The head of video-streaming service Netflix has foreshadowed the death of broadcast TV, claiming it will be fully obsolete by 2030.
Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix made the comments earlier this week in Mexico City where he was discussing the service’s growth in the Lat Am region.
Speaking at an industry event in Mexico City, he said: ‘It’s kind of like the horse, you know, the horse was good until we had the car. The age of broadcast TV will probably last until 2030. Broadcast television will die off within the next 16 years, the CEO of Netflix has added.
Reed Hastings, whose streaming media firm boasts more than 53million users, declared that the continuous rise of on-demand content will cause traditional TV to become obsolete by 2030.
The businessman, who has an estimated net worth of $860million, was appearing at the event to discuss Nielsen’s plans to start measuring Netflix’s viewership next month – a novel proposal.
Earlier this year, Netflix announced plans to disrupt how movies make their official releases. In a move which ‘breaks the stranglehold that movie theaters have’ on film releases, it will debut the sequel to ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ on the same day as it hits IMAX theaters.
To keep up with its progression and production of exclusive content, Netflix, co-founded by Mr Hastings and Marc Randolph in 1997, also announced a price hike of 1$ for new customers in May. The increase of $1 a month raised the cost of a subscription to $8.99 per month.
Hastings also admitted there are big plans in the works for Lat Am: “It is one of the fastest growth areas in the world in terms of broadband households and Internet connectivity.”
The firm, which accounts for a third of all US traffic and largely responsible for the rise of on-demand content, could possibly be the service which deals the killer-blow to satellite TV.
Hastings has his eye on an international expansion too with New Zealand and Australia set to see Netflix launched in the coming months, he said: “We are trying to get to a place where it’s fully global and you can get anything, anywhere.”
With its impressive audience, rapid growth and exclusive content such as Orange Is The New Black, Netflix continues to transform how consumers watch TV shows and movies worldwide.
And with TV viewership having dropped 50 per cent between 2002 and 2012 in US, according to ”the Observer” magazine, Mr Hasting’s prediction could end up being correct.
