Netflix has fired Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria, and former Disney executive Peter Rice will take over her office. The timing is hard to ignore, since engagement grew just 2% in the first half of 2026 and the share price has dropped more than 40% in a year. Meanwhile, YouTube grabbed 14.2% of connected TV viewing in July, leaving Netflix with 7.8% and a lot of explaining to do.

While Netflix viewers were busy deciding what to watch, the people deciding what to make got a cliffhanger of their own, starring a decade of hits and one sudden exit.

Bela Bajaria is out at Netflix after nearly a decade, and Peter Rice starts as Chief Content Officer on October 26. Her slate included Squid Game, Bridgerton, Stranger Things, Wednesday, and Beef.

“After a phenomenal decade at Netflix, Bela is leaving the company,” Co-CEO Ted Sarandos wrote in an internal email, as reported by Deadline.

He added that it is “hard to overstate the impact Bela has had during her time here.”

Deadline reported that Bajaria arrived in 2016 from Universal Television, built the unscripted division, and ran a $20 billion annual budget while pushing Netflix into live events with WWE and NFL deals. Her successor brings a different résumé, built on arthouse film and network scale. Rice ran Fox Searchlight, then became chairman of Walt Disney Television, overseeing The Simpsons, Abbott Elementary, and Shōgun, until Bob Chapek pushed him out in 2022.

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While Rice prepared to unpack his boxes, a crowd of employees was already packing theirs, just days before Bajaria’s news landed.

The cuts began on Wednesday, October 14, when Ted Sarandos and Co-CEO Greg Peters told staff in an internal memo that Netflix would lay off roughly 6% of its workforce, or about 1,000 people. That marks the largest round since 2022, when around 450 jobs went across two rounds. Netflix had about 16,000 full-time employees at the end of 2025. The bulk of the cuts landed in product, technology, legal, and HR.

The shake-up extended to other content staff, with film vice president Doug Belgrad and TV executives Carolina Garcia and James Oh also exiting. However, the memo stressed that the business remains strong and is on track to meet its full-year forecast. Netflix is expected to report earnings around October 20. As the executive behind some of its biggest hits exits, a veteran from Disney steps in to take over.

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What are your thoughts on Netflix handing its content keys to Peter Rice? Let us know in the comments.