When your company has gone from being a consumer darling to an outcast in less than a year, shedding hundreds of thousands of customers and billions in market value along the way, there are inevitably going to be people questioning whether you should continue in your job or not. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings finds himself in such a position these days.
Will Hastings be given the boot by the company he helped found? Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies Inc., doesn’t think so:
“There’s no real alternative, since he’s been the company’s visionary from the beginning . . . He’s developed their relationships with Hollywood and is the key for negotiating future deals. It would be probably incorrect for them to ask him to move aside.”
BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield also can’t imagine a Netflix without Hastings at the helm:
“Why would you get rid of the guy? It’s silly to even discuss.”
John Tschohl, author of “Achieving Excellence Through Customer Service”, disagrees:
“[Netflix] will never regain the value that it had, and it will take them years to recover the customers it lost . . . If I was on the board, I’d get rid of him.”
Bajarin believes that Hastings and Netflix are going to have to be extremely smart and persuasive going forward if they want to restore their customers’ confidence:
“He’s going to have to convince people not only of the value of this service, but that they’re not going to do these kinds of dumb things in the future . . . If he comes back with a lot of great content, especially great original content, people will come back.”
What do you think, Insiders? Does Reed Hastings deserve to keep the big chair at Netflix?
(via The San Francisco Chronicle)
Tim Bajarin used to be my gardener! He is the least credible person in ‘silicone ditch’.
Netflix was heading south anyway, it panicked [read qwikster] and dealt with the rising licensing fees from the content creators by acting like headless chickens.
Netflix is going to just get *smaller* no matter what strategy is used… period.
I agree Hastings has caused way too much dammage for them to recover there stock may level out around $75- $100. a share but with there reputation from the past year it will eventualy drop out again his big mistake was pushing too much too fast on the customers .
As of september redbox gets my dvd busines and hulu gets my streaming sorry netflix I just dont trust you anymore !
I thought silly before I read silly.
uhh, have you seen what has happened to the “Postal Service”
lately? (down in the dumps and NASTY!)
Do I trust getting a bill sent to me by “snail mail”
anymore? Much less a DVD?
Sorry, it has become too risky;
I trust my “internet connection”
much more,
and it is “lightning FAST!!!”
This is the revolution….
and “heads” (netflix) will surely roll…
BTW, I back this up with my own experience
over the last year of getting 3 bills sent to me,
arriving two weeks later, all crumpled up,
and, I end up paying the $20. late fees…
Glad I don’t own shares of Netflix ;)
He should stay. Streaming is the way to go. I don’t know how many times I have heard people say..”There aren’t any good movies anymore.” That is true! But Netflix has a zillion older movies, tv shows, documentaries that keep me viewing for hours every day. You don’t need dvds through the mail. Just go to Redbox for the few good ones although my two Redbox machines are only 20% full. I don’t know why they can’t keep them full. I got my free Redbox code today and drove to the nearest two machines and could not find a single movie interesting enough to rent so I came home empty handed. Thank goodness for Netflix.
Check the Redbox inventory online and then reserve it on the website before you start driving around town.
No one is saying that DVD is the future, we are just saying not to ignore the income the DVD side brings. I’ve said it here before but Hastings problem was that he misinterpreted why AOL failed. AOL didn’t fail because dial up died, they failed because the couldn’t get broadband customers to sign on. If they had both (as Netflix does now) they would have survived. In short the answer wasn’t for AOL to kill it’s dial up and it isn’t for Netflix to kill DVD. The answer is to reap the income from what sells now while planning for the future and let the market decide when DVD is no longer needed.
The USPS is one of the biggest hindrances to the DVD-by-mail scenario. A-hole customers being the other. I had to return 2 discs back to back because the first was cracked in half and the other scratched to hell.
I like Netflix streaming but I mostly watch Tv on there these days because Redbox gets my DVD priority on new releases. In the long-run Redbox is cheaper but Netflix does have a ton of stuff on DVD that isn’t available streaming and I don’t want to watch crap just because it’s available. I want to watch what I WANT to watch, that’s what I pay for otherwise I would just subscribe to HBO.
If Netflix had more of their catalog on Streaming I’d be (1) willing to pay more and (2) drop the DVD-by-mail service altogether.
