Netflix may not have been your go-to spot for telenovela reruns, but for Mexican users of the streaming platform, groundbreaking originals like House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black were really just afterthoughts to timeless Televisa hits like Teresa and Rebelde. In fact, according to a 2014 study, those two shows were the most popular titles in Netflix’s Mexican catalogue – a fact that probably inspired Televisa to launch its own notorious streaming platform, Blim, this year to counteract its nosediving marketshare.
Of course, we all remember the meme-stravaganza that followed the announcement of Blim’s rollout. For a good chunk of 2016, “Netflix vs Blim” became a trending topic that brought us the best in Mexican digital creativity while hilariously parodying the inferior quality of Televisa’s lowest-common-denominator serial schlock. But with 60% of Mexico’s television market share, Televisa’s probably laughing right along with us.
But the battle for Mexican streaming has continued raging into the fall and, as of this week, Netflix has at last been forced to remove Televisa content from its catalogue. The move may be the boost Blim needs to battle it out with Netflix and local competitor Claro TV – both of which offer subscriptions at significantly lower prices – but for a $44 billion global streaming empire like Netflix, it’s probably not a matter of huge concern.
In fact, they seemed to hop on the “Netflix vs Blim” bandwagon themselves with a tongue-in-cheek supercut they released as an adios to their telenovela content. Playing off of the genre’s heavy-handed melodrama, Netflix pieced together a montage of crying, shrieking, and general overacting with the words “It’s hard to say good bye. Many will miss you… others not so much,” closing out with a literal wink that reads more like a backhanded “good luck” to Televisa and their late-coming dive into streaming content.