Reed Hastings Knows He Messed Up

There is quite the interview with Reed Hasting posted today at the New York Times. To say the interview was a bit hostile would be an understatement.

Part of Steve Jobs’s legacy is how incredibly well he managed the Apple product rollouts. What do you think Jobs, who never minced words, would say about how Netflix has operated in the last three months?

I’m not going to put words in a deceased man’s mouth.

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I bet the interviewer invested in Netflix.

Hostile interview? Try loaded & incompetent blogger questions. Leading off with What Would Steve Jobs Say? Suggesting he step down for the good of the company? Waaahhh! No more Woody and Buzz on Netflix! Andrew Goldman should've stuck with Elle magazine.

I'll be the first to call out the "bipolar" nature of Hastings' leadership of NFLX, but the hostile response to this "interview" was warranted.

I agree w/ Saturn_V, these "hostile" questions are absolutely needed. He needs a wakeup call. This CEO may have been a great mailer company but when it comes to being a digital service provider, he needs to study up... I give him a A+ for the idea a D- for execution.

Some changes need to be made, if the CEO doesn't go, bring in a big gun from Google and put him on the board and get some infrastructure designs changed.

Yeah I'm going to have to agree. The New York Times article author Andrew Goldman is kind of a dick. If I were Reed I would have answered tersely as well.

The Steve Jobs question was pretty stupid. But the interviewer does have a point about losing Disney. The only reason I'm currently keeping Netflix's streaming service is so my daughter can watch all the Disney programming. The other stuff they are getting just doesn't compare. As soon as they lose Disney programming, my sub will be cancelled. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.

What the crap? They are losing Disney? I need to read up on what's going on with them. 3 kids + streaming Disney movie = happy Mr. and Mrs. Jahsoul

lol

Ok let me play devil's advocate on this then. Everyone is focusing on how blunt the interviewer is which resulted in a defensive interviewee. However, does Hastings justify anywhere in keeping his job? Who here would keep him employed as CEO of Netflix if given the decision? Would you interview him with less venom?

Loudspeaker said:

Ok let me play devil's advocate on this then. Everyone is focusing on how blunt the interviewer is which resulted in a defensive interviewee. However, does Hastings justify anywhere in keeping his job? Who here would keep him employed as CEO of Netflix if given the decision? Would you interview him with less venom?

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He does justify it in the interview, twice:

I founded Netflix. I’ve built it steadily over 12 years now, first with DVD becoming profitable in 2002, a head-to-head ferocious battle with Blockbuster and evolving the company toward streaming. This is the first time there have been material missteps. If you look at the cumulative track record, it’s extremely positive.

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If you think about batting averages on a baseball team, you think about the long term. We went public nine years ago at a $7.50 stock price and under a million subscribers. Now we’re over 25 million and a much larger stock price. It’s a mistake to measure everything by what happened last week or last month. Great leaders, like Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos, also focused on the long term.

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Yes, I think he should of been interviewed differently. This interview just looks like someone grabbed their pitchfork and joined the raging mob just to get their own personal cheers from the mob. 'If i'm an ass to this guy people will notice me. Brilliant!'

At the end of the article, we find:

INTERVIEW HAS BEEN CONDENSED AND EDITED.

Which leaves me wondering how much of this article is legit.

I wouldn't expect anything more than this garbage from the NYT. Horrible articles written by horrible "reporters." Their credibility went out the window a long time ago.

Yeah, I'm with AaronGant. I see this as a publicity stunt to get noticed. These questions like "But can you name just one that will cushion the blow of losing Buzz Lightyear?" are beyond over-the-top. Really? Kids only watch one movie - ever? No one watches Sponge Bob? The Shrek saga can't fill this "void"? No other child's movie has come out since Toy Story 3? I mean, get a grip!

I'm not saying we give CEO's "Rainbow and Sunshine" questions - I'm all for asking the hard questions. But these were just stupid.

i just don't understand the handling of this whole situation. the guy made some bad moves, people complained, and he actually took them back. what most companies do and what most people advocate is to stay the course no matter what, because the idea that a company could make a mistake is somehow damning. why should trial and error not be part of the marketplace? when the guy admits he was wrong then the dogs should be called off, but i guess the media can't miss the chance to go in for the kill.

oh, and the interviewer was a dick. an interviewer who was trying to ask good but difficult questions would have focused on why netflix thought it was best to spin off in the first place. these questions were really an editorial stating that hastings is worthless. no one who wanted a good conversation and real information would ask questions in that way

A good & hard (phrasing! ) question would've been how he expects the company to endure in the face of broadband capping and the increased cost of content. There was a video interview six months ago where he stated that he believed everyone would have Gigabit access in ten years. I would've asked him about that and what he was smokin'.

Yeah the interviewer is a total dick indeed: Blotched, flubbed, kibosh, "minced words", "the most arrogant move of all", "have you considered stepping down", "what grade have you earned", "name a movie", "can you name just one", "put places like HBO out of business, right?", not a single question is not heavily negatively charged. I assume this Andrew Goldman is not a journalist, he does not know the first thing about how to engage people and get answers. Even the title of the article...

Still, I find it worrisome for Netflix that Hastings has been so consistently wrong for such a long time. And reversing some of these decisions does not make him right either.

I also don't buy the "we went into streaming too fast". If Netflix really wanted to develop streaming, they would have agreed to the Starz price. I mean, if streaming is their everything and livelihood now, you die if you don't pay the price at all cost. And then you tell customers about the price hike and why you need to increase the subscriptions. But there's something terribly wrong if you don't pay for the Starz deal and you still increase the subscriptions. And I'm pretty sure the Starz deal was much less than the $10 billions Hastings' decisions cost Netflix.

