The co-founder of Netflix says that linear television will end over the next five to ten years. He also described a loss of nearly a million subscribers in the last quarter as less bad than the two million the company had forecast. In the United States at least, Netflix is attracting more viewing than any single broadcast network and the main online video players account for just over a third of total viewing between them, but the death of traditional television is greatly exaggerated.
“Looking forward, streaming is working everywhere. Everyone is pouring in,” Reed Hastings, the co-founder, chairman, president and co-chief executive of Netflix, told analysts. “It’s definitely the end of linear TV over the next 5, 10 years.”
Netflix lost 970,000 subscribers globally in the second quarter of 2022. In the United States and Canada, Netflix lost 1.30 million subscribers in three months. After gaining 6.27 million subscribers in 2020 and 1.28 million in 2021, Netflix has lost 1.93 million subscribers in the United States and Canada in the first half of 2022, reducing its total there to 73.28 million.
Netflix also lost 767,000 subscribers in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region in three months, resulting in a total loss of 1.07 million in the first half of 2022, falling to 72.97 million, slightly fewer than it has in its home market.
A modest gain of 14,000 in Latin America and 1.08 million in the Asia Pacific region left Netflix with a global total of 220.67 million subscribers.
Between September 2021 and May 2022, Netflix accounted for move viewing minutes than any single broadcaster, with a total of 1.33 trillion minutes viewed in the United States. CBS ranked second with 752 billion minutes, according to Nielsen data. The four main broadcast networks — CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox — collectively accounted for 2.14 trillion minutes.
Netflix is attracting far more viewing time than Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, or Apple, which collectively accounted for 568.9 billion minutes, or slightly less than NBC.
Nielsen data shows that Netflix reached a 7.7% share of viewing in June 2022, compared to 6.6% in June 2021. YouTube accounted for 6.9% of viewing, Hulu for 3.3%, Amazon Prime Video for 2.9%, Disney+ for 2.0%, and HBO Max for 1.0%. Online video made up 33.7% of viewing among all individuals, compared to 35.1% for cable and 22.4% for broadcast television.
Online video increased its share of viewing by 6.3% from June 2021 to June 2022, but traditional cable and broadcast television still comprised 57.5% of all viewing, suggesting that repeated reports of its death are greatly exaggerated.