Netflix's Original Content Library Is Growing By 185% Each Year (cordcutting.com)

Posted by msmash on Thursday March 31, 2016 @03:20AM from the Netflix-vs-Hollywood-studios dept.

An anonymous reader writes: From Q1 of 2012 to Q1 of 2016, Netflix has added an incredible 111 original series and films. The numbers translate to an average quarterly growth rate of 34.22% and an average annual growth rate of 185.41%. And there is reason to believe that future growth rates could be even higher -- with competition coming from all sides, Netflix is likely to keep pushing more and more cash into original content. Those wondering why Netflix has grown increasingly interested in owning the shows it airs, you have to realize that not long ago the streaming company was struggling to snap any good TV show from cable channels. The New York Times' profile of House of Cards' Beau Willimon, from 2014, sheds more light into this : Around three years ago, Netflix realized it had a problem: It was paying large sums to license other people's content -- TV shows and movies produced by other companies -- in order to then show them to you, the Netflix subscriber, at home. This initially proved successful, but there were two troubling aspects to this model: 1) It left Netflix very vulnerable to competition, since the shows and movies it licensed could, theoretically, be licensed by anyone willing to outbid them, and 2) the most popular TV shows, episodic dramas like "CSI" and sitcoms like "The Big Bang Theory," were already being sold for huge deals into syndication at basic cable channels like TBS and USA. What was left to Netflix were the kind of serialized shows that don't typically play well in syndication, like "Lost" and "Breaking Bad," which have complicated story arcs that compel a viewer to watch all the episodes in order. Traditionally, while these kinds of serialized shows could be big hits in their initial broadcast runs, they proved tough sells to aftermarkets, precisely because of the demands they placed on the audience.

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Meanwhile overall U.S. content is down 33.2% (2yr) by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-31 03:28 · Score: 2, Informative

It’s not your imagination – Netflix’s catalog is getting smaller. As competition in the OTT streaming space has increased, Netflix’s once-massive selection has decreased. In fact, it has shrunk by a third in less than two and a half years.
https://www.allflicks.net/netflixs-us-catalog-has-shrunk-by-more-than-2500-titles-in-less-than-2-5-years/
Meanwhile their DVD product is being killed off... by QuietLagoon · 2016-03-31 04:32 · Score: 4, Informative

Of course I know that streaming has superseded DVDs for the great majority of people.
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But Netflix appears to be slowly, drip by drip, screwing its customers of the DVD service.
The "next day" mail service has now been turned into two-day deliveries.
It also seems as if the turnaround at the distribution center once a disc is received is now next day, instead of same day.
I subscribe to the two discs at home level of service. I appear to be receiving about half the number of discs per month as I used to.
It looks as if Netflix is actively trying to chase customers away by reducing the amount of streaming content and putting large latencies into the distribution of their DVD service.
It looks like Netflix's US business has become too expensive, and Netflix is now looking to international markets for the profits as it withdraws from the US markets.