Hastings knows this about many of his customers. Did he panic? Sure, but the writing was on the wall once Amazon and others jumped into the fray. He over-reacted by that’s what happens sometimes. They’ll mostly recover if they can solidify contracts (such as the ABC deal announced) and keep content. Content is king in this game.
Netflix is still the best value. Cable and Dish can’t compete.
I would like to see both Blockbuster and Netflix go back to the two dvds per month
plan. I don’t watch many dvds and find $10.00 too high a price to pay for limited dvds(because of the turn around time..blockbuster takes three or more days from the day they receive one back and Netflix less then three) The wait time for new releases is too long, I’ve dropped both Blockbuster and Netflix. I now have gone back to tier 3 on AT&T U-verse and also subscribe to Vudu.com(which, by the way, have lowered their HD®ular streaming prices)
He should be fired! I loved Netflix and was a loyal customer since 2004, I got dozens of people to join. When the price hike was announced, I canceled in August. I do not trust Netflix any longer.
I personally dumped netflix when the annoucement was made and luckily sold all of my stock. I think he made a poor decision and should be held accountable. I am glad people stood up against this corporation and told them how they feel about the price hike and cancelled so many subcribtions.
I had Netflix and when they raised their prices I cut back to streaming only. I have since gotten Hulu+ and have dropped Netflix totally. I have one of the few B&M Blockbuster stores about a mile from my house and they offer a$14.95 a month all you can rent so I subscribed to it yesterday. I can get all the new releases a month ahead of the kiosk now. I still use BBE and Redbox, but only with Groupon deals or promo codes for the most.
Not to worry. If nothing else, Obama will bail Netflix out. They’re ‘too big to fail’.
Until I can find another source to send me British mysteries (tv) like Morse, Inspector Lewis, Midsomer Murders, Waking the Dead, George Gently, etc., I shall continue to LOVE Netflix by mail….
NetFlix took a Dump on the people that were feeding it! It will never recover like it was. It will make it, but more and more people will not trust them much. And they will never be like they were at one time! Sorry but true! I dumped them, and took a walk to Block Buster. $16.60 all you can watch.. Great deal!
I don’t even use RedBox now!
Here in The State of California where Nettflix lives, we have NO problems with our DVD/blu-ray by mail service. I been with Netflix for over two years, not once have I received a cracked or scatched disc. I’m disable and the service is very important to me. I mainly get blu-rays every couple of days. When I receive a movie we always watch it on the day received. The disc goes back the next day. Some months I have received 11 disc, but I average 9 to 10. I also have Blockbuster mail service(which I will be canceling this month) I’m lucky if I can get four movies a month but average 3. As for getting new releases from Blockbuster, GOOD LUCK!!! They are never available when release to BB. Theres always a wait. When I check my “q” with BB I always see a “Very Long Wait” never fails! So by the time you can get the movies from BB, it’s available on Netflix. So the BS commercial stating that Blockbuster gets it’s movies 28 days earlier, it’s big BullSh*t. Now that I have say all that, all that can be said about Reed, he has made some BIG mistakes. I was not happy at all with the increase or Quikster BS, but I have learn to survive with the increase(I pay $19.57)because of the service and all the new contents that has been coming to streaming recently. In every business there are always up’s and down’s. Netflix will survive. It’s stocks will never be as high (they were way over priced in the first place) but they will gain after customers start returning. There service is excellent for me. I used to have streaming problems but that has all gone away. My streaming service works perfect. The mail service is super and I frankly love Netflix(didn’t for a short period of time)and I will stay with them no matter what happens to Reed Hasting. PS: some of the comments that were made remines me how some knuckheads act. Peace!
All CEOs should only get a third of what they are paid, and when they
mess up and are fired, there should be $0 dollars paid to them.
That money is rightfully the stock holders.
Netflix may be great in the state they are based however, everywhere else
its not.
They reserve new releases for the newest customers and send from the bottom of the Q to long time loyals.
I asked them about that, and their sarcastic customer rep said, ” you are
a high volume renter so you are getting a higher value.
Lets see “unlimited DVDs” isn’t that their pitch?
If you can’t get what you want for your payment , then there is no value.
They seem to think a new customer’s payment has a greater value than
everyone else’s.
Netflix sucks.