Netflix Is Betting Its Future on Exclusive Programming
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Netflix is also getting squeezed by ISPs like Comcast, who want to charge them for the right to deliver video to Comcast's customers who already paid for their bandwidth.
So Netflix' only way to survive is to develop its own content. If it's dependent on other people to provide content, they'll jack up their prices to take Netflix' profit margins.
So now you have 5-10 competing services, and if you aren't paying attention, you don't know what shows are available on what service. Meanwhile, if you go to a file-sharing website, you can get every single show and movie. So Netflix (and its competitors) have less compelling of a value proposition, if you have to pay $10/month to several different services to get all the shows you might want to watch.
If you look at the British series, it's much shorter, and for good reason.
The opening scene for the season 1 had me hooked. They defined that character so well with that opening scene and I was immediately interested to see what this character was willing to do.
Then season 3 happened and I find he's turned into every other character in every other modern show.
I wish they had taken the approach of just making him ruthless towards the other nations in achieving the US's goals instead of the direction they went in.
Maybe they are too focused on their new exclusive shows to stay on top and make sure the new old ones are also good?
It's not quite "Breaking Bad" levels of tension and machination but it's a good, slow burn that really picks up as it moves along. Doesn't hurt that I just got back from my first visit to the Keys right as this came out.
(Although his blind act was much weaker in the first season...)
Then as films get farther and farther from their release windows, they turn up on HBO or Netflix streaming, etc. It's just a smaller niche for me between wanting to see it at release and not caring when I get around to watching it.
Since Netflix added streaming it's essentially taken the place of basic cable for me (rather than replacing Blockbuster). With basic cable you can't always count on something being on at a given time but you can usually skim through the options and find something enjoyable. That's how I am with Netflix. The only difference is that Netflix costs $10/mo whereas basic cable costs $50+.
I like the fact that a company is managing to compete with cable networks without actually being a (traditional) cable network. Their shows may not always beat the best of HBO but they sure as hell beat USA, TBS, and the long list of "random shows and movies" cable channels.
Presumably because it is becoming a smaller and smaller part of their business. That's the reason they wanted to spin it off as Quikster. DVD rental also isn't available on the subscription package that most users have.
Very basically, rental of a film for a cinema for a day is $250 or 35% of ticket sales, whichever is more (the flat rate is less over long periods, the 35% stays the same). 2 hours of 4k UHD video in the ProRes codec (which will play back smoothly on a regular computer, with good enough quality that most people wouldn't notice the difference) is about 700gb. A fast 1tb drive in an enclosure is under $200, so if the film is even moderately popular and would benefit from being presented on a large screen (which most films of any quality certainly do), then it becomes very tempting for exhibitors to make a copy, either for display or to produce knockoffs in disc form (which will be fully competitive with the 'official' version as far as audio/video quality goes).
* Technically there's DCI 4k and Ultra-HD, with the former being slightly higher resolution than the latter - see http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/174221-no-tv-makers-4k-an... but they're close enough that even camera people lump them otgether as '4k' and the 10% shortfall on UHD gear is not considered that bad of a loss. If you're very concerned about horizontal resolution chances are you're using anamorphic lenses anyway.
Don't get me wrong, I like Netflix. I don't have cable TV (and now that HBO Now exists, I don't plan to). But I've got Netflix alongside Hulu and Amazon Prime, and I see them as pretty fungible. Getting a good browsing/steaming UI together isn't rocket science, and all three are fine. The original content is the only thing that makes Netflix a "must have" for me.
Oops.
Netflix would destroy the networks but also their main suppliers.
That is why Netflix is going into original content. If they won't fund it nobody will.
I'm not so sure about the pirating scene - while big content providers likely will never kill it, they seem to have lawmakers in their pockets, and so will criminalize it as much as possible - expect draconian measures to destroy the most dangerous threat to big content providers.
It's hard to compete with free. At the moment, Netflix does a pretty good job. HBO might too if they can fully disentangle from cable. If prices get higher, or the content individuals want gets spread across too many streaming services people will watch less and/or pirate more.
That guy has a ton of class. This war will only benefit all of us entertainment junkies.
Netflix is making an incredible effort to catch up: They're giving great creative talent a lot of creative freedom, and they've certainly put out some fine prestige content in their first three years, but even House of Cards isn't really batting at the same level as HBO's landmark achievements.
I think when Hastings says "I predict HBO will do the best creative work of their lives in the next 10 years," there's a tiny bit of projection there – he knows HBO will have to continue to put out landmark content because sooner or later, Netflix will indeed have its own, bona-fide Sopranos.
As a fan of long-form episodic cinema, no other rivalry could make me more excited.
The US is surely important, but Netflix has launched in Europe and faces a huge obstacle that very few US Americans know about - rights licensing is far worse.
Selling content overseas is a huge business, which means a giant time delay until something makes it to, say, Germany (even if not dubbed). Which worked in the past, but the Internet is forcing real time usage, see the piracy numbers worldwide for something like Game of Thrones (HBO, I know). There is practically no legal way to easily consume something like GoT the same time as it is aired in the US.
Not so for Netflix' own content.
House of Cards, Daredevil - all already available globally.
The world is a big place and Netflix is going after it, the US is just one market.
That HBO/Apple TV deal better be global soon.
