Netflix Animation Division Has Several Staff Members Let Go
- Thread starter Cicada 5
- Start date
I have often found Netflix's strategy a little hard to understand. It seems to be often quite arbitrary, cutting popular and interesting shows whilst letting unhailed mediocrity roll on. But then, Netflix is notoriously secretive about how successful its programming is, so for all we know there are hit shows losing money and drivel making it. The only consistency I can see in Netflix is that it seems to avoid buying big, high profile movies soon after they are available to TV services: it clearly prefers a mass of cheaper stuff.
I am not suprised Netflix has hit a wall, however: there's a point where a company runs short of new subscribers to sign up, and it's also got a lot more competition nowadays. With Amazon, Apple and Disney as well, we've pretty much already got enough TV majors to dominate for decades, just like the major Hollywood studios dominate film.
Don't forget HBO Max. And considering their apparent benchmark for success is the fucking Boss Baby series, I don't think Netflix understands what success is.
I wouldn't be too sure. If success means anyone watching something, they're still king of the heap.
For instance, they let Adam Sandler make a load of movies, and whilst there probably isn't a critic of worth that would give them the time of day, those movies were incredibly popular. And of course Netflix has done well out of grabbing what must be relatively cheap international stuff: I'm sure a lot of it goes unwatched, but they only need the odd Squid Game and it's worth their while.
Netflix probably has really good metric on who watch what so I'm inclined to believe them when they cancel something that might seem successful but could actually be a almost unwatched. At the same time you have to factor in production cost, if a show does really well but cost 10 millions every episode while another does moderately well and cost 10 thousands every episodes it makes a lot of sense to cancel the expensive one.
I think netflix is just struggling cause there's too many service at this point and the public is just fatigued and doesn't want to subscribe to 5 service. I imagine a lot of people just hop between service or flat out cancel everything and turn to piracy. Every service is probably struggling (I wouldn't be surprised if quite a few bleed money, looking at you apple) but are kept afloat by investor/company money hoping they'll recoup the cost in the long run. I wouldn't be surprised if a few sink in the next few months and that would probably help netflix.
I think netflix is just struggling cause there's too many service at this point and the public is just fatigued and doesn't want to subscribe to 5 service. I imagine a lot of people just hop between service or flat out cancel everything and turn to piracy. Every service is probably struggling (I wouldn't be surprised if quite a few bleed money, looking at you apple) but are kept afloat by investor/company money hoping they'll recoup the cost in the long run. I wouldn't be surprised if a few sink in the next few months and that would probably help netflix.
I agree that Apple TV is probably running at a loss, but Apple has a massive financial war chest to keep Apple TV in the game for a long time - companies making $100 billion a year in profit can. It's doing substantially worse in subscribers than Disney which launched around the same time, but Disney had the advantage of being able to dump huge amounts of programming and IP it was already in the business of providing straight onto its service. Even so, Apple TV's almost certainly pulling in billions in income already, and with it being new and factoring in the competition, Apple's probably pretty happy with how it's going.
