Friends, a '90's sitcom about 6 New Yorkers and their lives together. If you haven't seen all of it, you at least have seen an episode or heard of it. When it was even rumored that "Friends" may be leaving Netflix, majority of the public did not take it well. Quickly, jokes of (or maybe serious statements) canceling Netflix subscriptions quickly started. Netflix quickly reacted by confirming with twitter that "Friends" will, in fact, be staying on the online streaming website.
Yes, "Friends" is a very beloved show by a huge range of age groups. However, there are so many better things to do with $100 million dollars than to keep Friends online for a year. Yes, only a year. The new contract is only until the 1st of January 2020. Netflix had already been paying WarnerMedia $30 million a year just for the 10 seasons of a show that everyone has seen (probably multiple times).
Netflix has already spent billions of dollars on their own shows that have been doing amazing with the public - "Stranger Things" for example. I, as well as a small fraction of the public, feel as though they would benefit more enhancing these shows than to spend $70 million more a year to keep something that has been around for years and people can buy on DVD if they really truly value rewatching it a million times.
While I think that majority of the public would be upset if Netflix had decided to continue with the plan to get rid of Netflix, I also think that it would not have been as catastrophic as Twitter made it out to be. I would actually be concerned if so many users only had Netflix for "Friends" and were paying money every month to just rewatch something they could pay a one time fee to get on DVD.
I am actually surprised that Netflix thought that it would lose so many members to actually pay the $10 million dollars to keep the show on for a year. What are we losing because of this $7 million increase for one show? Could we have gotten some different great content that the company didn't have or would Netflix have just grown in its profits?