10月14日周三下午4点30分左右，奈飞公司联席首席执行官泰德·萨兰多斯邀请贝拉·巴贾里亚去他的办公室时，她并没多想。这种随意的串门对这两位高管来说是家常便饭，他们的办公室相邻，都在奈飞好莱坞总部大楼的11层。
When Netflix Inc. Co-Chief Executive Officer Ted Sarandos invited Bela Bajaria to his office around 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday Oct. 14, she didn’t think much of it. These kind of casual drop-ins were common for the two executives, who worked in adjoining offices on the 11th floor of Netflix’s Hollywood headquarters.
尽管最近几个月一直有关于巴贾里亚职位不稳的传言，尤其是在萨兰多斯与HBO老板凯西·布洛伊斯进行了一次广为人知的会面之后，但巴贾里亚已在奈飞工作了十年，并且兑现了她对萨兰多斯和董事会的承诺。按大多数常规指标衡量，公司表现良好。
Though rumors about Bajaria’s job security had circulated in recent months, especially after a well-publicized meeting between Sarandos and HBO boss Casey Bloys, Bajaria had worked at Netflix for a decade and delivered on what she had promised to Sarandos and the board. The company was, by most conventional metrics, doing well.
巴贾里亚很快就意识到这不是一次普通的会面。萨兰多斯说，他要解雇她首席内容官的职务，由华特迪士尼公司和福克斯的资深人士彼得·赖斯接替。巴贾里亚取消了出席第三季首映式的计划，回了家，此后再也没有回过奈飞的办公室。第二天，她确实与员工开了一次线上会议。
It didn’t take long for Bajaria to realize this wasn’t a normal meeting. Sarandos said he was firing her as chief content officer and replacing her with Peter Rice, a veteran of Walt Disney Co. and Fox. Bajaria canceled plans to attend the premiere of the third season of , went home and never returned to a Netflix office. She did have a virtual meeting with her staff the next day.
“这是一生一次的荣誉，而且非常有趣，”巴贾里亚在给员工的留言中写道。“这不会是你最后一次听到我的消息。”这一消息震惊了奈飞和整个娱乐行业，就像2020年萨兰多斯解雇其长期副手辛迪·霍兰德时一样，那次决定促成了巴贾里亚的崛起。但这次人事变动并非毫无来由。
“It was an honor of a lifetime and so much FUN,” Bajaria wrote in a note to staff. “It won’t be the last you hear of me.”The news shocked Netflix and the broader entertainment industry, much like when Sarandos fired his long-time lieutenant Cindy Holland in 2020, a decision that led to Bajaria’s rise. But it didn’t come from nowhere.
对华纳兄弟的收购失败以及用户参与度停滞，导致奈飞股价大幅下跌。萨兰多斯觉得自己需要让投资者放心，奈飞有引进更多观众的计划。来自创意合作伙伴的持续抱怨、人才的流失，以及关于公司节目编排的负面新闻标题，也让萨兰多斯确信，他需要向好莱坞证明，奈飞依然很酷。
A failed bid for Warner Bros. and stagnant engagement had caused a steep drop in Netflix’s stock price. Sarandos felt he needed to reassure investors that Netflix had a plan to bring in more viewers. A steady drumbeat of complaints from creative partners, talent departures and critical headlines about the company’s programming had also convinced Sarandos that he needed to prove to Hollywood that Netflix was still cool.
公司如今正试图走钢丝：一方面坚称其流媒体服务运转良好，另一方面却在经历五年来最大规模的裁员和高管动荡。“两件事可以同时成立，”联席首席执行官格雷格·彼得斯在一次全体员工大会上说，“我们拥有一个令人羡慕、不断增长且盈利的业务。同时，我们知道还有更多工作要做，以推动更多增长。”以下叙述基于与十多位人士的交谈，包括Netflix现任员工、前员工和商业伙伴。公司拒绝置评。
The company is now trying to walk a tight rope, insisting that its streaming service is doing fine while also undergoing its greatest job cuts and executive turmoil in five years. “Two things can be true,” Co-Chief Executive Officer Greg Peters said during a town hall with staff. “We have an enviable, growing and profitable business. And, at the same time, we know there’s more work to do to drive more growth.”The following account is based on conversations with more than a dozen people, including current Netflix employees, former employees and business partners. The company declined to comment.
