Netflix's first live reunion special failed on a bug it added after the Chris Rock stream

TechCrunch reported on 19 April 2023 that Netflix had streamed its first live reunion special, for Love Is Blind season 4, only to see serious technical problems cancel the stream after a 75-minute delay. The episode was filmed and quickly published as regular video on demand. Netflix had livestreamed only one earlier event, Chris Rock's 'Selective Outrage' special in March, which drew 17.8 million viewing hours in its first week.

On the first-quarter earnings call, co-CEO Greg Peters said Netflix was 'really sorry to have disappointed so many people' and that it 'didn't meet the standard that we expect of ourselves'. He said the infrastructure was fine but the company had introduced a bug when it made changes to improve livestreaming performance after the Chris Rock event. It was not seen in internal testing because it only appeared when several systems interacted under the load of millions of viewers; around 6.5 million ended up watching the reunion.

The company said it would learn from the mistake and try live events again when they made creative sense, with co-CEO Ted Sarandos noting that most viewing of live specials takes place after the broadcast. Netflix also poked fun at itself on a Los Angeles billboard referring to the reunion being 'memorable'.

A cancelled live event for about 6.5M viewers, reissued as on-demand, and a public apology on the earnings call.

A change meant to improve livestreaming performance introduced a new bug after the March Chris Rock stream.

The bug did not show in internal testing and only emerged with several systems interacting under the load of millions of viewers.

The company had run only one prior live event, so it had little experience of live peak load.

The reunion was meant to showcase the new live capability, so the failure was highly visible.

A change made to improve streaming under load must be tested under load; internal tests without peak traffic miss multi-system failures.

Netflix said it still had the infrastructure for more live events and would use live when it made creative sense. The reunion was filmed and released as a standard episode.