Although we don't have HBO Go here -- we have a similar service called HBO Nordic. I'm almost certain that it's a HBO owned company, available only in nothern Europe though.
In other words the Nordic offering is better than either of the over-IP HBO offerings in the U.S. Says a lot of how dysfuntional the HBO situation in the U.S. is when they don't offer their best service domestically.
Later the same day, at prime time, they aired it in Italian.
[0] http://skygo.sky.it/ondemand/categorie/serie-tv/serie-in-ond... (in italian)
[1] http://skygo.sky.it/ondemand/categorie/serie-tv/serie-in-ond... (in english)
[2] http://www.skyonline.it/intrattenimento/serie-in-onda/il-tro... (both italian and english versions)
right now, they're international.
happy?
The only difference between Netflix and say "TNT" or "FOX" (other than they don't have news shows) is that the content is available on your schedule, not the networks, and they don't put advertisements in their content they just charge you a monthly fee to have access to it.
They have, nominally 60M subscribers[1] world wide, and 40M in the US[2], out of a total of 113M TV households [3]. If half of their subscribers watched the series Daredevil (which I recommend) that would be the equivalent of Netflix getting a 20 rating. [4] That would be equivalent to a Seinfeld [ibid] which was NBC's hottest show for a very long time.
So what that means is that networks need to either adapt to this new model or die. And the more that die, the more content there is for folks like NetFlix.
Oddly enough, this sort of makes Roku the new Comcast :-)
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurengensler/2015/01/20/netflix...
[2] http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/netflix-tops-57-million...
[3] http://www.tvb.org/media/file/Nielsen_2014-2015_DMA_Ranks.pd...
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_ratings#Commercial_rati...
And it's pretty clear that's not the only problem: once they think they can, we'll be back to product lock in, region lock in, vendor lock in "our new show is perfect to get people to switch to Comcast!"
As a side note, it wouldn't surprise me if they are deeply concerned about an Apple TV service with a similar interface as Netflix, but more / better content. When I hear Tim Cook talk about his ideas for TV, it seems like he hates the current way TV works. Most programs aren't live, but are still shown the way they were 50 years ago for no particular reason.
Pro: i'm watching twitch stream of pro-dota on my phone, there's a new menu I've not noticed before. Press it, click apple TV, it's now streaming seamlessly onto my TV. Similarly for any tv shows on my laptop - but only if they're .mp4 (ugh).
Cons: Awful menu and navigation. Comparatively expensive (assuming you're watching films - after 2 films you could pay for a streaming service). Search is bad and slow. Recommendations are all the same despite allegedly being split by genre. etc etc. It's barely better than any other smart TV to be honest.
I think Apple TV could work, but I don't think it's even close to being there yet
I like where this is headed. The competition will be a boon for content consumers.
So yes, your observations are spot on.
[1]: http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201302/netflix...
Even if to pay for this Netflix has a premium version... ($20 per month for example)
Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting.
The television revolution that began half a century ago spawned a number of industries, including the manufacturing of TV sets, but the long-term winners were those who used the medium to deliver information and entertainment.
When it comes to an interactive network such as the Internet, the definition of “content” becomes very wide. For example, computer software is a form of content-an extremely important one, and the one that for Microsoft will remain by far the most important.
But the broad opportunities for most companies involve supplying information or entertainment. No company is too small to participate.
Obviously the netflix executives were ahead of me on this one.
From somewhere else (via NFLX Wikipedia):
In a 2010 New York Times interview, Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes downplayed Netflix as a threat to more traditional media companies. Bewkes told the newspaper, "It's a little bit like, is the Albanian army going to take over the world? I don’t think so." At the same time, he recognized that the company's DVD service may have contributed to a decline in DVD sales, and regarding the industry's willingness to make special deals with Netflix in the future, he added "this has been an era of experimentation, and I think it's coming to a close."
I agree, and this is why netflix has time to build up a library of original content. It's bootstrapping its success off the backs of its future competitors. I will predict though, that when Disney's current contract with netflix expires (2020ish IIRC), they won't renew.
Am I the only one who likes shows being made available once a week, rather than all at once?
I also like looking forward to the next episode, which doesn't really happen when you can watch that next episode immediately (and self imposed waiting doesn't feel the same).
I suppose personally my feelings on the matter is even though I might lose the few advantages that you mentioned, the disadvantages far outweigh it and I won't miss the airing of shows like Breaking Bad or Suits that took one season and split them in half with gigantic gaps in between (months or even years), to the point where you can't even remember where the show was going by the time it returns. I like the freedom to watch at whatever schedule I prefer, without any kind of arbitrary limitations that may or may not suit my lifestyle at the time, and the confidence to know I'm going to be able to see a story through from start to finish once devote time to it...
The shared cultural experience is nice, but utterly foreign to those of us outside the US, where the discussion arrives weeks, months, or even years before the show.
Generally I wait for the entire season of a show to come out and then schedule several nights of viewing (over a couple months) with friends where we watch 3-4 episodes at a time. The downside of this is having to avoid discussion of the show in the few months after release.
With Netflix dumping seasons at a time it makes it much easier, and much more fun, to do this.
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What if the truth was, a one time payment to watch a show like House of Cards cost $100-$200? By offering a subscription they make it more accessible to more people (They let you cancel your Netflix subscription at any time)
Presumably because those laws would serve the public purpose.