The Shows Must Go On - Netflix Spike and Float

It’s still a time of staying at home and living through a pandemic. Streaming services are at the forefront of entertainment now and I cannot remember the last time that I tuned into a regular broadcasting television channel. A couple of decades ago, I might have not imagined that I would never wake up early or schedule my day to catch a show I really wanted to watch. Using a VCR recorder was all the rage for a while and it was cool to re-watch some of the shows I might miss or simply build up a collection of shows I cherished. The digital age is truly wonderful and it has given us freedom to access our favourite shows anytime and in any place across different platforms. I could not say that live broadcasts are completely dead, I am an avid sports fan. But live streamers are in abundance and organic entertainment without the fluff that producers would typically apply is a new dynamic that has brought in a new era of home entertainment.

Netflix has been getting heavy use in my household over the past few weeks with multiple streams running at a time. Currently alternating between 4K and 1080p streams, quality control over bit rate streaming has not bothered me so much and the value I am getting for accessing the shows is much better than what I pay for cable packages that are simply filled nothing that I find relevant anymore. Netflix currently have over 180 million subscriptions across the world and it has seen strong growth during the weeks this pandemic. As expected however, Netflix are cognizant of their rapid growth spike and are conscious of the post pandemic situation that may arise in the future along with other economic impacts that will influence future figures. Current growth is seen as what goes up must come down and the streaming giant want to communicate that this is to be expected.

Having an influx of subscriptions is an interesting factor as it provides immediate resource that needs to be deployed strategically for the rest of the year. The pandemic has stopped most production along with localization projects. For this reason, Netflix have decided to gradually release some of their pending shows with a delayed timeline to hopefully a level of retention. I have not cancelled my subscription to Netflix for a long while now and it would be great to see them introduce a recognition of loyalty at some point but sometimes a vanilla experience is the one that is most appealing. Perhaps that is why I have kept paying for so long. As a digital company, it is certain that Netflix are approaching current conditions with care and are continuing to push forwards with new projects while maintaining a safety net of releases to ease further production delays that depend on the state of the pandemic. Stream on!

https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/21/neflix-q1-earnings/

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