This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on October 20th, 2026. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.
Netflix is laying off 1,000 employees and gearing up for a two-front war. The opponents: a nepo baby with something to prove, and the endlessly tempting scroll feed. The risk is that we soon pay even more – for worse TV.
We didn’t know how good we had it. In the mid-2010s, the streaming services were still being built, and lavish, expensive TV series were the bait that got everyone through the door. Breaking Bad, House of Cards and Game of Thrones could be watched for under 100 kronor a month.
It was absurdly good value. Now, sadly, the absurdity is over.
After raising prices substantially, Netflix is firing its head of content and preparing for a new war for viewers. But this time quality TV won’t be the weapon. Everything points instead to an unpleasant surprise for those of us on the couch.
Netflix has had a difficult year. The stock has fallen more than 40 percent, and the big acquisition of Warner Bros fell through after a convoluted bidding battle against Paramount Skydance. Netflix did receive around SEK 25 billion as a consolation prize when Warner pulled out, but that hasn’t been enough to convince the market about its prospects.
A big reason is the viewers, who aren’t convinced either. A survey from the measurement firm Nielsen showed that Netflix’s share of TV viewing in the US fell by one percentage point from a year earlier, to 7.8 percent. Compare that with YouTube at over 14 percent, and Disney just under 5 percent.
A falling market share is always a worrying sign. Something has to be done.
That is why Netflix recently let go of content chief Bela Bajaria and film chief Dan Lin, along with a thousand other employees. That is only about six percent of the workforce, so plenty of people remain who can make TV.
All of this was the backdrop when Netflix reported its quarterly results late Tuesday evening, Swedish time. They showed its slowest revenue growth in three years, and in the accompanying letter the company admitted that some investors were worried about growth in viewing.
So viewers are drifting away, and at the same time prices keep climbing. In Sweden, the standard Netflix subscription has gone up 30 percent in just over two years. The biggest plan now costs 219 kronor a month. That is starting to be a sum you notice in your wallet.
To address that, a new, cheaper plan launches in Sweden in March next year. You get a lower price, but you have to live with ads.
Beyond pricing, the question is how Netflix will win viewers back and start growing again. The ousted content chief Bajaria once compared her content strategy to a “gourmet cheeseburger” – something that feels both luxurious and commercial at the same time.
That burger seems to have been less appetizing than intended, given the lack of big hits. Last year “KPop Demon Hunters” was a global smash, but no real successor has arrived yet. There have been attempts, but Netflix hasn’t landed anything of that caliber since.
One explanation may be a rapidly changing competitive landscape.
The big players are of course still there – Disney, Amazon Prime and Paramount Skydance (which now owns Warner Bros and HBO). The latter is run by David Ellison, a billionaire’s son and nepo baby who has borrowed heavily against himself and his father, tech mogul Larry Ellison, to build this new media giant. There is a risk that Paramount Skydance will make more odd and unusual moves. The prestige loss of failing means it will be a tricky – and perhaps at times irrational – competitor.
The harder threat, though, comes not from the industry but from the scroll feed. TikTok, YouTube and Instagram are all companies with one thing in common: their budget for commissioned content is zero kronor. The content comes from users, who happily produce it for free to reach an audience they can make money from.
It may seem an unfair comparison to pit feature films against TikTok clips, but this isn’t a question of production quality. It is about time. And viewers’ time is increasingly shifting from traditional channels to the new ones.
This could also affect what the big streaming giants put on screen. Netflix has, for example, started airing episodes of video podcasts, and offers a broad palette of mobile games included in the subscription. None of this would have occurred to a media company ten years ago.
The direction looks clear: we are moving away from big bets on traditional films and series, and toward something that looks more like social media content. Netflix won’t become TikTok or YouTube anytime soon, but we will increasingly recognize the tone and the address.
As a viewer, that can still be both familiar and entertaining. But if you hoped the ever-rising prices would mean more showpieces like Succession and Bridgerton, you will be disappointed.
Series like these, sadly, look set to be diluted with creators from social media. It is cheap and familiar – but also already available for free elsewhere. If it goes too far, customers may start to wonder what exactly they are paying for.
