Young viewers say they'll cancel Netflix if it loses The Office (1 Viewer)

[Lord Dalek]

So basically its "This Week on White People Problems" again.

 

[Jake Lipson]

If the loss of one particular specific licensed program is enough to get people to drop Netflix, I'm not sure why they have Netflix to begin with.

Amazon is selling the complete series of The Office on DVD for $54.99. Yes, it's not HD, and yes, you've got to put discs in your player. But you can buy it and own it forever. No one can legally take it from you.

Last I checked, Netflix's standard plan is $9.99/month. That means that for the price of 6 months of Netflix, you can own The Office permanently. If The Office is all people want, eventually it would become more cost-effective to buy it.

I don't watch The Office, but I'm a huge fan of the show Galavant, which is currently on Netflix but is produced by Disney. I suspect that it will probably go to Disney+ at some point, but there's been no confirmation of that. I do feel sure that it will be yanked from Netflix whenever their current license expires. So I spent $25 to buy the DVD of the complete series. I have that regardless of what happens with the streaming rights to the show.

It just seems like anyone upset enough about losing The Office would do well to consider a purchase, if that's really the only content on Netflix that they deeply care about. Even if they cancel Netflix and subscribe to the Universal service instead, in less than a year they'd be paying more for the cost of the subscription to continually access it than they would for permanent access via ownership of the discs. I get that lots of people are moving away from physical media...but this just seems like a no-brainer to me.

 

[Worth]

If you want it in HD, you can buy the entire series of The Office on iTunes for $70.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

If you want it in HD, you can buy the entire series of The Office on iTunes for $70.

...or wait until it goes on sale -- I bought it for $30 on iTunes at the end of January.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Maybe it’s just me, but I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the Venn diagram of life, there’s a high overlap between the people who say they’d cancel Netflix if the Office goes away, and the people who are password sharing rather than actually paying for Netflix.

 

[Malcolm R]

Most young people often don't follow through anyway when they say things like this.

Besides, most of them are watching YouTube, not Netflix:

https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture...nah-teens-vidcon-long-be-influencers-n1029551

 

[TravisR]

Most young people often don't follow through anyway when they say things like this.

Forget the young, I think that's true for most people.

 

[Malcolm R]

Forget the young, I think that's true for most people.

Yeah, I considered changing it after I typed it.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Yeah, I considered changing it after I typed it.

...but you didn't follow through.

 

[Malcolm R]

...but you didn't follow through.

Yes, but I also didn't proclaim it in advance and attach an ultimatum.

 

[Cranston37+]

Meanwhile... Netflix has announced that for the first time in their 8 year history they have lost subscribers, to the tune of 130,000 in the US, and their stock has shot down 15%

https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/netflix-q2-2019-earnings-1203270393/

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Meanwhile... Netflix has announced that for the first time in their 8 year history they have lost subscribers, to the tune of 130,000 globally, and their stock has shot down 15%...

Their price increase probably had something to do with that.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Their price increase probably had something to do with that.

I think there are probably a few factors, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's one of them. There's also so much more streaming content out there today than there was when Netflix was building market dominance; they're no longer the only option in town and people are noticing that. And I don't know if this makes a difference, but the amount of time they take for producing new seasons of their original shows seems to be increasing. For example, Season 1 of The Crown debuted in November 2016. Season 2 debuted December 2017, about a year later. The third season is still in production with no clear indication of when it'll be released, so we're looking at a two year gap between episodes. The first season of Stranger Things premiered in July 2016, and the second season came October 2017, but there was a nearly two year gap before the third season, which was just released last week. Their first big hit, House Of Cards, has concluded its run. I don't know how much any of those things in and of themselves make a difference, but I think looking at the big picture, customers are realizing that they don't need to remain subscribed to services in perpetuity the way it was with premium cable in the 80s and 90s. I can't speak for everyone, but surely taking longer to bring shows back that people have subscribed to see in the first place might not be the best way to encourage those subscribers to never leave.

 

[Cranston37+]

Their price increase probably had something to do with that.

That is the reason they cited, yes.

 

[Tino]

Meanwhile... Netflix has announced that for the first time in their 8 year history they have lost subscribers, to the tune of 130,000 globally, and their stock has shot down 15%

https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/netflix-q2-2019-earnings-1203270393/

Not entirely accurate.

They lost 126,000 U.S subscribers.

But added 10 million globally in the first three months.

 

[Cranston37+]

Not entirely accurate.

They lost 126,000 U.S subscribers.

But added 10 million globally in the first three months.

You are correct that it should read US, not globally. Post edited to reflect that. But the article I posted does state 130k.

However, if your aim is to make sure we're being accurate, and that's a good thing, then putting in bold that they added 10 million subscribers but leaving out the fact that that is 2 million less than they anticipated, is certainly not that. It's a piece of information that changes the story a bit...

 

[John Dirk]

I’m surprised The Office is that big a deal. But I never got it, so what do I know?

Having watched most of this show now, I can sort of understand its appeal. It plays more like a film than a typical sitcom in that it is [IMO anyway] not all that interesting on an episodic level but much more so on a climactic one. If you originally gave up on it as I did, I would recommend maybe giving it another spin on Netflix while it's available.