By Kevin Perez 

Throughout the past years Netflix has been losing fan favorite shows. Friends was removed in late 2019 and early last month, on January, The Office was removed. 

Why are so many beloved shows being removed?

 The reason is because the owner of those shows are now taking full rights and placing it on their own streaming platforms. This process has contributed to the idea of “streaming wars” where multiple streaming services are competing against each other in order to be on top. 

Marvel has also followed this trend. Many movies used to appear on Netflix, but that is no longer the case. Marvel shows and movies have made its way to Disney’s own streaming platform, Disney+.

When Disney Plus was in the works, Disney took all of Marvel and placed it on their subscription service. This is what is happening with other fan favorites like Friends and The Office. 

At this moment Netflix still leads all U.S. streaming services with a subscriber amount of 195 million. Amazon Prime Video comes in at 150 million and Disney Plus comes in with 86.8 million subscribers. 

Although Netflix leads, other streaming services have their own shows of gold as well. Disney+continues to rise with its monopoly over entertainment including Marvel. Disney recently introduced more than 10 new shows/movies rolling out in the next few years.

At this moment it does not seem like Netflix will be going away any time soon. While other streaming services like Disney + and HBO Max are building themselves up to compete with Netflix, Netflix still has a substantial lead which they should maintain as their Netflix Originals continue to be hits. 

Some of their top hits include Stranger Things, Ozark, The Crown, Outer Banks, Cobra Kai and The Queens Gambit. All these shows skyrocketed in popularity and are set for more seasons. Whether it’s animated TV shows or action films like 6 Underground, Netflix is continuing to roll out their own shows in order to expand a reach of interest. 

These new movies and shows Netflix releases are extremely important for their base. The introduction of those shows allows fans to binge watch new series and stay up to date with the latest on Netflix.

In a survey done by statista in 2018, 21% of people found Netflix Originals to be very critical in their decision whether to keep being subscribed to Netflix. 40.7% found it to be very important, while only 14% found it not to be, the rest of the percentage found it to be somewhat important. This survey supports the fact that Netflix Originals are an important factor for the audience when deciding if they should continue paying for the streaming service. 

So is Netflix losing its relevance as shows continue to drop? No not so fast. Fans have proven to find Netflix Originals attractive and captivating. As long as Netflix continues to release creative original shows they are in a good position to maintain their top spot in the streaming service rankings.