Oops is now a Netflix term

Brian Stelter has an article in The New York Times about Netflix, going backwards rapidly:

The New Coke experiment lasted less than three months. Qwikster did not even make it make it out of the bottle. In a swift reversal, Netflix said that it had decided to keep its DVD-by-mail and online streaming services together under one name and one website, abandoning the breakup it had announced three weeks earlier.
The company, which will keep a recent sixty percent price increase in place, declared that it had moved too fast when it tried to spin-off the old-fashioned DVD service into a new company called Qwikster, angering many subscribers. “We underestimated the appeal of the single website and a single service,” Steve Swasey, a Netflix spokesman, said in an interview, before quickly adding: “We greatly underestimated it.”
Some reacted by teasing Netflix and its chief executive, Reed Hastings, for being topsy-turvy, but many praised the company for, as Ingrid Chung of Goldman Sachs put it in an analysts’ note, “listening to its customers (finally) and working to fix its relationship” with them.
Netflix emailed people who recently canceled their accounts to tell them about the reversal.
Maybe, some said, after a season of spectacular missteps, Netflix has finally figured out how to communicate effectively about its future. Or maybe now the company is just saying what its subscribers want to hear— that those who want both online streams and DVDs won’t have to manage two accounts and pay two bills each month, after all.
Netflix stock, which has lost almost two-thirds of its value in the last three months, rose on the news in the morning, but declined in the afternoon, closing down 4.8 percent at $111.62.
Richard Greenfield, a media analyst for BTIG Capital, said in an email message that the announcement was the “necessary reversal of a bad decision. The key remaining question,” he said, “is ‘Why did they make the Qwikster decision in the first place?’”
Netflix said it had never actually separated the services or started Qwikster. But the planned breakup was rooted in Hastings’ belief that DVDs and online streams have different cost structures and different consumer demographics.
In July, to address the structural underpinnings of the business, he announced that the company would start charging $8 a month for both its streaming service and its DVD service, a total of $16 a month for the combination. Previously, DVDs were a $2 add-on to the $8 streaming service. Of course, subscribers who only wanted one service or the other— most new subscribers only want the online streams— saw no price hike, but that fact was drowned out by the outcry.
Netflix expected some of its 25 million subscribers to cancel in the wake of the price change, but the cancellation rate exceeded expectations. The company said on 15 September that it expected to report a quarterly decline of about one million in the third quarter, which ended on 30 September.
Still, it pressed forward, announcing the breakup plan the night of 17 September. “Companies rarely die from moving too fast, and they frequently die from moving too slowly,” Hastings wrote in a blog post that night. His implication then was that Netflix had to act aggressively to expand its fast-growing streaming service by severing its older, slower DVD-by-mail arm. In a sentence that now seems like a bit of foreshadowing, Hastings also wrote: “It is possible we are moving too fast; it is hard to say.”
Tens of thousands spoke out against the plan on Netflix’ website and others, and Netflix stock slid sharply. Three days after the announcement, Hastings wrote in a Facebook status update, “In Wyoming with ten investors at a ranch/retreat. I think I might need a food taster. I can hardly blame them.”
Then came the flip-flop, announced Monday. Hastings declined interview requests, but he said in a statement that “there is a difference between moving quickly— which Netflix has done very well for years— and moving too fast, which is what we did in this case.”
Swasey declined to comment on any involvement by the Netflix board in the decision to keep the two services together. Some of the details of the reversal are still being deduced. The Netflix plan for Qwikster to rent video games may or may not move forward; Swasey said that it was “to be determined.”
On the Netflix blog, some subscribers called for Hastings’ ouster, but others called him courageous for owning up to his mistakes. Wrote Sean Michael McCord, a systems engineer: “I was ready to call the whole thing ‘Quitster’ for me, but now I may just stick around for awhile longer.”
Some analysts suspect that Netflix’ third-quarter losses exceeded the company’s already-lowered expectations, but the company declined to comment. It will report earnings and subscriber figures on 24 October.
Despite the turnaround, online streaming remains the core business for Netflix going forward. A lack of compelling films and television shows on the streaming service is a frequent lament, and it is likely to grow louder next winter: that’s when Sony and Disney films are expected to be removed, the result of a failed negotiation with Starz.
But Netflix is trying to stock up on more streaming content; last month it announced a deal with DreamWorks Animation to stream that studio’s films starting in 2013, and last week it announced a deal with AMC Networks to stream old episodes of television shows like The Walking Dead. The company also remains interested in paying for the production of new television shows. Earlier this year it ordered its first original drama, House of Cards, which is expected to have its premiere in late 2012.
It is now in talks to distribute new episodes of two canceled television series, Arrested Development, formerly of the Fox network, and Reno 911, formerly of Comedy Central. The past seasons of both shows can be streamed via Netflix, and can be rented on DVD, too.

Rico says he's happy to see this move; he wasn't going to do much streaming, anyway...