I first met Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings in 2001 at a Maxtor event where I was the dinner speaker. He explained then that the company had always intended to deliver movies over the Internet (hence the name Netflix) but was starting with DVDs because the network infrastructure simply wasn\u2019t ready for digital delivery. They\u2019d eventually drop the DVD deliveries, though I think his estimate of when that would happen was around 2007, not 2011 as the company announced this week.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
However, the problem they face is that discs still form a huge part of their business and making people shift from this is going to be difficult when the overall media landscape is in a state of flux.<\/p>\n
What happens when one part of your customer base wants DVDs by mail, another wants streaming and yet another wants both?<\/p>\n
If you stay still your company could slow down and be overtaken by a rival and if you make necessary changes then you are bound to upset some users.<\/p>\n
Even for a company as modern and data driven as Netflix, it’s difficult to adjust a stable business model to fit around shifting customer habits.<\/p>\n
In a sense their dilemma represents the wider problems faced by the studios, who are struggling to adjust their business models in an era of rapid technological and social change.<\/p>\n
But if the studios can’t make up the shortfall in profits caused in part by digital delivery systems, then how can they continue to fund the very films we watch over them?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The recent announcement and subsequent u-turn by Netflix reflects a wider crisis facing Hollywood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8],"tags":[1686],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13010"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}