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Netflix’ crackdown on password sharing, or as the streamer calls it a focus on “paid sharing,” will drive growth for years to come, said the streamer’s co-CEO, addressing a Wall Street concern that benefits may top out this year.

Selena Kuznikov Co-chief executive officer of Netflix Ted Sarandos will be made an honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to the creative industries. The honor, one of the highest that can be awarded in the U.K., was personally approved by King Charles III.

Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos was asked by an analyst on today’s Q4 earnings call if “the recent management departure” would impact the streamer’s future plans for making original feature films.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor It’s the beginning of the end for Netflix‘s lowest-cost plan that does not include advertising. In reporting results for the fourth quarter of 2023, in which it added a better-than-expected 13.1 million net subscribers, Netflix touted its ad-supported plan as accounting for 40% of all Netflix sign-ups in markets where it has launched that, and said the number of subscribers on ad tiers grew almost 70% quarter-over-quarter. The company didn’t break out subscriber numbers but said it recently surpassed 23 million monthly active unique users on advertising tiers.

Netflix said today it plans to award its co-chief operating officers identical compensation packages for 2024 worth $40 million each.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Netflix‘s board has approved 2024 pay packages of its top execs, with co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters each to receive compensation worth $40 million. For Sarandos, it’s the same level of pay he is set to receive in 2023.

Netflix’s 250 million subscribers may think of the company primarily as a TV and movie streaming service, 99 percent of them are missing out on a major perk.In recent years, Netflix has branched out into the video games industry.The company has acquired a number of gaming studios, including industry titan Night School Studios, which developed the Oxenfree games.Oxenfree 2 was developed exclusively for Netflix, and yet the streaming platform’s games push is yet to be picked up by subscribers in earnest.In fact, while every Netflix subscription comes with a games library accessed via the Netflix mobile app, it’s unclear how many subscribers even know that the games exist.The library of more than 70 games can be found in the “Mobile Games” row on the Netflix app home screen.It includes award-winning titles including Immortality, Kentucky Route Zero and Before Your Eyes, all of which can be downloaded to mobile and played at no extra cost to subscribers.There are also games to complement popular shows, including ones inspired by Squid Game, Black Mirror and reality TV.But the games feature is little-used, with a report from CNBC revealing just 2.2 million Netflix subscribers — about 0.88 percent — play one of the streamer’s games daily.The stats indicated retention was a problem, with more than 70 million subscribers having downloaded a game at some point and mostly failing to become repeat users.That could be because, while viewers can watch a few minutes of a TV show or movie to get a taste, games require a download and larger time investment.Netflix continues to throw money and resources at the endeavour, with the number of games on the app having tripled in the past year.According to Co-CEO Greg Peters, the streaming

Netflix said it’s working on modifications to CEO pay policies after a majority of shareholder voting not to approve executive compensation in a non-binding vote at the last annual meeting. The company had said as much earlier this year.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer Netflix has made two significant appointments to its C-suite, elevating Eunice Kim to chief product officer and Elizabeth Stone to chief technology officer. Kim will oversee all worldwide product efforts for the streamer, and Stone will manage its data and engineering teams. “Elizabeth and Eunice have strong track records at Netflix and more broadly within the technology industry,” said Greg Peters, co-CEO of Netflix.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor After just more than a year at Netflix booting up the streamer’s ad business, Jeremi Gorman is leaving the company. Amy Reinhard, previously VP of studio operations, will succeed Gorman as president of advertising. The change comes as Netflix announced two other notable C-suite appointments Tuesday, promoting Eunice Kim to chief product officer and Elizabeth Stone to CTO.

Susan Rice, who left her post as domestic policy advisor to President Biden last May, has rejoined Netflix’s board of directors.

Netflix Co-CEO Greg Peters, who oversaw the launch of Netflix in Japan in a previous exec role, said the strong debut of the series One Piece cleared “a very high bar” and attests to the company’s “evolving” content approach.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Netflix just kicked off its big crackdown on illicit password-sharing users this spring — but co-CEO Greg Peters says there’s still a long road ahead of the company on this front. “We’ll be in the password-sharing business for some time,” Peters said, speaking Tuesday at the 2023 Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference. According to Peters, Netflix “built an elegant solution” to address the issue of informing users who were piggybacking on someone else’s account that they would need to pay for their own plan (or get added as an “extra member” for an additional fee).

