OCTOBER 15, 2026

Welcome back to Buffering, where our excitement over Tuesday’s announcement of a long overdue Apple TV 4K device refresh was quickly followed by sticker shock over its $300 price tag. This week in the newsletter, we’ve got reports on the layoffs at Netflix, New York Comic-Con, the Big Four networks’ fall season, and the AI revolution in China. Meanwhile, a small programming note: I’m taking a few weeks off from the newsletter grind to focus on some other projects and recharge my brain a bit. But don’t worry, Buffering will still arrive in your inbox as usual, packed with industry news and analysis from Vulture colleagues such as Eric Vilas-Boas, Savannah Salazar, and Chris Lee. As for me, I’ll be back at it right after Thanksgiving. Until then, feel free to reach out to me over on BlueSky, where I’ll be prattling on as usual about politics, the TV business, and whatever weirdness I come across on YouTube. Thanks for reading, and see ya soon.

— Joe Adalian, West Coast editor

In this edition: Ted Sarandos, Greg Peters, Doug Belgrad, Michelle Yeoh, Michael C. Hall, Tomi Adeyemi, William Shatner, Larry David, and Nic Cage saying whatever he wants…

Nearly a month into the new season, all of the Big Four broadcasters actually have reason to be happy: ABC’s Dancing With the Stars is by some measures doing even hotter than it did last year; newbies Cupertino and In the Line of Fire are off to solid starts on CBS and NBC, respectively; and Fox’s Best Medicine remains TV’s sleeper hit, both on TV and in streaming. It’s early, of course, and some shows that look great now will almost surely start to fade in coming weeks. But instead of talking about big year-to-year declines for the networks, we’re seeing more examples of shows being flat or even up in their linear broadcasts, with streaming viewership continuing to grow. That’s good for the entire TV business. —Joe Adalian

… But there are some key differences. It’s faster, under the hood and graphics-wise, and its Wi-Fi and Bluetooth have gotten upgrades (✅), but it doesn’t support Dolby TrueHD or DTS (❌). You can talk to the OTT box hands-free from across the room. (✅) Its new remote now has Find My on it and makes noise when you lose it. (About time.) And it costs $300. (❌) We’ll be curious to see exactly how much its new Siri AI, in Apple’s words, “supercharges” the unit in practice, but that’s coming, via software update, to the older 2nd- and 3rd-gen models released in 2021 and 2022. —Eric Vilas-Boas

Vulture took to the floor of New York Comic-Con. Surrounded by cosplayers and stars hyping this project or that, we covered some exciting moments, like William Shatner confronting mortality, Michelle Yeoh confronting humanity, and Michael C. Hall confronting Dexter’s ego. The Children of Blood and Bone team attempted to distance their adaptation from their drama with author Tomi Adeyemi, Tiny Chef whipped up an announcement, and Nic Cage made some noise about True Detective and ripped into Amazon for its coziness with AI. —E.V.B.

By Eric Vilas-Boas

Photo: Lisa O’Connor/AFP via Getty Images

The layoff axe swung back around at Netflix this week and harder than ever. Over 1,000 employees at the world’s dominant subscription streaming service are losing their jobs, approximately 6 percent of its overall workforce, marking its largest round of cuts since 2022. According to a memo from co-chief executives Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos that was obtained by Vulture, the company’s product, tech, legal, and human-resources teams have been the hardest hit by the restructuring. Vulture has also confirmed other teams, like its film and TV divisions, physical attractions, and marketing teams (including Tudum) were also plagued by cuts. The cuts also made their way into the C-suite: Chief product officer Eunice Kim, who helped oversee Netflix’s redesign last year, is leaving.

“We’ll continue to invest aggressively in high-impact areas to improve our service and further drive growth and innovation,” Peters and Sarandos wrote in their note to staff. “Doing that means making focused choices across the business so we can keep delivering for our members, partners, employees, and investors.”

Netflix, despite its perch as a dominant player in the streaming wars, has weathered a rough year. It faced protracted user-engagement problems, a stock price perpetually pointing in the wrong direction, and competition from streaming contenders like YouTube and now Skydance’s to-be-combined HBO Max and Paramount+. It turns out being an industry leader can also make you a target of criticism, no matter how often Sarandos says he’d love to put Netflix movies in theaters. “Overall, we’re not growing as fast as I want us to, and we’re working on making that move faster,” Sarandos said at Bloomberg’s Screentime conference on September 30. In both the entertainment and tech sectors that Netflix operates in, mass layoffs have become the norm more than ever this year. Amazon let go of another round of employees just last week, and Disney announced its latest round under newish CEO Josh D’Amaro a week before that. And for months, Hollywood has been bracing itself for the inevitable thousands of layoffs that will come out of the Skydance merger.

Plans for the latest cuts at Netflix were initially reported a couple weeks ago. The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the layoffs, a week ahead of Netflix’s next quarterly earnings call. In their memo, Peters and Sarandos said the company was on track to meet this year’s overall earnings target. Last year, Netflix made $11 billion in income, which would be enough to give 1,000 people $10 million each and still have an extra billion dollars left in the bank.

The real question is what Netflix actually plans to do after all this restructuring. While product, tech, legal, and HR departments may have borne the brunt of the cuts, executives on the creative side have also been shown the door, including film VP Doug Belgrad, director of indie film Sheroum Kim, director of overall deals and series Lisa Lang McMullen, director of dramas James Oh, and original series directors Andrew McQuinn and Carolina Garcia. Those are just some of the names that have made it into the trades, but in an industry that thrives on relationships, each departure represents its own web of splintered connections — and possible repercussions.

Belgrad, for instance, was Netflix’s No. 2 film exec under Dan Lin and known as a talent whisperer, having worked on several high-profile projects ranging from Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein to Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew. As a former president of Columbia Pictures he was also a key point of contact in Netflix’s output deal with Sony. It’s hard not to read cutting him and Kim as an indicator that Netflix sees their expertise as expendable. Perhaps it wants fewer festival films or risky talent-driven swings. (A new Page Six report questioned whether a pink slip might be in his former boss Lin’s future as well.) 

Netflix’s stated problem is that it wasn’t growing fast enough with the content it had. Whether ditching these executives and other employees helps them get content that does is a question Sarandos, Peters, and Co. will have to answer eventually.

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