It's interesting that while Netflix is quite successful overall it has made some hugely bad decisions (silverlight, qwikster, house of cards release). You wonder if Netflix culture is a contributor.
Releasing all the episodes at once, 2 days before the superbowl no less, so far appears to have been a very poor way to spend $100 million.
Sure, normally TV spreads by people talking about it across a season, but normally there's also the problem of "oh I have to now 'catch up' and the resistance that comes with that. This is a no-pressure situation where you can tell your friends about how awesome a show is, and they can go watch the whole show with no constraints or time pressure or schedule. It embodies the goal of the Netflix service.
Sure they're not getting the standard 'talk about a show for 6 months as episodes come out', but instead they might get a viral chain effect where the season isn't constrained to that time period either. Ultimately their goal is to grow subscribers by hooking them with valuable content they can't get anywhere else.
There is a problem here though. Because I'm sure I'll devour the season in less than a month, I'll be tempted to cancel my account (until Arrested Development is released). If they had spaced the release out like a normal TV show, they could get about 3 months of subscription fees from me.
As they put out more and more 'original' content, it becomes more likely that even if there is a month you're not interested in something new you'll stick around for the next new thing. I've been a subscriber (and cable cord-cutter) for years and even without the original content it's been worth the small fee.
I don't think we'll know for awhile whether the strategy is successful, but I certainly think it's more promising then qwikster (:
It's an HBO-quality show that didn't cost Netflix nearly as much as some HBO series.
Netflix bought 2 seasons for HoC for $100M. As HBO shows goes, a single season of Rome ran $100M+, Game of Thrones $50M+, the Boardwalk Empire Pilot $18M.
It's unknown how much of the subscriber fee HBO takes home, but the Internet seems to think it's somewhere in the $8-10 range, not too far off from what Netflix charges.
Yes, someone could sign up for a single month of Netflix, watch the series then cancel, but I'd expect the truly cheap/broke to simply download whatever they want to watch for free anyway.
The show has wide appeal, plenty of hype, reviews are largely positive and if torrent interest is indicative of popularity, the peer counts for HoC are right on par with with other recent premium cable series.