Netflix cancelations ‘spike by 800 PERCENT’ over backlash to ‘hyper-sexualized’ children in Cuties movie
NETFLIX saw subscription cancellations increase by 800 percent after Cuties triggered boycotts in September.
Reports from New York data analytics firms YipitData and Antenna seem to indicate that a conservative-led protest and Change.org petition caused much of the downward spike – as those boycotting claimed the French coming-of-age film sexualized pre-teen girls.
YipitData analysis, published by Variety last month, showed Netflix’s cancellation rate in the U.S. reached a multi-year high on Sept. 12 as cancellations jumped to nearly eight times higher than the average daily levels recorded in August.
The data company, however, reportedly declined to provide estimates on how many customers cancelled their subscriptions.
“@AntennaData can confirm that Netflix experienced a meaningful Spike in Churn Rate due to the 'Cuties' Backlash,” the company tweeted with a chart showing the dramatic downward spike.
Netflix’s chief financial officer Spence Neumann, who did not mention the impact from Cuties boycotts, said in a third-quarter earnings call that the streaming giant “came pretty close” to landing its target subscriber base of 195 million subscribers -- adding 2.2 million global subscribers for the three months that ended Sept. 30.
He also implied that a slowdown in new subscriptions was mostly impacted by a boom in new subscriptions at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
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“To look at Q3, the biggest impact was really the first half of the year and that giant pull-forward in subscriber additions in the first half of the year with COVID,” Neumann said.
He added: “When we have that much pull-forward, we expected and knew there'd be some level of slowdown, and we tried to project it as best we could.”
Theodore A. Sarandos, Co-CEO, and Chief Content Officer, added that the company has completed production on more than 50 productions since COVID shutdowns started and “expect another 150 before the year is over.”
“I think the thing that we've really been amazed by has been the adaptivity of our production communities to step up to the plate in these new COVID protocols and get the work done in such an incredible way and then so safely,” Sarandos said.