Consumer site Extreamist confirms what many suspected: Netflix has sharply reduced its streaming library titles by over 50% from an estimated 11,000 in 2012 to about 5,300 today.
Users notice when high-profile content like Dr. Who or King of the Hill go away, but for every big series or film that is noticed, a number of other titles disappear without being replaced.
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Over the years, this gradual decline has come from major content owners pulling the plug on giving Netflix distribution rights, as well as Netflix decreasing their total spend on third party content. Instead of having to renegotiate streaming rights repeatedly for third party content, Netflix has opted to place a heavier focus on original movies and shows, a move that, while certainly appearing successful thus far, is still considered by many to be a massive gamble. Netflix has had tons of success with shows like 'House of Cards,' 'Orange is the New Black,' 'Narcos' and more, but the fact remains that creating original content is extremely expensive and doesn't scale the same way content acquisition can.
Once surprising area of competition between Netflix and amazon Prime is children's programming. Per The Week
Additionally, Netflix has very quietly been dominating the children's entertainment market. For those without kids, or those whose kids are past the SpongeBob stage, this might be a section of Netflix that you simply never view, but its library of children's programing is huge. And increasingly this is the way that parents are choosing to entertain their kids. Roughly half of Netflix's 75 million subscribers routinely view children's entertainment.
• The number of titles in the Netflix library is down 50% in the last four years (Exstreamist via The Week)
Image: Helge Thomas
