Netflix Content Shakeup: Peter Rice Replaces Bajaria as Chief

Netflix has appointed former Disney executive Peter Rice as its new chief content officer, replacing Bela Bajaria, the company announced on Thursday, October 15, 2026. The shakeup brings a new face to Netflix content leadership at a moment of unusual pressure for the world's largest streaming service, landing a day after Netflix told staff it was cutting jobs across the company.

According to Reuters, Rice will take charge of the company's content strategy from October 26, overseeing series, films and live events across Netflix's regions. He inherits a global operation that spans scripted and unscripted series, films and a growing live-events slate.

Bajaria is leaving after nearly a decade at the company. She joined Netflix in 2016 to run its unscripted and local-language scripted series and was promoted to chief content officer in January 2023. During her tenure she played a hands-on role in expanding the company's international footprint and scaling its unscripted portfolio, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The global phenomena released under her watch include Squid Game, Wednesday and Bridgerton, and she pushed the company into live programming through multi-year partnerships with WWE and the NFL.

A reset shaped by layoffs and slowing growth

The announcement followed an internal memo in which Netflix told staff it was laying off about 6% of its workforce, roughly 1,000 employees, with product, technology, legal and human resources teams hit hardest. Co-chief executives Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters framed the cuts, the company's largest in more than four years, as a way to focus resources on high-impact areas while keeping full-year forecasts intact, according to ComingSoon.

Investor patience has been wearing thin. Netflix shares have fallen more than 40% over the past year, and audience engagement grew just 2% in the first half of the year to 97 billion hours viewed. Several returning series have posted season-to-season ratings declines, and the service has not produced a breakout cultural hit in over a year. At the Bloomberg Screentime summit in September, Sarandos admitted the company was not growing as fast as he wanted and said executives were working to change that.

The pressure comes not only from rival streamers but from free, user-generated platforms. Reuters reported that YouTube and TikTok are drawing viewers with free content, giving them a cost advantage over Netflix's subscription model. That dynamic has turned engagement, rather than subscriber counts alone, into the number investors watch most closely.

It is a crowded field for attention. Recent coverage has tracked how quickly audiences move from Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan turning a collaboration into a cultural moment to the fierce backlash over a controversial streamer stunt, underscoring how much of the modern audience economy Netflix now competes for beyond traditional television.

Who Peter Rice is

Rice arrives with decades of traditional television experience but little direct streaming history. He previously served as chairman of Walt Disney Television and chairman of general entertainment at The Walt Disney Company, and earlier ran Fox Searchlight and Fox Networks Group. He was dismissed from Disney in 2022 and has since worked as a film producer; his recent credits include The Social Reckoning, according to TipRanks.

In a statement, Rice said Netflix had "fundamentally changed the way stories are made, shared and experienced around the world," adding that the company takes chances on "distinctive voices and fresh ideas" and that he was excited to work with the team to bring more stories to members everywhere. Sarandos praised Bajaria for leading "enormous creative and operational changes" at the company and said Rice would help the platform "continue to scale and deliver members more of the stories they love," The Hollywood Reporter reported.

What to watch next

Investors will get their first look at how Wall Street prices the reshuffle when Netflix reports third-quarter earnings on October 20. Analysts expect earnings of $0.82 per share, up from $0.59 a year earlier, on revenue of about $12.87 billion, according to TipRanks.

For Rice, the test begins when he takes over later this month: turning a traditional-television resume into streaming hits that move the needle on growth. The earnings call will be Wall Street's first chance to react to the leadership change and to hear whether the new content chief has a plan to get engagement growing again.