The content boss of Netflix has explained why the quantity of the streaming service’s movie collection has declined so substantially over the past two years.
When asked about Netflix’s thinner film selection, Ted Sarandos told the UBS Global Media and Communications conference in New York that only around a third of the media company’s subscribers watch movies.
He explained that even in Canada, where Netflix has five major movie studio output deals, only a third of viewing comes from films—the same as in the U.S. Which has just one deal. “No matter what, we end up with about one-third of our watching being movies,” Sarandos said, according to Business Insider.
Sarandos added that one of the reasons why movies don’t do as well as TV shows on Netflix is because of the delay between films’ releases and Netflix being able to show them. “If you were passionate [about the movie], you’ve already seen it [when it came out],” he said.
Research reported on earlier this year showed that in 2014, roughly 20% of IMDB’s top 250 movies were available to watch on Netflix, whereas only around 12% were in September 2016. Additionally, Netflix’s selection of titles has dropped over 50% since 2012, according to the streaming blog Exstreamist.