“Today we sadly let go of around 300 employees.” [1] Netflix made the announcement last Thursday (June 23, 2022) after already experiencing a massive drop in subscribers, an increased cost of producing content, and informing employees that they might have to work on video content they disagree with in principle. Shoot, I remember the best thing about Netflix was when you could mail their DVDs back in a pre-paid envelope.
It hasn’t been difficult to see the problems building around the streaming industry’s business, and as a consumer, I’ll mention a few things that bug me the most. In November 2021, I noted in my Journal that “there will not be a valid winner of the online video streaming until some consolidation occurs within the industry.” There are too many players; most are good, and none are great. They all have content that is incredibly expensive to produce, and cutting corners produces sub-par results. It is a mess.
I, for one, am simply getting tired of paying for multiple services, and as a result, I have joined the “churn.” A growing group of individuals sign up for a month or the 7-day free trial subscription and then binge the seasons within the week. Then, cancel, and repeat with another subscriber.
The companies have responded by releasing the more popular series episodes weekly, and a few premium services are considering reducing the cost of streaming by adding advertisements. The problem with this is that we are right back to the ’70s only instead of free black and white television, where seasons have 20 episodes. We find ourselves paying rotating fees to various companies to view the content we enjoy, and the seasons only offer 8 episodes. Somethings got to give.
The give will generally be an implosion of companies within the industry. I suspect whatever emerges from the rubble will be a pretty good company with a product that will last. It won’t look or feel like anything we have today; however, I hope it has the one feature I have begged Netflix to implement. A payer button. I’ll explain. When you log onto Netflix, a list of everyone that has your password.. err.. that live in your household has a separate little box. Netflix should be able to identify which one of the boxes hosts the person who pays the bill. That person should never receive the error message “Three people are already logged onto this account. Would you like to add a fourth?”
Reference:
[1] [Netflix Lays Offs More Employees To Cut Costs (yahoo.com)](https://finance.yahoo.com/m/8aad7ee3-e5aa-3f54-9edc-616d6b93e9f2/netflix-lays-offs-more.html)