🎧 Netflix Hits Every Panic Button. Now What?

To hear Ted Sarandos tell it, things are going great at Netflix.

“Our business and our business flywheel are working,” the co-CEO said on this week’s earnings call — a week after laying off 1,000 employees, and unceremoniously firing content chief Bela Bajaria, whose sudden perp walk out of the company’s HQ has shaken even an industry accustomed to volatility.

So while revenue was up, engagement was up (but by only 2 percent) and churn was down, strange things are afoot at Netflix — and it’s now legacy studio operator Peter Rice’s job to sort things out, to turn some of Netflix’s “doubles and triples,” in Sarandos’ words, into home runs.

Is Netflix simply pivoting to a new growth era, or is the underlying streaming game going the way of basic cable 10 years ago — disrupted by a player taking audience, in this case, YouTube?

Elaine Low, Sean McNulty and Natalie Jarvey tackle that question and more this week — reading between the lines of the earnings call. What challenges does Rice face (local-language production, anyone)? How do the ousters of women and people of color from the top of the Hollywood food chain affect what stories are told? And are gourmet cheeseburgers still the right business model for Netflix?