The streamer was undoubtedly hoping to blow up the internet with more he-said-she-said drama along the lines of season 3’s Zainab-Cole Cuties scandal when Netflix announced plans for a live reunion special for the fourth season of its hugely popular reality series Love Is Blind. Rather, it seems like Netflix was broken by the internet.
Fans were met with a string of messages when they tried to get the player to load at all as they prepared to watch the reunion, which was supposed to start on Sunday at 8 p.m. ET. “The time is almost here! The early notice was hopeful, saying, “The live event will start soon.” Reality eventually set in: “There’s a problem with the livestream.” Hold on tight! Our goal is to have things fixed as quickly as possible.
Eventually, the broadcast did materialise, but not before 9:00, at which point a lot of people switched their attention to Yellowjackets or Succession. I saw the (mostly unremarkable) reunion at 10 p.m. by refreshing Netflix, watching the live broadcast, then fast-forwarding to about the 70-minute mark.
I had to click over to HBO myself. (For those who were unable to watch the show on Sunday night, the episode will be available on Netflix on Monday at 3 p.m. ET.) Co-host Vanessa Lachey welcomed viewers, saying, “We are finally here, even though we are no longer live.” You guys at home haven’t missed anything.
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In order to conserve all of the tea for you, we have been sitting on these couches and not speaking to one another. By then, rivals had joined in on the memes, and even AOC was making jokes. The harm had already occurred.
However, Netflix, which has a lot riding on its ability to pull off live events, was embarrassed by the delay in addition to the difficulty it caused to customers. The streamer may have serious future consequences as a result of Sunday’s debacle.
I don’t want to overstate the obvious: live broadcasts on linear television are consistently successful. With the possible exception of the odd unbleeped f-word, news, sports, talk programmes, special events like awards ceremonies, and the rare gimmicky live episode of a primetime sitcom, everything comes across practically flawlessly.
Sports and other live events really appear to be the last barriers preventing many prospective cord-cutters from making the transition to streaming. Therefore, platforms must support live streaming if they hope to hasten the shift away from traditional TV and towards their own services.
The L.A. Times was informed in March by Brett Sappington, vice president of market research company Interpret, that “live is able to draw consumers in a way that on-demand just doesn’t in volume.” If it’s exclusively available on Netflix, then everyone who want to confirm their membership must visit Netflix. They wish not to be left out.
However, Netflix faces a unique set of difficulties because it lacks the linear equivalents of rivals Disney+/Hulu, HBO Max, Peacock, and Paramount+. The parent businesses of the latter services are already juggling conventional and streaming coverage of events like the Grammys and the Olympics, albeit with varying degrees of success.
In 2022, Thursday Night Football began to stream on Amazon under an 11-year agreement. However, Chris Rock’s standup special Selective Outrage was Netflix’s first major live event, which took place in March. Everything went so well that overnight headlines focused more on Rock’s insults at Will and Jada Pinkett Smith than any technological difficulties.
It was just Love Is Blind: The Live Reunion’s second try. Netflix already has a deal in place to broadcast the SAG Awards the next year, but if Sunday’s disaster happens again, it may find it difficult to draw in the live-content partners it needs to remain competitive.
Not that each subscriber choosing whether the service is still a good bargain for their household will necessarily keep any of this in mind. It appears more probable that the lost evening will end up as simply another issue to throw on top of the many fans’ already growing list of complaints—whether they are upset with Netflix for cancelling their favourite programme too soon or believe the quality of its whole selection of material is deteriorating.
Netflix has so far provided consumers with a technologically advanced and flawless experience, especially when you consider that it still has more members than any of its rivals.
In an intriguing in-depth analysis of Netflix’s advanced server network, Open Connect, streaming researcher Dan Rayburn told The Verge that “you only get that number of subs if you can deliver good, quality consumer experience at scale.” No one has ever operated on the same scale as Netflix. Nobody possesses such knowledge.
Whatever went wrong to compromise Love Is Blind: The Live Reunion’s live component represented a user-experience crisis that might have had a bigger effect than, say, the House of the Dragon premiere disaster on HBO Max, because Netflix seldom makes mistakes like this. Pre-market trading saw a 2% decline in the company’s price, according to a Monday morning report from Bloomberg.
However, the true test of how much Netflix suffers from Sunday’s gaffe will be whether or not its subsequent live show succeeds, as well as the one after that and so on. Error is now completely eliminated. Because a streaming service can never stop trying to prove its users’ devotion, just like the recently weds from devotion Is Blind. Netflix now has a great deal of damaged trust to mend.
Source:
https://time.com/6272470/love-is-blind-live-reunion-netflix/
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