A More Mauvy Shade of Pinky Russet

“Screw you, i’m going to cancel my DVD subscription and just have streaming!”

“You idiots, i’m going to cancel my subscription altogether!”

These are the types of comments streaming in from Netflix subscribers all over the country because of the latest price changes and the divorce of streaming from the DVD service. Everyone with a blog or twitter account is pointing out that Netflix is going to lose customers hand over fist.

But wait – perhaps that’s exactly what Netflix wants.

What if they’ve figured out that the cost of running the “DVDs by mail” business is too high and they cannot continue to support it? What if they’ve figured out that they have to change the company to a streaming-only model? What if they’ve figured out that they have to do it quickly to survive? What if they would rather have 15 million streaming-only customers than 25 million streaming-and-DVD ones?

Please understand, i’m not advocating the way they structured or communicated the changes, i’m just pointing out that Netflix is a public company that has to do what’s best for its investors. If they said “we have to do this or go out of business in 5 years”, would it be any more palatable for their customers? Sometimes radical problems need radical solutions – perhaps this is one of them?

[disclaimer – I am not a Netflix customer, so i’m not feeling the anger and resentment that everyone else is!]