To say that Netflix is having a pretty bad week is, well, putting it mildly.
First, it marred what should have been a triumphant launch of its streaming-video service for Canada by hiring actors to pose as members of an "enthusiastic" crowd at a press conference. Then its normally level-headed CEO got a little too chummy with a reporter in Toronto, telling him that Americans are too "self-absorbed" to notice that Canadians will be paying less for streaming than U.S. users are.
Oh, boy.
Normally, I leave these kinds of PR gaffes as fodder for our resident media blogger at Yahoo! News — but since there’s an actual tech angle here, I’ll bite.
Oh, boy.
Normally, I leave these kinds of PR gaffes as fodder for our resident media blogger at Yahoo! News — but since there’s an actual tech angle here, I’ll bite.
First things first, though. Having belatedly realized that he’d managed to insult, you know, his entire base of U.S. customers with his "awkward joke," Netflix CEO Reed Hastings posted a bowing, scraping apology on the official Netflix blog Thursday night, explaining that he was wrong to label Americans as "somewhat self-absorbed" people who generally don’t "follow what happens in the world."
"I do not believe that one of the most philanthropically-minded nations in the world (America) is self-absorbed or full of self-absorbed people," Hastings wrote. "My apologies to anyone offended by my self-absorbed comment." Well, that’s a start — although judging from the scores of angry comments to his post, a red-faced Hastings still has a lot of apologizing to do.
Now, for some real tech news. As I wrote earlier this week, Netflix’s new $7.99-a-month, streaming-only service for Canada highlights the fact that for now, there is no streaming-only option for Netflix users here in the States. (Hastings had previously said that Netflix won’t be mailing DVDs in Canada because of the "tricky" proposition of shipping discs though non-U.S. postal systems.)
Of course, the fact that U.S. users are paying only a dollar more to get DVDs in the mail (one at home at a time, in the case of Netflix’s $8.99 subscription plan) in addition to video streaming kind of undercuts the whole "Canadians are paying less than Americans" argument that started this whole mess.
Still, in his apology Thursday, Hastings added that Netflix is "looking at adding a streaming-only option for the USA over the coming months," a possibility that Netflix execs first hinted at way back in February 2009.
If you ask me, a streaming-only subscription plan for the U.S. would — or rather, could — represent one of the best values in home video today, especially considering Netflix’s solid catalog of 20,000-plus "Watch Instantly" TV shows and movies. (Indeed, Netflix just inked a new streaming deal with NBC Universal that includes every new episode of "Saturday Night Live," as well as SyFy’s "Battlestar Galactica.")
But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was disappointed by the pricing for Netflix’s streaming-only service for Canada — again, it’s $7.99 a month, just a buck cheaper than the $8.99/month plan in the U.S. that includes one mailed DVD at home at a time.
Now ... if the streaming-only plan was more like $5 a month, then we’d be talking. (Just to be clear, the key word here is "bargain." Movie fanatics, like me, who are obsessed with picture quality and title selection will still probably prefer to pay more for physical DVDs and Blu-rays.)
So, anyone like the idea of a streaming-only Netflix plan for the U.S. — and if so, how much would you be willing to pay? Oh, and are you satisfied with Hasting’s apology? (My first thought, being the geek I am, was: "Apology accepted, Captain Needa." Name the movie and the character, and I’ll give you a gold star.)
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