萨兰多斯在2020年首次任命巴贾里亚为全球电视主管时，交给她的任务是彻底改革Netflix的策略。公司不再想成为HBO，而是想取代整个有线电视套餐。巴贾里亚推动Netflix进军真人秀和体育直播。她在世界各地建立了节目制作团队，使Netflix在本地语言节目和电影方面处于领先地位。
When Sarandos first named Bajaria his global head of TV in 2020, he tasked her with overhauling Netflix’s approach. The company no longer wanted to be HBO, it wanted to replace the entire cable bundle. Bajaria pushed Netflix into reality TV and live sports. She built up programming teams all over the world, giving Netflix a lead in local-language shows and movies.
这一计划奏效了，吸引了数千万新用户。（打击密码共享也发挥了巨大作用。）尽管如此，一些媒体和业内人士抱怨Netflix正在变成沃尔玛，一篇称巴贾里亚偏好的节目类型类似于“美食芝士汉堡”的文章强化了这一观点。（这句话实际上出自她的副手金妮·豪。）萨兰多斯和巴贾里亚将此类批评斥为沿海精英主义。Netflix是世界上最受欢迎的流媒体服务。
The plan worked, attracting tens of millions of new customers. (The crackdown on password sharing also played a huge part.) Still, some in the press and the industry complained that Netflix was becoming Walmart, a view reinforced by a article that said Bajaria’s preferred type of programming was akin to a gourmet cheeseburger. (The line actually came from her deputy, Jinny Howe.) Sarandos and Bajaria dismissed such criticism as coastal elitism. Netflix was the most popular streaming service in the world.
即使是其仅算中等成功的节目，观看人数也超过HBO最热门的节目。随着面临更多竞争，Netflix去年在美国最受欢迎的10部原创流媒体剧集中占据了6部。
Even its only moderately successful programs were viewed by more people than HBO’s biggest hits. As it faced more competition, Netflix had six of the 10 most-watched original streaming series in the US last year.
然而，Netflix今年大部分时间都在试图弄清人们为何没有花更多时间观看这个流媒体服务。普通用户每月观看Netflix的天数在减少——这一指标被称为“有效播放天数”。普通用户观看该服务的时间也在减少。
Yet Netflix has spent most of this year trying to understand why people aren’t spending more time watching the streaming service. The average customer is spending fewer days a month watching Netflix — a metric known as qualified play days. The average user is also spending less time watching the service.
高管们本以为会成为大热门的剧集，比如，未能达到预期。过往热门剧集的新一季，比如，流失了大部分观众。Netflix有不少成功之作，但没有一部像过去那样司空见惯地成为定义文化的热门剧集。公司刚刚赢得十年来最少的艾美奖。
Shows executives thought would be big hits, like , fell short of expectations. New seasons of past hits, like , surrendered most of their viewers. Netflix had plenty of successes, but none of the culture-defining hits that had become so common. The company just won its fewest Emmys in a decade.
这个问题在Netflix最大的市场美国最为严重，也是该公司在剧集上投入最多资金的地方。来自美国的热门剧集传播到世界各地，推动拉丁美洲和欧洲的增长和参与度。
This problem was most acute in the US, Netflix’s biggest market and the place where the company spends the most money on shows. Hits from the US travel all over the world, fueling growth and engagement in Latin America and Europe.
这一波动让所有人互相指责。节目团队怀疑是最近用户界面的全面改版出了问题，或者应用没有向足够多的人推送新一季内容。产品团队则说剧集不够好。
This blip caused everyone to point fingers at one another. The programming team wondered if a recent overhaul of the user interface was the problem, or if the app wasn’t serving new seasons to enough people. The product team said the shows weren’t good enough.
巴贾里亚去年通过解雇彼得·弗里德兰德来解决国内节目问题，后者跳槽到了亚马逊公司。她还把公司的节目扩展到播客和YouTube创作者，希望在白天提升观看量并吸引年轻观众。这两个类别都不特别受萨兰多斯欢迎，他此后承诺公司将重新聚焦于优质电影和电视这一核心业务。
Bajaria addressed domestic programming problems last year by firing Peter Friedlander, who hopped over to Amazon.com Inc. She also expanded the company’s programming into podcasts and YouTube creators, hoping to lift viewership during the day and appeal to younger viewers. Neither category was especially popular with Sarandos, who has since pledged the company will refocus on its core of premium film and TV.
