Netflix Looks Back on Its Near-Death Spiral

For Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix, the worst part of the company’s 2011 self-inflicted Qwikster debacle, in which Netflix tried to both raise prices and spin off its DVD-by-mail business, wasn’t the parody by “Saturday Night Live,” the scathing media criticism or even the dizzying plunge in the company’s stock price from almost $299 in July 2011 to about $53 last September.