The Sunday Read: ‘How Everyone Got Lost in Netflix’s Endless Library’

The landscape of television has drastically shifted in the age of streaming, with services like Netflix redefining what audiences watch and how they watch it.

TV shows in the streaming era are generally perceived as inferior in quality compared to previous "prestige TV" eras.

The abundance of content and quality concerns

Willy Staley expresses concerns over the perceived degradation in TV show quality in the streaming era, suggesting that current offerings fail to match the high standards set by earlier prestige TV series such as The Sopranos, Mad Men, or Breaking Bad. The industry appears to be in transition, and what used to be high-quality television may now just be a niche within the streaming business model.

Streaming platforms have fundamentally changed the business model and incentives of the television industry.

Shifts in business strategies and content diversity

Streaming platforms, described as having an "effectively endless amount of money," focus on subscriber growth rather than immediate profitability. This strategy appears to have tipped the scales towards quantity over quality in terms of content production. For instance, the success of shows like "Baby Reindeer," made far from Hollywood, signifies a move away from traditional TV production centers and a greater embrace of diverse content.

Butler discusses how streaming has liberated television from the constraints of traditional linear programming, indicating a shift to programming that caters to various refined interests. "The prison of time" has been broken, allowing viewers to watch what they want when they want, supporting a wide range of niche content that was not viable in the past.

Lotz further elaborates on this, noting that streaming services have altered the goal from selling an audience to advertisers to building multiple targeted audiences. As a result, the incentives for programming on streaming platforms are fundamentally distinct from those of traditional broadcast and cable TV.

Challenges in measuring viewership and cultural impact

Staley underscores the difficultly in gauging whether streaming content reaches wide audiences because platforms like Netflix guard their viewership data closely. The release of Netflix's viewership data finally offers some insight into the popularity of shows and the understanding of cultural trends within the vast library Netflix o ...

Netflix has revolutionized the television industry with an aggressive content expansion strategy and a disruptive business model characterized by substantial spending on content and heavy reliance on debt financing.

Netflix has rapidly transformed the television industry through its unprecedented spending on content and reliance on debt financing.

Netflix's strategy of borrowing heavily to fund a massive expansion of its content library has upended traditional television business models.

Ron Butler informs us that Netflix's creation of new shows was fueled by new debt, which it used to attract more subscribers. This method has substantially altered the television industry's landscape. The company was famously nicknamed "Debtflix" by the business press after accumulating about $15 billion in long-term debt by 2019. Netflix, described as a newcomer "armed with an effectively endless amount of money," aggressively invested in content creation, disrupting well-established industry norms.

In 2014 and 2015, Netflix issued large sums of debt, totaling nearly $900 million, to expand its original programming. This figure grew from $1.5 billion raised in 2015 to over $3 billion in 2017. The company's aim was to triple its content offerings and release 80 movies in the subsequent year, and it continued borrowing substantially over the next two years, totaling another $8 billion.

Ted Sarandos highlighted the need for better calibration between budget and audience, amid growing concerns about the sustainability of Netflix's debt-financed growth. James Shamos commented on the "Uberfication of Hollywood" under streamers like Netflix, noting a dynamic shift for creative talent from sharing in profits to a work-for-hire status.

Netflix's focus on subscriber growth over profitability has led to a proliferation of content, much of which fails to find a significant audience.

By borrowing mountains of money, Netflix transformed from a mass mailer of DVDs to becoming the world's most prolific content platform. Netflix's aggressive strategy aimed to rapidly increase its original programming, leading to the release of a high volume of content, with an average of one new movie per week. This approach created an emphasis on the quantity of content rather than prioritizing the content's long-term sustainable impact or profitability.

Netflix is considered the primary force that pushed other companies to enter the streaming market and is seen as the purest expression of the streaming model. Its strategy is centered on growth and expansion, with significant expenditure that may not immediately translate into profitability.

Netflix's data-dr ...

The article explores the vastness of Netflix's content library and the obstacles to grasping viewer trends within its rapidly expanding universe.

The sheer scale of Netflix's content library is virtually incomprehensible, with thousands of titles and millions of hours of viewing.

Netflix's content range is staggering, with over 16,000 titles making it nearly impossible for any individual to consume even with constant viewing. This immensity was highlighted when Netflix released a comprehensive look at its viewership data for the first time, ranking 18,214 pieces of content over the first six months of 2023. Despite the depth of data, titles with fewer than 50,000 viewer hours were not included, suggesting even more content lurks beneath the surface.

The platform consistently breathes in and exhales new material, much like the constant churn of rush-hour traffic on Manhattan's streets. Amidst the flood of content, shows like "Richie Rich" can easily become hidden gems or lost in the crowd. The ranking shows "The Night Agent" at the top with over 812 million hours viewed, while "My Teacher, Mr. Kim" is at the bottom with 100,000 hours watched, yet many lower-ranked titles share identical view counts and are only distinguished by their alphabetical order.

Determining the popularity and impact of specific titles on Netflix is complicated by the platform's opacity and the disconnect between critical reception and actual viewership.

Contrary to what might be culturally discussed, the actual viewership of shows on Netflix can be quite different. For instance, the action thriller "Triple Frontier" was among the most-watched movies in a given year, but did not translate into cultural capital as Netflix instead prioritizes the vastness of its offerings.

Netflix's reluctance to share detailed viewership data keeps shows' true popularity shrouded in mystery. The narrative ...