News Corp digital chief and Hulu board member Jon Miller interviewed Netflix's Ted Sarandos and Sarandos talked about the price increase, spinning off the DVD business, viewing habits, and more.
Interesting tidbits from the interview:
- The Starz content has become a smaller percentage of veiwing and less valuable, and instead Sarandos wants to "Spend enourmous amonunt of money on things that get watched an enourmous amount of time."
- TV shows account for about 60% of streaming now.
- Less than 30% of streaming is laptop viewing, the rest is a mix of game system, streaming box, TV, and other devices.
- Netflix customers had "much lower ratings" on new releases, and much higher ratings on the personalized content, so Netflix has focused on finding movies that people would love instead of new releases.
- Sarandos said enabling customers to cancel with one click a "super bold scary decision."
- Netflix has no interest in offering sports programming.
- Sarandos on piracy: "Our competitor is piracy." He believes that people are honest and would prefer to get it legally, so Netflix focused on creating a product that was better than free. He also noted that when people buy DVD movies on the street they're paying someone, but in this case it's the wrong person.
via AllThingsD.
Dear, Netflix Co.
this is what people are looking for on instant watch.
* Get some current popular shows like how heroes run for 4 season on tv and on netflix
* we all know starz is leaving & about 1,600 titles will be disappear.
* it will be great to see some 200 new tv shows and 400 movies appear on that night
* it will be great to grow more kids and family contact tv shows,movies and work with disney,nick,cartoon network, pbs it will be great to 14 season of arthur or full season of old sesame street
* the website will be great to fix i been rating zero stars for movies are not my type and still appears
* it will be great to get a poll each month showing 5 shows and 5 movies we pick which one show or one movie then those will air instead of adding random titles.
* it will be great to get new stuff from 2000-now
Posted by: Noor Almtowaq | September 17, 2011 at 03:39 PM
Netflix, you should embrace the community you have and enable community features within your website as well, like bring back comments about movies, not just reviews but discussions. Social features are what is driving things these days and the netflix website lacks them because you are afraid of dealing with bad things people will say about netflix on your own social platform. In the end, if you allow people who enjoy the same types of movies to discuss those types of movies, it will further drive them to enjoy the content you provide - and improve customer satisfaction.
Posted by: Mike Ekholm | September 17, 2011 at 03:49 PM
If they spin the DVD biz off, stick a fork in Netflix cause they're done. They own no content to stream while they do own tons of DVD's to rent. The DVD library is their only competitive advantage.
Posted by: Edward R Murrow | September 18, 2011 at 12:00 AM
"TV shows account for about 60% of streaming now."
Well, duh! That's the nature of the beast. If someone watches a series they like they are going to watch all the episodes thus adding a higher percentage to TV streaming. You only need to watch a movie once to get to the end. One movie = one viewing. One season = 22 viewings so of course the percentage would be screwed. This doesn't mean people aren't watching the movies. Really, does anybody actually stop to get what's behind the numbers?
Posted by: ClydesMP | September 18, 2011 at 12:57 AM
no one watches STARZ cause it's not in HD
Posted by: Trentmorrison | September 18, 2011 at 05:18 AM
TV shows generate "sticky" customers. Once someone is hooked on a show, they're likely to stick with Netflix for quite a while.
In that sense, two hours of TV programming are much better for Netflix than two hours of movie programming. Because two hours of TV programming mean that you've already watched three episodes.
In other words, Netflix has stumbled on a neat business model by experimentation. One day they might unbundle the episodic programming as Nettube or NetTV ...
Posted by: Xavier | September 19, 2011 at 10:06 AM
If you watch the entire video you get a pretty good idea why the company is doing what it is doing. I did not detect any hint of arrogance, or deception. He answered every question asked and seemed to be pretty straightforward.
This is why i prefer to hear what those that are making the decisions that count have to say vs. every armchair CEO out there with an opinion.
These guys get it.... and as soon as the hysteria dies down I will be buying back into this companies stock.
Posted by: Lonny | September 20, 2011 at 09:59 AM