California Treasurer Fiona Ma has sent letters to the CEOs of seven Hollywood studios urging a return to the bargaining table with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA to end a months-long double strike that’s shut down much of the entertainment industry and is taking a major toll on the California economy.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney is coming for the streaming password-sharing freeloaders. Taking a page from Netflix’s playbook, Disney chief Bob Iger announced that the media conglomerate has put a priority on finding ways to convert password-borrowing users into paying customers.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Shares of Netflix were down more than 8% in early trading Thursday, coming after the streamer blew away estimates on subscriber gains for the second quarter — and analysts saying the company continues to be well positioned to weather Hollywood’s double actors and writers strike relative to its peers. But investors had been anticipating a bigger bump from its new initiative to monetize password-sharing accounts. Note that Netflix’s post-earnings stock drop came amid high investor expectations leading into the Q2 report: Shares were up nearly 62% year to date in 2023. Revenue for Q2 came in at $8.19 billion, shy of Wall Street’s $8.3 billion consensus expectations. And Netflix’s guidance for Q3 revenue of $8.52 billion also was less than the $8.9 billion average forecast by analysts. The company added 5.9 million net new subs in the second quarter, more than double expectations, and said it expects to add about the same number in Q3.

Netflix Co-CEO Greg Peters said the initial verdict is in on paid password sharing — a risky but multi-billion-dollar initiative for the company — and it is positive.

behind only Simon Property Group, which was among the 1.5% of companies who asked shareholders to weigh in on executive compensation packages having rejected the “Say on Pay” proposals.The pay packages included total compensation for co-CEO Ted Sarandos, former co-CEO Reed Hastings and Greg Peters, who was elevated from COO to co-CEO earlier this year. In 2022, Hastings earned $51.1 million in total compensation last year while Sarandos brought in $50.3 million and Peters received $28.1 million. Last week’s rare dissent came days after WGA West president Meredith Stiehm sent an open letter to Netflix and Comcast shareholders urging them to reject the pay proposals ahead of the votes, pointing to the intensifying impact of the guild’s strike, which recently entered into its second month.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor In a symbolic rebuke of Netflix’s top executives, company shareholders voted against approving the compensation packages of leaders including co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters. At the streamer’s June 1 annual shareholders meeting, investors failed to approve the proposed exec pay packages for 2023. But the vote was a non-binding “say on pay” measure, meaning Netflix’s board can disregard the result. The vote came after the WGA had urged investors to vote against Netflix’s exec compensation measures in a letter Tuesday. “While investors have long taken issue with Netflix’s executive pay, the compensation structure is more egregious against the backdrop of the strike,” WGA West president Meredith Stiehm wrote in the letter to Netflix shareholders.

Netflix shareholders declined to support a proposal affirming the pay packages for top executives during a vote at the company’s annual shareholder meeting on Thursday.

Six months after the landmark debut of its ad-supported subscription tier, Netflix said the plan has hit 5 million monthly active users globally.

filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, Netflix’s executive chairman and former co-CEO Reed Hastings raked in approximately $51.1 million in total compensation last year, up from the $40.8 million he received in 2021. Hastings’ package included a $650,000 base salary, approximately $49.4 million in stock options and $1 million in other compensation.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Reed Hastings, who stepped aside as co-CEO of Netflix in January, and co-chief Ted Sarandos both saw double-digit increases in their compensation packages for 2022, with their total pay topping $50 million each. Hastings’ total pay last year was $51.07 million, $49.4 million of which was in stock option awards, up 25% from 2021, the streamer disclosed in its 2023 proxy statement Friday. Sarandos’ pay jumped 31.5% in 2022, to $50.3 million, comprising $20 million base annual salary, $28.5 million in stock options and $1.79 million in other compensation (including $1.43 million in residential security costs). In stepping down as co-CEO, Hastings will take a huge pay cut: For 2023, as executive chairman, he’s eligible to receive a $500,000 base salary plus $2.5 million in stock options, according to a Netflix 8-K filing with the SEC. In the co-CEO role, he stood to make $34.7 million this year, mostly in stock.

