In a sketch that didn’t make the air last weekend, SNL hilariously mocked Netflix’s recent identity crisis-related public missteps. In the sketch, company CEO Reed Hastings and DVD operations head Andy Rendich — played by Jason Sudeikis and Fred Armisen — apologized for the confusion to customers and also announced even ore name changes.
With that said, here’s life imitating art once again: Netflix has decided to abort the whole idea of the Qwikster spinoff for it’s DVD-by-mail operation, explaining in one of the greatest understatements of the 21st century that it “underestimated the appeal of the single web site and a single service.”
In a post to the Netflix blog this morning, Hastings wrote:
It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.
This means no change: one website, one account, one password… in other words, no Qwikster.
While the July price change was necessary, we are now done with price changes.
Additionally, a company spokesman seemingly confirmed to the New York Times what many had already suspected: that company brass acted a bit panicked and didn’t think the whole Qwikster thing through entirely, even though it was possibly a smart business move in theory. In corporate speak, this translates to “moved too quickly.”
The company admitted that it had moved too fast when it tried to spin-off the old-fashioned DVD service into a new company called Qwikster.
“We underestimated the appeal of the single web site and a single service,” Steve Swasey, a Netflix spokesman, said in a telephone interview. He quickly added: “We greatly underestimated it.”
Mr. Swasey said that the Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings declined an interview request. But in a statement, Mr. Hastings said, “Consumers value the simplicity Netflix has always offered and we respect 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.”
With his penchant for chaos and confusion, I think Reed Hastings would make an excellent third world dictator. #reedhastings4libya.
R.I.P. Qwikster. At least we’ll always have this guy to remember you by…