Netflix is replacing Bela Bajaria, its chief content officer, with former Disney executive Peter Rice. Bajaria is leaving after a decade at the company, according to the Los Angeles Times. The change follows Netflix’s announcement of layoffs affecting 6% of its staff, and arrives as investors press the streamer for more hits and more viewing time.
Bajaria’s work helped expand Netflix’s international reach and live programming, including NFL games and WWE matches. The company also built large audiences for non-English-language series. Rice inherits that wide brief while Ted Sarandos says he wants the slate to reach “the next level,” particularly in the U.S. and Canada, with bigger, buzzy hits.
That phrase points toward the tension in the job. Netflix has spent years making its catalogue feel global and eclectic; a sharper focus on hits could mean backing fewer, larger bets. That might produce more shows people discuss together. It could also make the service less willing to let unusual or locally specific work find its audience at its own pace.
The numbers in the report offer a useful caution about equating cultural reach with viewing hours. Live programming accounts for 5% of Netflix’s content budget and 1% of its watch time, Sarandos said. Those figures do not settle whether live events are worthwhile: the company has said they have brought significant subscription sign-ups. They do show how easily a strategy can look weak if success is measured by only one metric.
Rice’s appointment is a change in management, not yet evidence of a new programming philosophy. The test will be visible in what Netflix keeps funding: global variety, live experiments, and the oddball series that may take longer to become a hit. A slate built only to make the next quarterly argument easier would be a smaller service, even if its biggest shows got bigger.