Just two days after the “Love Is Blind” Season 4 live reunion fiasco, which delayed the livestream for over an hour with many viewers unable to watch the special until the next day, Netflix Co-CEO Greg Peters said the delayed was caused by a “bug.”
“From a technical perspective, we’ve got the infrastructure,” Peters said during Tuesday’s earning call. “We had just a bug that we introduced, actually, when we implemented some changes to try and improve live streaming performance after the last live broadcast Chris Rock in March and we just didn’t see this bug in internal testing because it only became apparent once we put sort of multiple systems interacting with each other under the load of millions of people trying to watch ‘Love is Blind.’”
While fans of the reality dating series tuned in to the special expecting for the reunion to rehash the season’s drama and give a status update for how each couple’s relationship has evolved since their respective wedding days, viewers were met with an error message on the livestream.
Despite the livestreaming troubles, the reunion reached an audience of 6.5 million viewers, Peters said.
“We’re really sorry to have disappointed so many people,” Peters continued. “We didn’t meet the standard that we expect of ourselves to serve our members … We hate it when these things happen, but we’ll learn from it and we’ll get better — we do have the fundamental infrastructure that we need.”
Co-CEO Ted Sarandos echoed Peters’ apology for the livestream not being immediately available to “Love Is Blind” fans but expressed his excitement regarding the wide viewership for the unscripted show.
“We’re super-thrilled that people love the show,” Sarandos said. “It does point to the kind of love for that brand, and for the growing love for those unscripted brands on Netflix.”
Sarandos also signaled confidence in further live events for unscripted shows like “Love Is Blind,” adding that “sometimes those results-oriented shows do the layout a little bit better on live conversation.”
“We want to use live when it makes sense creatively, when it helps the content itself,” Sarandos continued. “So a reunion show that’s going to generate news and buzz and it really does play better live when people can enjoy it together; certainly the Chris Chris Rock stand-up show played out so much anticipation for what he’s gonna say in that set … When we have the opportunity to do projects like that, we’d like to have the option to do it.”
