Netflix wants to abandon this whole Netflix thing and just be HBO, basically

By Sean O'Neal | February 29, 2012 | 6:57pm

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Continuing a trajectory that will make a fascinating cautionary example for some future business class, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has made explicit his intentions to transform his company from a once-powerful titan of a unique industry into an ordinary cable channel, saying it was Netflix’s “natural direction” to be bundled in an ordinary cable package someday and provide an ordinary sampling of cable offerings. To that end, Hastings says his focus is on upping the original content in Netflix’s library to around “40 percent,” something he hopes to achieve by acquiring more programs like Lilyhammer, the upcoming House Of Cards, and of course, that new season of Arrested Development—and meanwhile, not worrying so much about losing huge swaths of the movies and TV shows that people signed up to Netflix to watch in the first place, thereby making that ratio more easily achievable.

“Eventually, Netflix could look like HBO, with 40 percent of the content its own and 60 percent coming from other sources,” The Hollywood Reporter concludes, because if there’s one thing the world is short on, it’s another cable channel attempting to copy HBO. “And to satisfy customers confused by the whole notion of ‘on-demand streaming,’ we feel it's our natural direction to revise our service to play movies and TV shows only according to a programming schedule,” Hastings added at a press conference approximately a year from now.