A technical bug was responsible for the delay in the live reunion of Love is blindHowever, executives stressed that the streamer has the infrastructure necessary to do live broadcasts in the future.
The live reunion for season four of Love is blind was supposed to air Sunday at 5 p.m. PT, but was delayed by more than an hour. It eventually aired later that night for some customers, but was no longer live.
At the time, Netflix gave no reason for the delay. The recorded special then appeared on Netflix on Monday afternoon. During Tuesday’s first quarter earnings interview, Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters said the company was “sorry it has disappointed so many people.” He added that the bug was introduced after the streamer attempted to make improvements to its live broadcast system following the March Chris Rock special.
“We just didn’t see this bug during internal testing because it didn’t become apparent until we kind of put a load of multiple systems interacting with each other with millions of people trying to watch. Love is blind. So we hate when these things happen, but we will learn from them and get better and we have the fundamental infrastructure that we need,” Peters said.
In the end, 6.5 million viewers watched the show, he said.
The reunion, hosted by Nick and Vanessa Lachey, was intended to be Netflix’s second-ever live broadcast after Rock’s stand-up special, Chris Rock: Selective outragewhich debuted on March 4.
The streamer has already announced plans to live stream next year’s SAG Awards ceremony. Other streaming companies have moved to live events due to their continued appeal to audiences. For example, Amazon signed an 11-year deal to stream Thursday Night Football and Apple TV+ and broadcast certain MLB games.
Netflix, on the other hand, was resistant to live sports in particular due to the high cost of acquiring the rights. However, during the earnings call, co-CEO Ted Sarandos said the company is open to more live events.
“We’ve said we want to use live if it makes creative sense, if it helps the content itself,” Sarandos said. “So a reunion show that’s going to generate news and buzz really plays better live when people can enjoy it together.”
He added that Chris Rock’s stand-up show made sense for a live event because of the anticipation of what he would say on set. However, 90 percent of the viewing occurred after the show aired live, he said.
