Workers at Netflix’s Tudum fan website were fired off on Thursday, less than five months after the streaming giant launched the site and only a week after the streaming provider disclosed its first subscriber drop in a decade. The reduction in viewers has shaken Hollywood’s faith in streaming as a potential growth engine, putting the spotlight on Netflix for any signs of weakness.
Netflix has been tight-lipped about the size of the layoffs. However, “Tudum, the fan website, is a top focus for the corporation,” was stated.
Five employees whose Twitter accounts match authors’ identities on Tudum’s site tweeted about being laid off on Thursday, among other tweets by other laid-off writers and editors that CMT could not independently corroborate. However, the reductions appear to be minimal compared to Netflix’s overall personnel and restricted to the Tudum business. At the end of last year, Netflix employed 11,300 people.
Tudum, Netflix’s “official companion site,” was established in December as “the official companion site” to the streaming service. It was announced by Netflix’s former marketing boss Bozoma Saint John, who departed the business in March, as a resource for news on Netflix episodes and movies and fan-focused pieces delving deeper into Netflix programming.
Netflix’s years of unstoppable expansion had prompted virtually all of Hollywood’s big media corporations to invest billions of dollars in their streaming programs until last week. These “streaming wars” spawned a slew of new services, including Apple TV Plus, Disney Plus, HBO Max, Peacock, and Paramount Plus, to name a few. As a result, the problematic shift to streaming has significant ramifications for Hollywood’s future. Still, it also complicates the number of services you must use — and pay for — to watch your favorite series and movies online.
Netflix said last week that in the first three months of this year, its member base decreased by 200,000 accounts. It was Netflix’s first overall membership loss in ten years, dating back to when DVDs-by-mail were still a significant part of its operation. While the loss was primarily due to Netflix’s withdrawal from Russia following the invasion of Ukraine, the company warned that it expects to lose another 2 million customers by the end of June.