Netflix's pseudo apology letter & video has been making its way around the internet the past couple days. The big news is that instead of the big (60%!) price increase that brought so much flack a few months ago, Netflix is splitting into two separate companies; one for digital streaming & one for DVD/Blu-ray mail service. Purchasing both services together will cost the same as the 60% price increase, but you're supposed to feel like you're purchasing two different services from two separate companies.
Only you're not supposed to feel like that because the envelope will look almost identical to the current Netflix envelope. The company doing the streaming will be called Netflix while the mail service will be called Qwikster. Make sense? Sound good to you?
No. Not likely.
So what's going on? Well, in our opinion, they're panicking. With the US Postal service in real trouble & facing major cutbacks, Netflix can no longer rely on their model of distribution to continue without either making customer service sacrifices or switching to a more expensive, private carrier. Outdated as it may seem in the age of high speed internet, UPS & Fed-ex, the US Postal Service is actually a pretty amazing thing; for less than the cost of a candy bar you can have a real live person carry your handwritten letter, bill, or postcard to its recipient anywhere in the country in just a couple of days! It's big government at its most grandiose perhaps, but it allows almost all Americans to have reliable, affordable mail service. That the mail will just arrive at your house 6 days a week is something we've all grown up taking for granted. Sure there are problems & the free market has decided that Americans are happy to pay more to guarantee the delivery dates for important packages & documents, & then we're happy to email free digital copies of everything else, but for access & overall price, well, nothing beats the postal service. The Netflix mail-in model just cannot function without postmen who daily overcome rain, heat, snow, & gloom of night.
One of Netflix's biggest assets has always been its name: NET-FLIX: Flicks from the net! (ahem, the word "Flick" is pretty catchy isn't it…) It's a much catchier name than VOD (Video On Demand) which I can only assume got its name because the name "Netflix" was taken. Netflix was started in 1997, just at the beginning of the digital download era when pirated music was first becoming a widespread issue. They saw what was happening to the music industry (at the hands of another infamous "-ster" named company) & jumped to make sure the same thing wouldn't happen to films. The late '90s were also the years of peak rental frustration. Blockbuster had trampled most of its competitors & insisted on resting lazily on its laurels rather than innovating & customers were getting increasingly irritated about spending a fortune in late fees on an item that cost so little to make & ship. Netflix was beautifully placed; they could provide better selection at a consistent price & then when bandwidth increased enough for digital streaming, they'd already have a loyal customer base. Now that Blockbuster is out of the picture & they're the only rental biz in town, it is surprising that they're faltering the way
they are. My guess is that Netflix sees the industry going in a certain direction & it's the one that sounds like Sweatmix & not the one that sounds like Friendster. They know what business they want to be in & what business is expensive, labor-intensive & possibly soon to be obsolete. Qwikster is, in all likelihood, a cutting off of dead wood so that the mail-in service can finally be disassociated with the catchy, movie-streaming name & left to putter about in internet obscurity until everyone & their grandma has gotten over the demise of the postal service & finally figured out the whole new-fangled computer-digital-download-thingie. (I mean, did they seriously not check to see if the twitter handle @Qwikster was taken?) Given that part of our business is DVD/Blu-ray rental & we're well aware that there's a continuing market for it, I think it's unfortunate that Netflix is apparently dismissing physical rental. Sure, shipping will be an increasing problem, but digital download is still only a fraction of the movie market. Only a relatively small number of films are available for streaming, & the industry is still pumping out DVDs, Blu-rays & all those special features discs & people are still demanding them. Conversion to a new media platform is slow & people like what they're used to (heck, we still regularly get requests for VHS tapes!) There's no guarantee that the market will favor the online streaming system Netflix is backing.
(Note to the good folks over at archive.org; I hope you're preserving those soon to be antiquated "queues" so that someday we can all look back on a simpler time when you actually had to wait patiently for your turn to watch Hangover 2, & we can tell our children tales of a tiny, magical truck driven by a blue-hatted driver who would hand deliver a little red envelope to a box with your address on it & therein lay your movie. You will blow their minds.)