But the worst had to come first. Asking what the CEOs of Intel or IBM or Dell would have said about Hastings' recent decisions would have been very bad, irrelevant, uninformative and impossible to tell already, but asking the dead Steve Jobs? Come on, has NYT fallen so low?

The bottom line with netflix is that they shit in their own back yard. That never ends well.

Not even Apple has had a hit every time. First attept at appletv didnt' go over very well. One of the itune releases wiped out of your music. Before then you couldn't redownload stuff. So unless you had backed it up on your own you were just fucked, then there was a backlash and they added a great and wonder feature that would let you redownload your stuff.

yes netflix is losing starz but did anyone stop to think of what woud happen if they keep them? This year they wanted $30 million, next year they want $300 million. I'll do a little math for everyone real quick 300 / 25 = 12. That means that they would have to raise your netflix bill another $12 JUST for the cost of starz.that is what HBO wanted which is why HBO isn't on there.

At that point it isn't fair to bash netflix for dropping starz. look at how people bitched and moaned over a few dollar increase. what are they going to do about a $12+ one?

I don't mind them at all for losing Starz. Fuck Starz, damn studios are probably demanding more than they deserve anyway.

But I do think it's bad of them to split and pretty much double the price. Hell, I didn't even really use the dvd service. Had it for like 2 or 3 years? I think and only did the dvd thing like 5 times. But I like the option because of their online selection. I know that they can't have everything up because of studios being greedy but that's why they should've kept the original plan and maybe raised it by a dollar or 2.

I'm pretty sure before the split and price hike, they were still making a profit. That's the move that is making me start to think they are just as greedy as the studios that demand tons of money as well. Faulting them for making a profit is dumb, but faulting them for being greedy is fine imo, and it seems like they are heading that way.

Chimel said:

Yeah the interviewer is a total dick indeed: Blotched, flubbed, kibosh, "minced words", "the most arrogant move of all", "have you considered stepping down", "what grade have you earned", "name a movie", "can you name just one", "put places like HBO out of business, right?", not a single question is not heavily negatively charged.

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It makes you wonder if he went back and added all that after the interview to make himself look tough. "THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN EDITED AND CONDENSED...to make me look cool"

I am amazed Hastings didn't punch the guy.

Steve said:

It makes you wonder if he went back and added all that after the interview to make himself look tough. "THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN EDITED AND CONDENSED...to make me look cool"

I am amazed Hastings didn't punch the guy.

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Better to save that for a recorded interview. make sure to show people that you mean business.

Does Every fucking story on every Tech site have to have open with What statan AKA steve jobs has supposedly done (AKA lies),


I am getting fucking tired of hearing about steve jobs on every damn news site and poping up on my cell phone tech news every 7 minutes, .

IT's bad enough I heard about him dying on my android with aCNN news alert I thought IT was something important . Other than making me happy and opening a botlle of wine it was a waste of my time and battery power to take out the phone and see what the hell the news alert was.

Pulse reader gets news from every website and 80 of it is about god damn steve jobs or has the words steve jobs in it even if the story is not about steve jobs there Is not safe haven other than to get off the internet for 4 months.

Cube said:

Does Every fucking story on every Tech site have to have open with What statan AKA steve jobs has supposedly done (AKA lies),


I am getting fucking tired of hearing about steve jobs on every damn news site and poping up on my cell phone tech news every 7 minutes, .

IT's bad enough I heard about him dying on my android with aCNN news alert I thought IT was something important . Other than making me happy and opening a botlle of wine it was a waste of my time and battery power to take out the phone and see what the hell the news alert was.

Pulse reader gets news from every website and 80 of it is about god damn steve jobs or has the words steve jobs in it even if the story is not about steve jobs there Is not safe haven other than to get off the internet for 4 months.

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It isn't just tech sites though. It's tv and radio also. I feel about the same as you though. It's like when Micheal Jackson died, you couldn't get out of bed without hearing at least 7 stories about him. Over the weekend some radio station was going on about Steve jobs, I had to just turn to something else. Partly because I couldn't stand to listen about him and partly because they didn't make one statement that was close to valid other than the fact he pasted away.

Serpent said:

I don't mind them at all for losing Starz. Fuck Starz, damn studios are probably demanding more than they deserve anyway.

But I do think it's bad of them to split and pretty much double the price. Hell, I didn't even really use the dvd service. Had it for like 2 or 3 years? I think and only did the dvd thing like 5 times. But I like the option because of their online selection. I know that they can't have everything up because of studios being greedy but that's why they should've kept the original plan and maybe raised it by a dollar or 2.

I'm pretty sure before the split and price hike, they were still making a profit. That's the move that is making me start to think they are just as greedy as the studios that demand tons of money as well. Faulting them for making a profit is dumb, but faulting them for being greedy is fine imo, and it seems like they are heading that way.

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This is exactly the problem. Netflix needs some sort of incentive to upsell. They need some sort of discount for both dvds and streaming It when have you ever had a service where it was just flat out you have to pay full price for more than 1 service. Insurance, cable tv, mcdonalds almost everyone some sort of price break if you buy more than 1. This is the biggest reason I will be dropping netflix. This is also the only thing I blame on the CEO. I know that he has massive movie studios and huge companies like google and amazon that are making it impossible to get reasonable contracts now that all the original contracts are expiring. But at least give me some small couple dollars off if I stream and mail.