You may have noticed the selection of movies on Netflix isn’t what it used to be, and the company admitted as much Monday, with Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos addressing the subject at the UBS Global Media and Communications conference in New York.
Fortune reports that Sarandos said the reason can be summed up succinctly: Viewers aren’t watching movies. Sarandos reportedly said only about one-third of Netflix subscribers watch movies.
“He explained that even in Canada, where Netflix has five major movie studio output deals, only a third of viewing comes from films — the same as in the U.S., which has just one deal,” Fortune reports.
Business Insider quotes Sarandos saying: “No matter what, we end up with about one-third of our watching being movies.” Sarandos reportedly cited the delay in getting movies on the streaming service as a key factor.
Fortune adds: “Research reported on earlier this year showed that in 2014, roughly 20% of IMDb’s top 250 movies were available to watch on Netflix, whereas only around 12% were in September 2016. Additionally, Netflix’s selection of titles has dropped over 50% since 2012, according to the streaming blog Exstreamist.”
If they provided better movies there would be more movie watching.
It sounds like they think that they should be writing off 1/3 of their viewers and get rid of movies. I did a trial 3 months with Netflix last spring, and while I did catch up on a couple of TV shows that I’d missed, I didn’t find enough movies to make it worth my while and canceled.
The thinking is that movies and older back library material are good for padding the number of titles you can promote when you’re trying to make a name for yourself and pick up subscribers but become an expensive liability once a service starts focusing on original programming. It’s possible there’s something to the theory that newer movies are taking too long to get to the streaming services but I think it’s more likely that the viewers who are particularly interested in recent films are buying the DVD / Blu-ray / 4K releases now that retail on most of them has gotten fairly inexpensive. TV boxed sets cost more and aren’t as easy to find after their initial release. Some TV series available on the streaming services aren’t available on DVD at all, making but Netflix and other services the place to watch them.
I do think Netflix is throwing the baby out with the bath water, though. Having said that, there IS money to be made from a good film library and some service, possibly one that doesn’t even exist yet, is going to do just that.
I enjoy Netflix but the number and quality of movies is limited. I loved Bloodline and some of the Netflix made shows. If they start putting on more reality shows, im gone, that is why i left the networks, sick sick sick of reality shows. What happened to the Hollywood writers since the strike, these new shows are the pits. Ill start reading again. Please no more!!