Netflix CEO reveals plans to increase content library despite ongoing battle with US Internet service providers
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has confirmed the streaming service has no plans to incorporate sports into its offering despite recently moving into new territories such as chat shows.
Speaking to employees at the company’s campus movie theatre in California, the Netflix co-founder revealed plans to remain advert free and keep improving the service’s movies and television offering as well as more information about his crusade against ISPs who want to charge companies like Netflix more for moving their data around.
“We are really focussed on movies TV shows and surrounding ecosystem,” said Hastings. “We have so long to go to fulfil our mission of having the best of the world’s content…We don’t have any ambitions or interest in sports, which is a unique and wonderful entertainment option but it’s a very different space.”
With late-night talk show host Chelsea Handler leaving E! to premiere a newly-formatted late-night talk show on Netflix in early 2016, Hastings said the services was “betting on a creative vision” and that Netflix sees Handler as “expanding and filling out a certain proposition”.
Of the somewhat controversial decision to increase prices for new customers Hastings agreed that “no one likes a price increase but they like increased content and they want us to do more and more” citing shows such as House of Cards, Orange is the New Black and Lillyhammer as the reason why prices needed to increase.
In addition to focussing on Netflix’s vision for the future Hastings has been spearheading a lobbying effort in the US to get federal regulators to monitor how Internet service providers (ISPs) charge firms to move data around the internet, officially opposing Comcast’s merger with Time Warner Cable.
“The idea that one company, if the merger goes through, will control half of the residential internet is a scary idea. But 98 per cent of my time is making Netflix service better, with algorithms, all of that. A small part of it is on merger opposition.”
Looking ahead to the future Netflix model Hastings said the interface would “continue to get better” with the mobile phone becoming more central as it becomes “the remote control of your life”. He added: “We’ll use more voice and our algorithms and data will be so much better so that you will always want to watch something on Netflix. The content library should be much bigger and we’ll be much more mobile.”