September 2011. Netflix has just raised prices ~60% by unbundling DVDs from streaming, and customers are furious. CEO Reed Hastings now announces the DVD business will be spun into a separately branded service called “Qwikster,” with its own website, queue, and billing. Streaming stays Netflix.
The strategic logic: streaming is the future, and shielding it from the declining DVD business lets each move at its own speed.
You're watching this at the moment of the announcement. What happened within the next month?
Public record: Netflix announcements, Q3–Q4 2011