仅凭节目上的波动并不能解释过去几周的动荡。如果你听萨兰多斯解释他为何解雇巴贾里亚并用赖斯取而代之，他会反复提到同一个词：人才。
A programming blip alone doesn’t explain the turmoil of the last couple weeks. If you listen to Sarandos explain why he fired Bajaria and replaced her with Rice, he kept coming back to the same word: talent.
“彼得·赖斯懂得如何维护人才关系，”萨兰多斯本周在与分析师的电话会议上说。“在竞争激烈的市场中，创意人才可以选择他们想在哪里工作，我们希望Netflix永远是他们乐于做出职业生涯最佳作品的地方。”Netflix曾经确实是那样的地方。但近年来，该公司对人才的主要吸引力在于它提供了最大的受众群体。对萨兰多斯来说，电影主管林𬀩是这一问题的代表。
“Peter Rice understands talent relations,” Sarandos said on a call with analysts this week. “In a competitive market, creative talent have choices of where they want to work and we want Netflix to always be the place that they love to do the best work of their life.”Netflix used to be that place. But, in recent years, the company’s primary appeal to talent is that it offers the largest audience. For Sarandos, film chief Dan Lin was the face of this problem.
巴贾里亚于2024年将林𬀩引入公司，对公司的电影制片厂进行改革。她认为林𬀩的前任斯科特·斯图伯制作的电影太多，花钱也太多。斯图伯不喜欢说“不”字。林𬀩则没有这个问题。他削减了片单规模，否决了公司许多创意合作伙伴的想法，比如彼得·切尔宁和史蒂文·斯皮尔伯格。
Bajaria brought in Lin in 2024 to overhaul the company’s movie studio. She felt his predecessor, Scott Stuber, was making too many movies and spending too much money. Stuber doesn’t like to say the word no. Lin has no such issue. He pared down the slate and passed on ideas from many of the company’s creative partners, like Peter Chernin and Steven Spielberg.
这让他得罪了一些非常有权势的人，其中许多人直接联系了萨兰多斯。几位长期合作伙伴，如达弗兄弟、诺亚·鲍姆巴赫和肖恩·利维也转投了其他公司。大卫·芬奇选择不再续约。
That made him unpopular with some very powerful people, many of whom reached out to Sarandos. Several long-term partners, such as the Duffer Brothers, Noah Baumbach and Shawn Levy also left for other companies. David Fincher opted not to renew his deal.
萨兰多斯向巴贾里亚表达了他的不满，敦促她做出改变。就林𬀩而言，他只是在做他被要求做的事情。他今年的电影大多在公司内部指标MVS下被评为“受喜爱”——该指标根据观众是否看完影片以及是否通过给电影双拇指点赞来表达喜爱来衡量观众满意度。巴贾里亚知道林𬀩在待人接物方面确实需要一些帮助，但他也已经连续三年推出了奥斯卡竞争者，分别是、和。
Sarandos voiced his frustration to Bajaria, urging her to make a change. As far as Lin was concerned, he was doing what he had been asked. Most of his films this year were considered “loved” under the internal metric MVS, which measures viewer satisfaction based on whether they stick with titles and show affection by giving a movie a double thumbs up. Bajaria knew Lin could use a little help with his bedside manner, but he had also delivered an Oscar contender three years in a row with , and .
单独来看，每一个问题都很容易被淡化。每家电视网都有在艾美奖上表现不佳的年份。达弗兄弟和利维离开是因为他们想为影院制作电影，而这在Netflix并非常态，原因在于萨兰多斯。鲍姆巴赫的电影并未取得巨大成功。芬奇是在休假，他并不是要投奔竞争对手。
Each of these concerns was easy to dismiss in isolation. Every network has a bad year at the Emmys. The Duffers and Levy left because they wanted to make movies for theaters, which is not the norm at Netflix because of Sarandos. Baumbach’s films haven’t been runaway successes. Fincher is taking a sabbatical, he’s not leaving for a rival.
然而，综合来看，这些因素促使萨兰多斯采取了行动。首先，他解雇了巴贾里亚。随后两天，他又解雇了林。
Yet, taken together, it pushed Sarandos to act. First, he fired Bajaria. Then, two days later, he dismissed Lin.
好莱坞和华尔街的一些人认为，公司领导层反应过度，加剧了人们对这家依然处于强势地位公司的担忧。它仍在以两位数的速度增长，快于好莱坞的同行。按目前进度，今年利润将达到约150亿美元。
Some in Hollywood and on Wall Street feel the company’s leadership has overreacted, amplifying concerns about a company that remains in a strong position. It’s still growing by double digits, faster than its peers in Hollywood. It’s on pace for about $15 billion in profit this year.
