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.