means anything conservatives don't like is a very woke thing to say. Woke is post modernist far left garbage which ends at center-left. Not at "far right".

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#863

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the same boat, I cut the cord in 2008 and truly feel that my kids had a better experience as youths. Having cable tv in a hotel was a huge deal for them, although they didn't really understand commercials.

Ha ha, yeah my kids were shocked by the repetition and onslaught of commercials. "How does anyone watch this?" they asked. Yeah.

Strangely my reaction was the opposite. I didn't really have tv, and I LOVED commercials, I would even put on the paid programming channels if left alone.

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#864
post #775

All the handwringing over Netflix subscriber loss seems to be overlooking the fact that they raised their prices - significantly. Of course they could lose subscribers from doing that. But 200k subscribers out of 150 million? Combined with the end of the pandemic and sky high inflation meaning many people have less opportunity to watch and less money to spend. The fact they raised their prices something like 20% and…

Definitely a part of it for some. Me, I cancelled due to the low quality of their catalog. A decade or so ago, they had a really strong library of media. Now they don't. What they spend their money on, I find to be severely lacking.

All this makes me realize that we have Netflix and haven't really watched or enjoyed it since, I think, the Expanse. I guess we watched the Squid Game, too, but I thought that was terrible. Like a low grade ripoff of an old (and much more intelligent) manga called The Liar Game.

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#865
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, Netflix would be 1000 times better if they just let me sort, filter and find content based on concrete metadata. Instead, I'm forced to rely on their recommendation algorithms that purport to know what I want to watch, but for some reason keep recommending low quality content in languages I'm just not interested in. I'd be happy if I could just filter Netflix to only show me content with original audio in…

Yes! I recently went on a little trip and the AirBnB host had Netflix. This is the first time I’ve ever used Netflix. And oh my god how do people find anything with it?? I didn’t realize that you could scroll horizontally for about a day. And the categories are… useless. +1 for traditional “action” categories. And the content was mostly straight to DVD B-movies with a few “80s oldies.” I did manage to watch the new B…

To be fair, I think their algorithm is way better once it gets a bead on your interests. Now, that definitely results in some shows never pop up in your 'feed,' but overall I'm in 2 modes of watching:

1. Scrolling into something that suits my interests 2. Navigating straight to something I want

If I'm in mode 1, then the feed works pretty well. If I'm in mode 2, then I can search straight away for the thing I'm looking for (and usually that search starts at the Google layer so I can be sure I'm going into the correct app in the first place!)

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#866
post #778
post #775

All the handwringing over Netflix subscriber loss seems to be overlooking the fact that they raised their prices - significantly. Of course they could lose subscribers from doing that. But 200k subscribers out of 150 million? Combined with the end of the pandemic and sky high inflation meaning many people have less opportunity to watch and less money to spend. The fact they raised their prices something like 20% and…

I wonder why the market reacted so harshly though, with NFLX losing 1/3 last Wednesday ($347 to $215).

Netflix P/E ratio is about 30:1, so Netflix not growing is a bad look.

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#867
post #662

It's sad that we cannot own titles but are forced to rent them from these streaming services that can't seem to get their shit together. (Not blaming Netflix per se; this is a pox on all their houses). Used to be nice in the DVD days. I built myself a nice collection then. This was the idea behind digital rights lockers: UltraViolet, which Disney refused to participate in and which closed down in 2019, and its succes…

I still buy hard media (which makes me a Luddite apparently) because I consider it art and refuse to pay for digital media that is allegedly perpetual and then one day it goes missing because the wokes decided it should be memory holed. One of many, many examples: https://screenrant.com/its-always-sunny-blackface-episodes-m... Even things like iTunes Music Store which once claimed that all your past purchases are ava…

I have had 4 different shows have content cut from them that I noticed this year, for a variety of woke factors.

- Peep Show (Jeremy & Nancy "taboo" breaking episode)

- 30 Rock (Jenna & Tracy "role reversal" episode)

- Community (Chang D&D)

- Always Sunny

In these instances, the character that is doing the "deplorable" act is the villian or idiot. It's not like these shows are promoting those views, they're actually doing the opposite.

It's so bizarre.

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#868
The elephant in the room is that the quality has been plummeting. I used to watch Netflix for MCU content. Guess where I get that now. There were also shows like Adventure Time, My Little Pony, Schindler's List, none of which are on Netflix now.

Netflix content is mediocre. I loved Squid Game and The Queen's Gambit, but they felt padded and I fast forwarded through them. A lot of their other other content is shock and sex, which I presume gets people to binge.

But there's only so long you can keep dropping quality before people leave.

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#869
post #857
post #854

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've lost 200K subscribes... so far . The full effect of price increases will take time to fully play out, plus the effects of implementing commercials have yet to be seen. Also, it remains to be seen how other streaming services will respond. Will they raise prices and add commercials too? If Netflix becomes the one streaming brand most associated with actions hostile to their viewers, this could be the beginning…

This 200k subscribers number is missing the elephant in the room. They expected 2.5 million new subscribers. They didn't get those 2.5 million new subscribers and actually lost 200k, so they're technically -2.7 million subscribers. This may have also triggered an exodus of subscribers too, even if Netflix doesn't do anything additionally stupid to turnoff consumers.

I know it’s commonly used logic, because announcements and expectations and whatnot, but I find the logic of:

> They didn't get those 2.5 million new subscribers and actually lost 200k, so they're technically -2.7 million subscribers

To be extremely questionable, if not outright incorrect. They didn’t lose something they didn’t have. 2.5m people didn’t leave, 200k did. Sure, they didn’t reach a target of 2.5m new users, but that’s not the same as losing them.

I know, shareholder announcements/analysts predictions etc, I know I’m not going to change that logic, but I still think it’s bad logic.

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#870
post #861

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely a part of it for some. Me, I cancelled due to the low quality of their catalog. A decade or so ago, they had a really strong library of media. Now they don't. What they spend their money on, I find to be severely lacking.

They published some shareholder statement years back saying "The quality of the programming does not seem to correlate with how much most users consume". So there you go. I found the same, 10 years back I would read about something amazing and critically acclaimed -- and they'd have it! Now rarely do they. But, my wife and I still watch a lot of Netflix. It is the service which seems to have many things she wants to…

It is same situation at our home. My wife finds plenty of things to watch on Netflix. I rarely do.

When we want to watch something together, we are renting on demand movies or even driving to redbox and picking up some snacks at the same time.

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