奈飞正步入一个不同的阶段。它现在是一家成熟的媒体公司——增长放缓、利润丰厚。在经历了25年的快速增长后，地心引力迟早会起作用。
Netflix is just entering a different phase. It’s now a mature media company – slow growth and high profits. After 25 years of rapid growth, gravity was going to arrive at some point.
但成熟并非奈飞股价的良方。由于增长更快，该公司历史上一直比其他媒体公司享有高得多的估值倍数。
But maturity is not a good recipe for Netflix’s stock price. The company has historically traded at a much higher multiple than other media companies because it was growing more quickly.
解雇巴贾里亚并聘用赖斯，重塑了奈飞在好莱坞的叙事，业界对这一消息的反应交织着沮丧与兴奋。奈飞看似是主要娱乐公司中最稳健的一家，却正在大刀阔斧地调整团队、裁员——就像天空之舞、迪士尼以及业内其他公司一样。但赖斯是一位备受尊敬的高管，拥有深厚的人才关系网。
Firing Bajaria and hiring Rice has reset the narrative for Netflix in Hollywood, which greeted the news with a mix of depression and excitement. Netflix, seemingly the most stable of the major entertainment companies, is overhauling its team and firing people – just like Skydance, Disney and the rest of the industry. But Rice is a widely respected executive with deep talent relationships.
但这不会立即安抚投资者。公司股价上周下跌了6.6%，这与公司对年底业绩的平淡预期关系更大，而非高管变动。
But it won’t immediately mollify investors. Shares in the company fell 6.6% this past week, which had more to do with the company’s tepid forecast for the end of the year than any executive change.
奈飞的问题并非始于节目内容。萨兰多斯和彼得斯决定试图收购华纳兄弟和HBO时，投资者便开始担忧。那笔交易也是萨兰多斯开始与赖斯洽谈加入公司之时。萨兰多斯曾联系赖斯，商谈由其管理华纳兄弟的资产，近几周这一对话又重新升温。
Netflix’s problems didn’t start with programming. Investors started to worry as soon as Sarandos and Peters decided to try and buy Warner Bros. and HBO. That deal is also when Sarandos started talking to Rice about joining the fold. Sarandos reached out to Rice about managing the Warner Bros. assets, a conversation that picked up against in recent weeks.
彼得斯和萨兰多斯需要向华尔街证明，他们有重新加速增长和提升用户粘性的思路。他们已透露了一些想法。公司希望销售其他流媒体服务，并将其节目整合进自家服务。
Peters and Sarandos need to prove to Wall Street that they have ideas for how to re-accelerate growth and boost engagement. They have teased some of these ideas. The company would like to sell other streaming services and integrate their programming into the service.
Netflix 还面临着关于体育版权的重大决策，并正寻求整合更多来自国际合作伙伴的节目，类似于其与法国广播公司 TF1 达成的协议。在这些领域，Amazon 和 YouTube 遥遥领先。
Netflix also faces major decisions about sports rights and is seeking to integrate more programming from international partners, akin to its deal with French broadcaster TF1. These are areas where Amazon and YouTube are far ahead.
摩根士丹利称赞 Netflix 采取了“果断行动以解决担忧”，而 Pivotal Research 的 Jeff Wlodarczak 写道，该公司“对 Netflix 的担忧保持不变”，理由是来自短视频、免费流媒体和 Skydance 的竞争更加激烈。
Morgan Stanley praised Netflix for taking “decisive action to address concerns” while Pivotal Research Jeff Wlodarczak wrote his firm’s “concerns around Netflix remain unchanged,” citing greater competition from short-form video, free streaming and Skydance.
与 Netflix 股价上一次暴跌时不同，公司目前没有显而易见的解决方案。它已花费大半年时间告诉投资者一切都会好起来。它也不再有联合创始人 Reed Hastings。无论这种说法是否言过其实，要改变这一叙事，都需要 Sarandos 和 Peters 共同努力。
Unlike the last time Netflix’s stock tanked, the company doesn’t have an obvious solution. It’s spent most of the year telling investors that it’s going to be just fine. It also doesn’t have co-founder Reed Hastings. Changing the narrative, overblown or not, will require Sarandos and Peters to work together.