Netflix Chief Praises Rival Service From Disney; Executives Note COVID-19 Effects
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings praised Disney's rival service, which launched in November (see 1911120048). After more than 20 years of “watching different businesses” come and go, Hastings has “never seen such a good execution of the incumbent learning the new…
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way and mastering it” than Disney’s launch of its direct-to-consumer streaming service, he said Tuesday. “To have them achieve over 50 million in six months, it's stunning,” Hastings said. Netflix expects “a bunch more” streaming services to come to market soon, he said. “It's great, obviously, for the consumer to be able to have all these options.” The significant increase in subscriber growth that Netflix experienced as the global COVID-19 pandemic hit in March was “essentially a pull forward of the rest of the year,” said Hastings on a Q1 call (see 2004210059). “Our guess is that subs will be light in Q3 and Q4 relative to prior years because of that.” Though content production is at a global standstill, “we work really far out relative to the industry because we launch our shows all episodes at once,” said Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos. “So our 2020 slate of series and films are largely shot and are in post-production remotely.” Netflix is “actually pretty deep into our 2021 slate,” said Sarandos. Before shooting can resume anywhere, “we have to be able to look our employees and our cast and crews in the eye and say that this is a safe place to work,” he said.