Facebook, sure. Why Netflix? TV and movies have always been around. The US owes its status as a cultural superpower to Hollywood. Too much TV and movie-watching isn't good for a nation, sure, but you could make that argument about any pastime.
When Hollywood was built in the 1920's it was not exactly the backbone of the economy. The article argues that the Chinese Government sees value in the economy beyond GDP goes up and cash flows good. Technology and manufacturing are important to national security.
The article quote Xi Jinping saying “we must recognize the fundamental importance of the real economy… and never deindustrialize.” I guess the national question for the other super power is how important is this "real economy" to itself. Is too much talent and labor sucked up in profitable activity that is suboptimal for a nation? Are these 21st century company's like Netflix good enough for our nation?
This is a valid point, and I tend to agree with it. However I see entertainment as part of the "real" economy. It's an incredibly old industry, provides real value to nearly every human being, creates high-, medium-, and low-skilled employment across a wide variety of disciplines, can allow your culture to punch above its weight, and produces art that endures across generations and centuries (for example, Shakespeare).
Literally all you need to entertain people is talent and a space.
To be fair, the quantity and availability of novels/fictions was pretty low before the fifties, so I guess there is some truth to it... Though the timeframe is definitely longer then only Netflix's existence
I'd happily veggie out on a couch with a favorite book series and live in fantasyland for days (alas, real world interferes...).
Given the option of gorging on books or gorging on Netflix over a long weekend dawn till dusk, I bet most people would choose Netflix. If you randomly divided the people into those two groups and made them read and the others watch, more readers would wash out than watchers.
I tried that. It soon becomes utterly boring, no matter how good the show is.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binge-watching
[2]http://www.buffalo.edu/ubnow/stories/2019/04/kruger-binge-wa...
No, it hasn't. It has been somewhat since the much more recent introduction of “on demand” programming to cable, but that was basically just the introduction of streaming into cable in response to streaming services.
I think "on-demand" is a blessing. We are no longer tied to broadcaster schedules, have to remember to "program the DVR", writers don't have to write a cliffhanger every 12 minutes for an ad break.