Co-founder Reed Hastings has said for years that he doesn’t want to offer advertising and had no problems with password sharing. But the company is changing course after losing 200,000 customers in the first quarter, the first time it has shed subscribers since 2011. Netflix also projected it will shrink by another 2 million customers in the current second quarter, a huge setback for a company that regularly grew by 25 million subscribers or more a year.
Losing customers for the first time in a decade, Netflix Inc. is throwing out all of its old rules.
The streaming leader will introduce a cheaper, advertising-supported option for subscribers in the next couple years, and will start to crack down on people sharing their passwords even before that. Netflix also will curb its spending on films and TV shows in response to the customer losses.
