New OTT releases this week: See what to watch, where

The company said it lost 200,000 subscribers in its first quarter, falling well short of its forecast of adding 2.5 million subscribers. Suspending service in Russia after the Ukraine invasion resulted in the loss of 700,000 members. Netflix ended the first quarter of this year with 221.6 million subscribers, slightly less than the final quarter of last year.

Netflix's 26% tumble after the bell on Tuesday erased about $40 billion of its stock market value. Since it warned in January of weak subscriber growth, the company has lost nearly half of its value.

Netflix believes that factors hampering its growth include subscribers sharing their accounts with people not living in their homes. The streaming giant estimated that while it has nearly 222 million households paying for its service, accounts are shared with more than 100 million other households not paying subscription fees.

Netflix said for the first time that it was open to the idea of offering lower-priced subscriptions with advertising. The company is also looking to generate additional revenue from customers who share their account with friends or family outside their home. "Those who have followed Netflix know that I've been against the complexity of advertising, and a big fan of the simplicity of subscription," said CEO Reed Hastings. "But, as much as I'm a fan of that, I'm a bigger fan of consumer choice."

Netflix spent $50 billion on new content last year, in a bid to attract or retain subscribers, according to researcher Ampere Analysis. That's a 50 per cent increase from 2019, when many of the newer streaming services launched, signaling the quick escalation of the so-called "streaming wars."