Netflix Adds 5.3 Million Subs In Q3, Beating Forecasts (variety.com)

Netflix shows no signs of slowing down. The company announced its third quarter results, adding more subscribers in both the U.S. and abroad than expected. Variety reports: The company gained 850,000 streaming subs in the U.S. and 4.45 million overseas in the period. Analysts had estimated Netflix to add 784,000 net subscribers in the U.S. and 3.62 million internationally for Q3. "We added a Q3-record 5.3 million memberships globally (up 49% year-over-year) as we continued to benefit from strong appetite for our original series and films, as well as the adoption of internet entertainment across the world," the company said in announcing the results, noting that it had under-forecast both U.S. and international subscriber growth. Netflix also indicated that its content spending may be even higher next year than previously projected. The company had said it was targeting programming expenditures of $7 billion in 2018; on Monday, Netflix said it will spend between $7 billion and $8 billion on content (on a profit-and-loss basis) next year. For 2017, original content will represent more than 25% of total programming spending, and that "will continue to grow," Netflix said.

Comments

Now if they wou;ld just

[bobstreo]

Add more content. There is over 100 years of movies and over 75 years of television they could add pretty cheaply.

There seems to be less content now than there was when I first subscribed.

Re:Now if they wou;ld just

[thereitis]

If Netflix were going to add 75 years worth of content, they'd really have to improve their search, discovery, and add filtering features. Even now it's quite a chore to find something new and interesting and no way to filter out what's not interesting.

Let me search by one or more of director, by movie rating, actor/actress, publish date, rotten tomatoes score, etc.. There's no reason they couldn't do that other than dumbing the interface down for the masses. Give me an "advanced" option at least.

I can't tell you how many times I've had someone over and we're like hey let's watch a movie. Then spend the next 20 minutes flipping through Netflix and giving up.

Netflix is the best option out there, but once someone comes up with a better search and quality content, they're going to eat Netflix's lunch.

Re:Now if they wou;ld just

[Tukz]

I can really recommend https://www.justwatch.com/

It got filters for searching in several streaming services.

Re:Now if they wou;ld just

[drinkypoo]

Last I checked, netflix had actually taken features out of the gui but was still supporting them in URLs. you could put in search and view options which were no longer clickable anywhere. I haven't tried to do that in ages though, because I now watch Netflix almost exclusively on Amazon Fire Stick, where all the interfaces are terrible

Re:Now if they wou;ld just

[Baron_Yam]

>Let me search by one or more of director, by movie rating, actor/actress, publish date, rotten tomatoes score, etc

Genre, recommended viewer age, content (violence/sex/swearing/whatever) year (with +/-), director, actor, writer, studio, nation or geographic region of production, box office, major award wins... and except for year, multiple simultaneous selections and/or exclusions for each.

Maybe I want to see a historical porn comedy with no horror elements made in approximately 1985 in Europe but not Germany.

And I can see that happening with a pretty damn simple GUI, too.

Re:Now if they wou;ld just

[ebyrob]

Could it be the major movie studios quit selling movie rights to Netflix and greatly delayed release to Netflix past normal home releases? Oh my goodness, is that why Netflix had to start making their own content? Looks like someone woke up a sleeping giant.

If Netflix had a problem with *only* getting $10.00 per subscriber per month, I think they'd find a way to ask for more. I get the feeling they're not too concerned about it though seeing they have a spare $8 billion to throw around making content every year.

Re: Subs as in subscribers, huh?

[slazzy]

It would take quite awhile for netflix to download that many subtitles from thepiratebay.

While content decreases

[sdinfoserv]

While # of "subs" and monthly cost continue to climb, actual content has deceased. In the 2 years 2014-2016, number of movies and TV shows decreased by 33% and 26% respectively.
http://time.com/4272360/the-nu...
Just this August, Disney has announced it's pulling it's entire library OFF Netflix in favor of its own streaming service.
What really torques me is that shows I should be able to see, I can't in the US due to greedy lawyers, but the shows are readily available to netflix in other countries (ie: Startrek Discovery)

Re:While content decreases

[AmiMoJo]

There was an old BBC series, made for but not by them, called Ashes to Ashes that I wanted to see. I was on Netflix for a few years, then vanished.

I've been trying to figure out the economics of that. It's dirt cheap to buy on disc, I can't imagine they make much money that way, so why not get a bit of revenue from Netflix viewings too? Is Netflix a really bad deal for them, worse than the physical sales?

But they're doomed!

[drinkypoo]

I heard here on Slashdot that they were doomed since they were removing content and raising prices! This is unpossible!

T-Mobile

[JestersGrind]

There is currently a T-Mobile promotion that pays for Netflix for their members. I wonder how many of those 5 million are coming from that.