Letters: Next episode might be better?
[Re: Netflix shares tumble as streaming giant loses 200k subscribers, yesterday]
Quelle surprise, as the French would say. After years of being trapped at home having little else to do except watch TV, people have started to cancel their subscriptions for Netflix.
If the streaming giant wasn’t prepared for this moment, then they really were missing a trick.
To their credit, it seems they have, with forecasts suggesting another 2 million subscribers could give up the platform.
For a long time Netflix has had market dominance, with the only comparative product – iTunes – being vastly more expensive. Now there’s an abundance of them.
But can you remember what you watched in lockdown? No me either. Apart from a series of shows we’ve watched too quickly and raved about for a week, they were mostly forgotten. Few had longevity that lasted beyond the initial hype.
This is Netflix’s problem. They are feeding an insatiable beast with no real loyalty to the platform itself. Unless they can prove people should come to Netflix and only Netflix they’ll struggle. Many of their “own brand” TV shows and movies regurgitate actors and all blend in to one. This saves budgets in the short-term, but as we’ve seen, will hurt Netflix in the years to come.
Linda Goring