I have a sense of schadenfreude (that’s laughing at others misfortune) with the recent Netflix numbers. The most wonderful streaming service (wink) lost 200,000 subscribers in the last quarter and believe it or not is expecting another drop of two million the next one. There are various reasons, say those maybe in the know. Among these are that there are so many more competitors these days, like Amazon Prime, Apple TV, BritBox, Crave, etc. etc. Another is that the pandemic is over – over! – get it? People are sick of watching movies in their basements no matter how large the screen. Elon Musk, mischievous as he is, even suggested so much of Netflix’s content is “woke” (politically correct) and therefore “unwatchable.” Let me weigh in. I’ve long found Netflix unwatchable, having complained about it a number of times, and last summer snipped the electronic cord by cancelling my virtual subscription. It wasn’t necessarily wokeness that did me in, though I can see what Musk means, but the fact so much of the inventory held no interest for me. I’m not a television watcher so, despite how supposedly great content was (Peaky Blinders vile premise – please!), I had no interest in “binge” watching. It was movies for me. But Netflix never offered up much in the way of classic, foreign or independent films and their current offerings with few exceptions (Roma (Alfonso Cuaron, 2018), Copenhagen (Mark Raso 2014), Panoptic (Rana Eid 2017), Life Itself (Dan Fogelman, 2018)) just didn’t appeal. Months would go by before I watched another Netflix movie. I’d go on the site, scroll and scroll and scroll and never find anything to watch. But truth be told, in recent months I’ve reconsidered. My main movie outlets have been Criterion Channel and Turner Classic Movies, and since I was in Europe for two months, had no access to the latter. I wanted more content and thought I should re-open the Netflix window. That remains to be seen. Meanwhile, I have to smile at the great streaming service’s (wink) bad news.
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