Before Netflix could deliver a film to your television, it had to deliver one to your letterbox.
Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph, the company began renting DVDs through its website the following year. Customers chose a film online and waited for the post. The early price was $4 a rental, plus $2 postage.ย
In 1999 came the more consequential innovation: a monthly subscription. For $15.95, customers could rent four DVDs a month without due dates or late fees. The proposition was beautifully ordinary.ย
Netflix would remove an irritation from your life. You could watch a film without driving to a shop, negotiating its shelves, or being penalised for forgetting to bring it back.
Almost three decades later, the company that liberated us from the video shop faces a different question. Having become part of the furniture, how does it keep growing? What worlds remain for Netflix to conquer?
That question has acquired urgency. This month, Netflix cut approximately 1,000 jobs, about 6% of its workforce.ย
Chief content officer Bela Bajaria departed after nearly a decade. Film chief Dan Lin was also dismissed. Peter Rice, the former Fox and Disney executive, took over Bajariaโs role on October 26, with responsibility for films, series and live programming worldwide.
These are significant changes in the people deciding what much of the world watches. They also represent an uncomfortable moment for a company whose identity was built on knowing where entertainment was going before everyone else.
There is having something on, and there is having something you cannot wait to watch. Netflixโs first great transformation arrived in 2007, when it introduced streaming. The envelope became unnecessary.ย
Its second was becoming a commissioner of entertainment rather than simply its distributor.ย and , both launched in 2013, proving that a streaming service could compete for attention and prestige with televisionโs most powerful…