Netflix is Losing "The Office"
Photo: theweek.com
Like the wedding date that took Roy and Pam three years to set, this announcement was one that fans of The Office knew might come eventually, but at the same time figured it never would. Yesterday, it was announced by Netflix that its most popular show will be taken off the streaming service at the end of the year 2020. The reasoning: NBC is launching its own streaming service and is making The Office (owned by NBC) exclusively available on its platform beginning in January 2021.
It’s no surprise losing The Office has made a lot of Netflix customers upset. According to Nielsen data referenced by NBC yesterday, the show was streamed on Netflix for about 52 billion minutes in 2018 alone. In the month of April, it was viewed twice as much as the second-most viewed show on streaming devices. There are a lot of people who pay for Netflix to just watch The Office and perhaps a few other things here and there. It will certainly cause Netflix to take a hit in membership.
However, this is the new trend and Netflix has been preparing for it. That’s why you see so many more Netflix original tv shows and movies when you log in. They had to pay WarnerMedia $80 million to keep Friends for another year, but will most likely lose that show eventually as WarnerMedia is planning on launching its own media service, just as NBC is. Disney has already pulled its content from Netflix because they are launching their own streaming service this year. As cable is dying out, the most popular cable networks are beginning to get into the streaming service business with their exclusively-owned content.
It will be interesting to see where things go from here. The thing that made Netflix so popular was streaming so many television shows from different networks. I just don’t see many people paying for a streaming service that only features NBC content, Disney content, ect. That’s like paying for one tv channel. The only difference would be you could pick whatever show you want from that channel at any time. Still, it doesn’t seem to make much sense. Are people going to keep ditching cable to pay different monthly subscriptions to NBC, ABC, ESPN, Disney, and whatever-else-they-want streaming services? Only time will tell. But for now, fans of The Office will attempt to see how many times they can watch the series all the way through for the next year and a half. And then have to buy the complete series on DVD.