Reed Hastings saw his total pay package jump by about $10 million last year to $51 million on a new stock option grant. Co-CEO Ted Sarandos pulled in total compensation of $50.3 million, up from $38.2 million, also on a bigger option grant.

Over the weekend, the “Love Is Blind” reunion made headlines. But though the season 4 conclusion was filled with plenty of drama, it was Netflix’s inability to get the event, which had been advertised as its second live special, to stream on time.

reunion made headlines. But though the season 4 conclusion was filled with plenty of drama, it was Netflix's inability to get the event, which had been advertised as its second live special, to stream on time.After promises that they were waiting to start the special until it could stream, Netflix eventually gave up and recorded the reunion.

Ted Sorrandoes was asked point-blank in Tuesday’s quarterly earnings call about resisting Netflix’s current reluctance to give their films conventional theatrical releases, a stance that has now put the company at odds with most of their streaming competition. The short answer: Don’t stop a horse in mid-stream.“The film division is doing great,” stated Sarandos. “They really are building out some great films.

Netflix is owning up to the long delay they had with the Love Is Blind live reunion.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters revealed what exactly went wrong with the live “Love Is Blind” Season 4 reunion special on Sunday — and how they plan to fix the problem with other live broadcasts moving forward. “We’re really sorry to disappoint so many people,” Peters said during a prerecorded Q1 earnings interview Tuesday. “We didn’t meet the standard that we expect ourselves: to serve our members and just be clear from a technical perspective. We’ve got the infrastructure. We had just a bug that we introduced, actually, when we implemented some changes to try to improve live-streaming performance after the last live broadcast, Chris Rock[‘s ‘Selective Outrage’] in March. We just didn’t see this bug in internal testing because it only became apparent once we put multiple systems interacting with each other under the load of millions of people trying to watch ‘Love Is Blind.'”

Netflix CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters celebrated the success of the streamer’s latest hit series “Beef,” but skipped over controversy surrounding cast member David Choe’s involvement.The executives touted the show’s recent critical and fan acclaim during the company’s first quarter earnings interview Tuesday, but didn’t acknowledge the building outrage among viewers that started after a 2014 video of Choe resurfaced on social media where he said he forced himself on a masseuse.“That’s new this quarter and it has kicked off and it’s off to a tremendous start,” Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said of the show.

Just two days after the “Love Is Blind” Season 4 live reunion fiasco, which delayed the livestream for over an hour with many viewers unable to watch the special until the next day, Netflix Co-CEO Greg Peters said the delayed was caused by a “bug.” “From a technical perspective, we’ve got the infrastructure,” Peters said during Tuesday’s earning call. “We had just a bug that we introduced, actually, when we implemented some changes to try and improve live streaming performance after the last live broadcast Chris Rock in March and we just didn’t see this bug in internal testing because it only became apparent once we put sort of multiple systems interacting with each other under the load of millions of people trying to watch ‘Love is Blind.'”While fans of the reality dating series tuned in to the special expecting for the reunion to rehash the season’s drama and give a status update for how each couple’s relationship has evolved since their respective wedding days, viewers were met with a error message on the live stream.Despite the livestreaming troubles, the reunion reached an audience of 6.5 million viewers, Peters said.“We’re really sorry to have disappointed so many people,” Peters continued.

The Love Is Blind reunion didn’t end up being live on April 16 due to “technical difficulties,” but apologetic Netflix brass are very pleased with the viewership the streamer had once the special finally aired.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Netflix said it would stage a “broad rollout” of its paid-sharing plan in the second quarter of 2023, including in the U.S. The streamer announced the news as part of its first quarter 2023 earnings report. As part of Netflix’s crackdown on customers sharing passwords with people outside their household, the company plans to start blocking devices (after a certain period of time) that attempt to access a Netflix account without properly paying. “In Q1, we launched paid sharing in four countries and are pleased with the results,” Netflix said in its Q1 letter to shareholders. “We are planning on a broad rollout, including in the U.S., in Q2.”

Netflix delivered a mixed set of results for the first quarter, edging Wall Street analysts’ estimates for earnings per share but falling short in other key categories.

Netflix plans to phase in “paid sharing” — the company’s preferred term for cracking down on the loaning of login credentials — in the U.S. in the coming weeks.

Reed Hastings just made a bold claim: That Netflix is the “biggest builder of cross-European culture.”