hunter-gplpcn
Netflix Inc. is preparing “always-on” live television channels and new streaming bundles, a shift in strategy for a company that built its business on on-demand viewing, according to people familiar with the matter. TechCrunch reported the plans, citing people with knowledge of the discussions, and said Netflix’s user engagement has fallen about 40% over the past year. The company has not commented on the figure.
The plans describe a hybrid service: linear-style channels that run around the clock, organized around genres, live events and programming themes, sitting alongside Netflix’s on-demand library. The company is also exploring bundles that combine its service with other offerings, the people said. The combination would let Netflix borrow the strongest feature of traditional television, the channel that is always there, while keeping the catalog that made its name.
The timing is telling. Netflix spent years telling investors that its model, watch what you want when you want it, would make linear television obsolete. Now the company that disrupted broadcast schedules is planning to build some of its own. The engagement figure reported by TechCrunch, a 40% decline over the past year, would explain the reversal if accurate: an on-demand library is valuable, but a subscriber who cannot decide what to watch is a subscriber who drifts to another app.
Live programming has already become one of Netflix’s most reliable levers. Its Christmas Day NFL games drew record audiences, its 10-year deal with WWE brought weekly live wrestling to the platform, and its boxing and comedy specials have produced some of its most talked-about events. Those one-offs proved that live events drive sign-ups and press coverage. Always-on channels extend the logic from special occasions to the everyday: a channel that never stops removes the decision, and the exit, from the viewing session.
The engagement math explains the urgency. Streaming subscriptions now compete for the same finite hours of attention, and platforms measure success in watch time as much as in subscriber counts. Advertisers pay for attention, and Netflix’s ad tier, which the company built to capture a share of the television advertising market, needs long sessions to justify its pricing. A decline in engagement undermines the advertising story as much as the subscription story, which makes a format that pads watch time directly relevant to the company’s next phase of growth.
Yahoo Tech, which analyzed the reports, described the live-channel push as a defensive move against Disney+ and Max, both of which have leaned into live sports and appointment viewing to hold users’ time. The competitive pressure is real, and it comes from all sides: YouTube has become the default home for lean-back viewing, Amazon has spent heavily on Thursday Night Football, and the traditional pay-TV bundles Netflix once undercut are themselves bundling streaming services. A channel that plays continuously, analysts said, functions like a home base: users land there when they have no specific title in mind and stay while they decide.
There are risks. Live television is expensive to program, and a 24/7 channel is a different discipline from curating a catalog: it demands anchors, schedules and content that can fill hours. Netflix’s brand has been built partly on the absence of channel surfing, and longtime users may not welcome its return. Bundles carry their own complications, from revenue-sharing negotiations to the awkwardness of selling a partner’s service inside an app designed to keep people watching Netflix.
Netflix’s history with live programming is instructive. Its first live events were experiments, a comedy special and a golf match that mostly tested whether the infrastructure could handle a simultaneous audience. The NFL deal, signed in 2024, was the first proof that live could be a core product, and the company has since built a small but growing calendar of live events across sports and entertainment. The move to 24/7 channels extends that calendar from a few nights a month to every hour of the year, a jump in ambition and cost.
Investors have reacted cautiously to the reports, with Netflix’s shares roughly flat since the news, according to market data, as analysts weigh the cost of the shift against its potential to slow churn. The company’s balance sheet can absorb the investment, but the strategy will be judged on engagement numbers in the quarters ahead, and the 40% figure reported by TechCrunch will be the baseline against which the channels are measured.
Analysts said the channels are most likely to work as complements, holding the audience that on-demand serves poorly, rather than replacements for the catalog. The company has the content library, the data and the subscriber base to make the experiment credible; what it lacks is experience in the slow, steady craft of programming a schedule. For Netflix, the question is no longer whether to resemble television. It is how much television to become.
