Cable television costs around $50 per month depending on what you subscribe to. Netflix costs around $10. While many of us are going to have an internet connection regardless of whether we have cable or not, dropping the extra $50 in charges and picking up Netflix seems like a great idea.
Apparently, over 26 million other people thought so too. Just announced, Netflix viewers watched over one billion hours of online streaming video last month. That’s impressive.
Not only does this mean viewers watched an average of 80 minutes a day on the service, it also makes Netflix more popular than any traditional cable network.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings made the announcement and he credits Ted Sarandos, head of licensing, with the achievement, claiming, that if it weren’t for him and his team, the milestone would not have been possible.
Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix comments in a Facebook post:
Congrats to Ted Sarandos, and his amazing content licensing team. Netflix monthly viewing exceeded 1 billion hours for the first time ever in June. When House of Cards and Arrested Development debut, we’ll blow these records away. Keep going, Ted, we need even more!
Netflix is even on track to beat out broadcast networks like CBS and ABC. And with the amount of annoying commercials and regular sponsor breaks, it’s no surprise that viewers would rather enjoy Netflix as opposed to viewing 35 minutes of commercials to see 25 minutes of programming.
Netflix’ has their quarterly earnings due out later this month, then we can see how the additional content has impacted the bottom line. Last year, viewers were in an uproar over the price increase. This year, well, we’ll have to wait and see what happens. It sounds like they are on the right track to me.
