How Netflix can stop losing subscribers

The chains on ad-supported viewing

Not all of us have 4K HDR money

Netflix on an iPad Air.

In a sense, I should be thankful for Netflix’s ad-supported tier. It’s difficult to find any service worth subscribing to for less than $10 per month. Ads may be irritating, and usually for products I don’t care about or could never afford, but a few minutes aren’t the worst sacrifice. Not when I can browse my phone or go make some food in the meantime.

Simply put, though, there are too many additional restrictions. It’s one thing to sit through ads, or go without 4K or HDR — it’s another to have some movies and shows completely blocked, an issue Netflix blames on “licensing restrictions.” There’s no telling which titles will be blocked, either, until you stumble on them or go searching for unofficial lists. You could pony up a subscription fee only to discover that one of the things that drew you in is inaccessible. Heck, Netflix will even lock up Originals like House of Cards, its very first streaming series.

Almost as insulting is the fact that you lose casting functions. This is presumably related to the way Netflix’s ad technology works, but for some people, casting is a vital part of streaming. I’ll occasionally put videos on my Nest Hub when I go to sleep, for example, and hotel TVs may let you cast as a way of avoiding direct logins or plugging into a free HDMI port. Imagine if you were blocked from watching the service on your phone or laptop because of the way ads work — frequent travelers would cancel immediately.

Quantity over quality

Stick the landing on shows, please

Pause menu on Netflix featuring The Witcher

If it seems like there’s a non-stop barrage of original Netflix content, it’s not an accident. The company’s strategy is to cast a wide net, catering to diverse tastes in order to keep as many people watching as possible, and hopefully attract new viewers along the way. It seems to be working overall.

That approach sometimes casts people adrift, however. A lot of Netflix Originals are frankly mediocre, or forgettable, which may actually be the worst crime. Moreover, a lot of them are low-budget affairs, and/or tied to genres I don’t care about, such as romance or teenage drama. I have zero interest in “reality” shows, which are actually highly staged and have even less meat to them than an episode of The Big Bang Theory.

Netflix’s strategy forgets a lesson it taught in the first place, which is that if a show is good enough, viewers will pay up for a month just to see it. There might not even be a Netflix today without House of Cards, and Apple TV would be dead in the water if it weren’t for the occasional Severance, Pluribus, or Ted Lasso. Certainly, you need more for people to watch after the main attraction — but no one is clamoring for HBO to make baking shows.

I can’t cover this topic without touching on two related sins, which are canceling shows mid-plot, or failing to keep up quality levels for the shows that survive. Admittedly, that second problem recurs across the industry, but it’s amazing that Netflix can spend a fortune on something like the final season of Stranger Things and not live up to the quality of the first season. Meanwhile, a number of acclaimed shows that should’ve been given a chance to breathe — like The OA and Mindhunter — got the axe on cliffhangers. If you want people to care about your content, you can’t threaten their emotional investment the moment viewership is a little disappointing. Remember, classics like Blade Runner and The Shawshank Redemption weren’t hits in their theatrical runs.

Inflicting friendly fire

From a business perspective, I can’t begrudge Netflix for wanting to reduce account sharing. Prior to its crackdown, there were probably many users out there who actually could afford one plan or another, but just didn’t bother because they had a friend or family member they could mooch from. You can only be so ambitious with your business when a portion of your audience isn’t paying a dime.

The Netflix Household concept goes too far, however. If you’re not too familiar, this establishes a “main place” where you watch the service. As long as people linked to your account are watching from that location’s network, they’re fine, and schemes do make it possible to travel. In practice, this often interferes with legitimate use cases, like a child heading off to college, or cottage viewing if you’re rich enough to afford a second home. It may even create problems with normal travel habits, regardless of whether you use a VPN.

Ultimately, I don’t even support the business angle I mentioned a second ago. Sometimes people can’t justify the cost of a video subscription, or are already paying as much for other services as they’re willing to. Account sharing at least gives them exposure to Netflix, and there’s a decent chance they’ll convert to paying customers at some point. They might want 4K HDR, or profiles for their partner and child. I’m reminded of the “shareware” model from the early days of PC gaming. Sure, some people never bought in, but it also produced megahits like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D.

A dearth of licensed content

Bring back the rental store feel

Some of you might be confused by this one, because there’s long been a rotating selection of licensed movies and shows on Netflix. You’ll usually recognize many titles too, such as Seinfeld or Jurassic Park. If none of the current first-party offerings are appealing, there’s probably some familiar favorite to fall back on.

Thing is, that selection can quickly feel shallow. If you’ve been alive for a while, you’ve probably seen some of these movies multiple times. Others may have no appeal whatsoever, whether because of genre or their reviews. And while some people have comfort shows they go back to repeatedly, I’m not one of them. I can enjoy rewatching episodes of, say, The Simpsons or Smiling Friends, but even then I’d often rather watch something that can surprise me.

Being more aggressive about licensing content would go a long way. It might restore that feeling walking into a video store in the ’90s or ’00s, when you could discover a cult classic by accident, or one you’d only heard about in passing. The odds of that happening on Netflix are pretty low.

To be fair, licensing is a challenge. Hollywood studios have their own services these days, and they’re rarely going to let their best offerings out of the stable. But if you want to deter me from hunting around those other rivals’ libraries, more licensed material is a useful tool.