Netflix

Holland, who spent nearly two decades at Netflix, replaces Stacey Snider as Global CEO of Sister. The company’s co-founder, Murdoch, called Holland a “transformational leader in the industry for many years” and said she is the “total package.”

A year after announcing that it had chosen Microsoft as its ad-tech partner for its introduction of an ad-supported subscription tier, Netflix is preparing to build its own server in order to enable new ad formats. To better compete with Disney+, Max, Peacock and others with ad-supported options, Netflix has been talking to ad buyers about experimenting with “episodic” campaigns that would allow them to create mini-series-type ads featuring multiple, sequential spots — rather than showing the same ad repeatedly, according to a Financial Times report.

Star Cillian Murphy and producers fired back at the Florida governor for using their footage in a heavily criticized anti-LGBTQ ad.

Vernā Myers will be stepping down from her role as Netflix’s head of inclusion strategy at the end of September. Myers, who was the first to ever serve in the position for the streamer when she joined in 2018, will remain as an adviser to Netflix while returning to her self-titled consulting company, The Vernā Myers Co. Upon Myers’ departure, Wade Davis, Netflix’s VP of inclusion strategy, who has worked under Myers for the past four years, will be promoted to oversee the team.

Only 35.6% of the 14.8 billion hours of viewing on Netflix that occurred from January through March of this year was for original TV shows and movies, Omdia said. Crunching data from PlumResearch, the Informa research company’s conclusion flies against a popular narrative — that the oracle-like brilliance of top Netflix executives Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos presciently predicted a pullback of content by Hollywood’s incumbents, and in a move of heartbreakingly staggering genius they set about building their original content juggernaut, powered by a $17 billion budget.

The first half of 2023 has been a colossal disappointment for media executives who wanted this year to be a rebound from a terrible 2022, when a slowdown in streaming subscribers cut valuations for Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global roughly in half. Instead, investors have once again become excited by Netflix’s future prospects as it’s cracked down on password sharing, potentially leading to tens of millions of new signups. Netflix shares have surged the past five months, outpacing the S&P 500. Meanwhile, the legacy players can’t get out of their own way.

Netflix is making a major shift in how it reports its Top 10 rankings. Starting today, the streaming giant will provide an estimated viewership for the weekly charts of its top shows and films. This will be estimated by taking the traditional hours viewed they have provided for some time and dividing by the show or film’s total runtime. In addition, Netflix will be extending the window of measurement for the most popular lists for TV and film from 28 days to 91 days.

SWAT made its first appearance on Nielsen’s streaming charts a week after CBS briefly canceled the series.

The crime drama cracked the overall top 10, and came in fourth among acquired series, for the week of May 15-21 with 635 million minutes of watch time. On May 5, CBS said it was canceling SWAT — then reversed course three days later and picked up a shortened final season of the show. The series’ first five seasons arrived on Netflix on May 17; it also streams on Paramount+ and Hulu.

Netflix has seen its four biggest days of subscriber additions in the four-and-a-half years that data provider Antenna has been tracking the service. The boost comes soon after Netflix began rolling out its password sharing crackdown in the U.S. The streamer told its U.S. members via email beginning in late May: “Your Netflix account is for you and the people you live with — your household.”

Netflix’s Bridgerton prequel Queen Charlotte spent a second straight week as the top title in Nielsen’s streaming rankings — with a viewing time rank almost identical to its opening week. The parent series also rejoined the top 10. Queen Charlotte recorded 1.88 billion minutes of viewing for the week of May 8-14 — nearly equal to the 1.89 billion minutes from the prior frame. (Taking the numbers out one more decimal point, the series had 1.883 billion minutes for May 8-14 and 1.888 billion for May 1-7.)

In a symbolic rebuke of Netflix’s top executives, company shareholders voted against approving the compensation packages of leaders including co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters. At the streamer’s June 1 annual shareholders meeting, investors failed to approve the proposed exec pay packages for 2023. But the vote was a non-binding “say-on-pay” advisory measure, meaning Netflix’s board can disregard the result. The board had unanimously recommended voting for the 2023 compensation plans.

Recent research by Samba TV and HarrisX may shed further light on how consumers are likely to respond to Netflix having last week moved to cut off free password sharing and charge $7.99 for adding an outside-the-household user. On the upside, more than four in 10 of the 2,500 U.S. adults polled at the end of March said they would be willing to pay more to share their account with someone outside of their home, with 41% saying they would pay up to $10 more per month, and another 10% that they would pay up to $15 more.

Netflix has threatened to preemptively remove films and TV shows from its U.K. library to avoid falling foul of new streamer regulations being introduced by the British government. Ministers in the U.K. want media regulator Ofcom to police streaming giants in a similar way to traditional broadcasters, meaning the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video could be fined up to £250,000 ($310,000) for carrying harmful content. Pictured: Queen Cleopatra is a Netflix documentary that has attracted criticism.

Emma Miller, SVP, scripted development & programming for AMC Networks (left), has joined Netflix as director, overall deals, series (U.S. and Canada) reporting into Nne Ebong, VP, overall deals, series. Carrie Gillogly, SVP scripted programming for AMC Networks (right), also is leaving the company to join Netflix as director, drama series, (U.S. and Canada) reporting into Jinny Howe, VP, drama series.

The streamer intros an “extra member” option priced at $7.99/month for adding access to people outside the account holder’s household.

Netflix’s The Diplomat negotiated its way to the top of the streaming charts for its opening week. The drama starring Keri Russell drew 1.3 billion minutes of viewing in the U.S. for the week of April 17-23 (the series premiered April 20). It finished a little bit ahead of Love Is Blind (1.22 billion minutes) — whose not-quite-live reunion special, slated to debut on April 16, available for the full week.

Shares of Netflix jumped more than 10% Thursday on news that the streamer had signed up almost 5 million customers for its ad-supported plan within six months of launch. At Netflix’s first-ever upfronts event Wednesday — held virtually — the company announced that it had signed up nearly 5 million global monthly active users following its initial introduction in early November 2022.

At its first upfront presentation, Netflix shared some hard numbers with advertisers, saying it now has nearly 5 million global monthly active users for its ad-supported tier. The median age for those users is 34, the streamer said, considerably lower than the senior citizen-level average for most broadcast and cable channels. After years of forswearing commercials, Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters told advertisers and media buyers: “We share a common goal, which is building connection. You want to connect consumers with your amazing brands. And we want to connect them with amazing entertainment they’ll love.” Pictured: Jeremi Gorman, Netflix president, worldwide advertising.

Netflix at the last minute canceled its first live upfront presentation after striking writers said they planned to disrupt the event. The streaming service notified attendees Wednesday night that the presentation would be made virtually instead of at the Paris Theater, which has been run by Netflix since 2019. The company did not give a reason for the shift, although published reports indicated that  that the New York Police Department expressed concerns about pedestrian safety in the vicinity of the event.

Netflix’s dark comedy Beef made its debut on Nielsen’s weekly streaming rankings in the No. 4 position with 962 million minutes watched. This measurement was taken during the April 3-9 viewing window, and Beef premiered on April 6, meaning the series achieved that viewership in its first four days of availability.