You know that feeling after an argument when you  realize what would have been a good response only after it’s too late? Well, here I am.  On October 16th, our comm 101 class had a debate about possible strategies for Netflix to use moving forward. The four options for Netflix were: to continue on buying content, to focus more on their own content, to partner with NBC/ABC, or to partner with YouTube/Google. I joined the team arguing that they should continue to buy content, but I was open to hear the other sides of the argument.  One argument that was brought up incessantly was that Netflix can’t continue to purchase content because it takes too long for them to get movies and the selection is too small. If I could go back in time, I would point out that they were all arguing from personal experience with Canadian Netflix, rather than from knowledge regarding Netflix as a whole. American Netflix serves a much bigger market, and has more than double the titles that Canadian Netflix has. Another argument that was brought up by the team supporting a partnership with YouTube/Google was that YouTube is proven to be successful, and therefore a partnership with them would be low risk. However, Youtube is used by mostly non-paying users. So, what’s the incentive for people to subscribe to Netflix for YouTube when they can already access it for free? Those are just a couple of things I wish I had said in class.

Source:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/09/06/netflix-canada-best-movies-tv-shows_n_3882581.html