As Netflix's stock soared over the past couple years, investors and consumers wondered how to think of the company's long-term role in the media ecosystem.

The latest quarterly results should make it easier to define Netflix, but the answer may not be as ambitious as some had hoped.

It's easy to get wrapped up in Netflix's grand successes and project aspirations on the company that may be too grandiose. After all, Netflix vanquished Blockbuster, its first foe. It zoomed by HBO in global subscribers, its second target. It's only natural to think about whom Netflix may be coming after next — and the company's own language around competitive landscape fueled those fires. Netflix has listed sleep and Fortnite as recent competitors.

But listening to Netflix executives speak Wednesday after reporting net customer additions that drastically fell short of analyst estimates and the company's own guidance, there was no talk of sleep and Fortnite.

Instead, the company's leadership spoke pragmatically about making better shows and movies to draw an audience.

"We're just going to continue to focus on our strategy of developing more and more original programming," said Netflix Chief Financial Officer Spencer Neumann. "There will be some quarter-by-quarter choppiness along the way based on things like seasonality and content slate."

That's the kind of language you'd hear from someone who works at HBO. It is not the kind of language you'd hear from someone at a cable operator, which historically has offered sweeping society-wide justifications like "college ended" to explain why pay-TV signups fell. Netflix hasn't attained that level of assumed ubiquity.