After years of growth, the streaming giant revealed a shock fall in subscribers. But is it really downhill from here?
An era comes to be defined by its major innovations and, sometimes, just a simple company name does the trick: the Ford Motor Company more than a century ago, or Virgin in the 1980s. They are the business ideas that sum up a moment of progress. Of course, somewhat less prophetically, there were also the shorter-lived promises offered by DeLorean or Myspace.
Until last week, all of us were enjoying “the Netflix boom”, mainly because of what the streaming giant represented, rather than for what it actually was. Netflix stood for easy access to culture, for family sharing, and for turning our backs on the shallow commerce of ad breaks. And it quickly became rather an emotional consumer relationship, especially during the dark lockdowns imposed during the pandemic. In isolation, the homebound took solace in The Crown, Stranger Things, Bridgerton, Money Heist, Lupin, Call My Agent! or Squid Game. In fact for 10 years now in the UK, these box-set shows have fed a national conversation that occasionally also intersected with the chatter around the rest of the world.
