Netflix Orders New Children’s Show Based on ‘Magic School Bus’ | Hacker News Reader

Netflix Orders New Children’s Show Based on ‘Magic School Bus’

nytimes.com

125 pointsbrutis23 comments

Several years ago, I asked a friend who worked for a Cable company in their Video-on-Demand division what the most popular show was in their catalog.

He answered that the most popular shows were kids shows (Teletubbies, Wiggles) at 2AM or 3AM in the morning. Imagine a crying toddler being soothed by the glow of their favorite show while the exhausted parent relaxes for a brief moment.

Netflix has the data and like it did with House of Cards it knows that it should partner with and/or create the content that its youngest viewers are demanding (especially at 3AM). The Netflix addiction might start even younger now...

Alternative explanation: drunk and/or high people looking for easy-to-process entertainment.

Hell, I'd rewatch Magic School Bus even if I wasn't drunk. That was a great show.

Either way, Netflix's strategy to produce original programming that people want is their weapon against ISPs trying to build their own on-demand offerings and throttling Netflix.

Its more their weapon against being deprived of profitability by competitors bidding up the prices of content from outside producers (and, especially, those competitors locking up exclusive deals). When Netflix was mostly alone in their market, they didn't really need their own programming, but once there was competition, they did, independent of ISPs.

Its the same thing that HBO went through on cable.

I've been watching it recently because I randomly discovered that Netflix had the old episodes, usually over lunch or around dinner or when I want to take a break.

The last MSB episode ever was about computers, complete with cocky nerd that is convinced that his code was flawless. ;)

The timing for this couldn't be better - I adore the show so much and it's especially timely to do a reboot because Ms. Frizzle was a fantastic female scientist role model for me when I was young and now kids (and when I have kids) will get to experience a newer, less dated version of her now :)

A few years ago, I went all cord-cutter for a while, so just Netflix over the Xbox. I finally caved and got cable back. My daughter, who was around five at the time, was watching some Nick show she hadn't seen before (I think it was Ni Hao Kai-Lan) the first day we got cable back. When it was over, my daughter looked at me and said, "I liked that, I wanna watch another episode!" I had to explain to her that with cable, you didn't get to choose what you watched like Netflix, you just picked a channel and whatever they were showing was what you got. I don't ever think I have felt as old as I did in that moment.

What made you cave and get cable TV again? Do you regret the decision?

I ask because we have been cable cutters for years now and my 4 year old basically has no idea what commercials are or how broadcast television works. I think of my childhood watching Saturday morning cartoons and I sometimes miss that experience with my kids.

Live sports, mainly. I don't regret it, per se (although I no longer watch live sports on cable, ironically, MLB.tv is more than adequate for my needs now). But we're still predominantly Netflix, with some Amazon Prime Instant mixed in here and there. In an ala carte world I think we could get by with just Cartoon Network and HBO, with our current viewing habits, and honestly I think we could do without those without much pain (would just have to buy Game of Thrones elsewhere).

It's not just the Magic School Bus either!

>The companies declined to discuss terms of the deal, which follows Netflix’s acquisition in the last year of rights to a number of Scholastic series, including the original “Magic School Bus,” “Clifford the Big Red Dog” and “Goosebumps.”

Oh God, not Clifford - Louis CK is spot on about Clifford: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_Eix1CDVHYE

Welp, Netflix gets it. If you have kids, you'll understand the allure of Magic School Bus and you are all the more likely to stick with Netflix or sign up.

Much like the video game "console wars", exclusive content is something people will pay for and it makes a platform very sticky.

My kids use my Netflix account way more than I do.

A lot of credit should go to whomever had the insight to create the Wii client and dump the viewer directly into the "For Kids" UI. That was genius.

This is great, my kids love the books.

I work for a cable tv-like operator. I get everything for free, including OTT content on tablets and stuff. My primary-school age kids only watch Netflix. They don't even know the brand name of the TV product I work on day to day.

Thankfully their grandparents don't know what a Netflix is, have no idea that almost everything can be had on demand, and continue to watch and pay for overpriced old-school linear content.

I wish there was news about the rumor that Netflix might produce another Star Trek series.

That rumor was mostly false. There have been "overtures", so someone at Netflix is interested, but there is no planned production.

http://larrynemecek.blogspot.ca/2014/06/hold-your-horsesther...

I wish it was true, and I wish the new one would be based in the 29th century universe voyager introduced us to.

Netflix is really amazing to me! I am SO impressed by their model and the plethora of data that they can just sift through (I love analytics and data mining).

Netflix has went from dvds by mail, to video content distribution, to an ACTUAL broadcast network. While I love their selection, I hope that they release their episodes once a week. I'd imagine it would capture an audience instead of marathoners.

From an investment standpoint, I can only imagine it being a matter of time before all the data they have (like audience retention time, device types, and internet speeds which can easily provide an assumption of demographic) be put to use for video ad campaigns.

Simply awesome business model!

Releasing all the episodes at once is definitely a good idea for a kids show. Parents can schedule in the show whenever they want, they can use an episode as a reward or push one back as a punishment, they just get maximum control over their kid's entertainment.

For House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, etc. you can make the argument that weekly episodes would be better, but for a kids show I think there is no question that more control is the best strategy.

What benefit do you get by releasing weekly vs. all at once though? I mean, you could argue that you'll have people sign up for a trial to watch a series then drop the service, but that's likely a rounding error for Netflix.

>I'd imagine it would capture an audience instead of marathoners.

You may be right about capturing an audience, I just wouldn't be one of them.

I like Netflix original content because most of what I want to watch isn't released on an irritating once-a-week model.

Take shows that rely on cliffhangers for example, for shows that use cliffhangers I find myself always waiting until the end of the season before I begin watching any of the episodes.

I'm also a little bit off-put by the idea of a 'captive' audience. Can't I just enjoy the show on my own terms? People like me always will anyway.

As a parent, I still can't believe Netflix doesn't offer better parental controls. All we want is a whitelist of programs that our kids can watch.

Children programming is by far more than 90% of our Netflix usage.

The Nintendo Wii client has a "kids only" whitelist.

nice! reminds me of the recent Reading Rainbow kickstarter :D

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