Over the past few years one of the ways people choose to watch their favorite shows has been Netflix, the company that provides unlimited watching for the shows they offer for the price of $8 a month. Although Netflix offers hundreds of options to their customers, some of their most popular shows such as Friday Night Lights, How I Met Your Mother, One Tree Hill, Family Guy, and about another 40 shows, are being taken off their list of available shows as of Oct.29.
A couple of factors go into why a show is taken off Netflix. The popularity of each show and whether or not the show’s studio wants to renew their deal with Netflix. Shows such as How I Met Your Mother and Family Guy with large studios who don’t want to renew their deals with Netflix are leaving people who have Netflix furious because these are the shows they like the best and want to watch all the time. “I am really upset that Family Guy is being taken off,” junior Timothy Jiang said, “Whenever I am just chilling out, I turn on Family Guy because it’s funny but soon I won’t be able to, which frustrates me since I pay to watch it.”
Another thing Netflix does to decide whether they should keep or remove a show is to look at which shows are being watched frequently and those that are not. Some shows that aren’t as popular get taken off at Netflix’s control because not a lot of people seems to be watching the show. One of the less popular shows that is being removed is one of senior Gavin Keiner’s favorite shows, Across the Universe. “I really don’t think it’s fair that just because a lot of people don’t watch it like some other popular shows means that it should be taken off Netflix, which I pay for,” Keiner said.
Even though Netflix is removing close to 50 shows and movies in just the month of October, it is not likely they are going to stop there. Netflix has already planned to remove about 30 more movies and shows in the month of November including popular movies, Men in Black and Field of Dreams on Nov. 1.
Students who get Netflix and watch a lot of movies such as junior Gelila Yimam are upset because that is where they watch the majority of their movies. “It really makes me upset that Netflix keeps doing this because I love to just watch Netflix sometimes whether it’s an old or new movie,” Yimam said, “One Tree Hill was bad enough, but now even more shows and movies it just confuses me.”
Danny Rothenberg
News Editor
