NONSPORTS SPENDING BY TV AND INTERNET STREAMING COMPANIES 2017 5 TV COMPANIES INTERNET STREAMING COMPANIES 10.2 12 10 8 8 8 7.8 1 6.3 BILLIONS OF US DOLLARS 6 4.5 4.2 4 2.5 2 1 1 0 FOX CBS UNIVERSAL NBC HULU APPLE WARNER TIME DISNEY NETFLIX AMAZON FACEBOOK In 2017 many companies in both traditional television and internet streaming spent 1 billion or more on nonsports programming 130 million That's 78 million more than the company made during the same period in 2016 2 Since its founding in 1997 Netflix has transformed from a DVD sales and rental company into the largest internet entertainment service provider in the world After picking up 8.3 million new subscribers in the last three months of 2017 it had more than 117 million paying members in more than 190 countries 3 These subscribers collectively watch more than 140 million hours of TV shows and movies per day 4 6
How has Netflix become so successful The company’s services whether it is delivering DVDs by mail or streaming content online have proven extremely popular with consumers The company now creates its own original series award-winning documentaries foreign films and programming for kids in order to provide its customers with a steady flow of new things to watch In addition Netflix keeps close track of the types of movies and TV shows its customers are watching The company then uses this data to create and acquire content geared toward the viewing habits of specific audiences For Netflix and its subscribers alike it’s a win-win situation Netflix is to the naked eye a two-pronged success If your company can produce local content that people love worldwide and you only NETFLIX WINS ITS FIRST OSCAR FOR A FEATURE FILM Netflix is no stranger to accolades The internet media giant has been nominated for and even won some major awards before But from the time it started creating original content in 2013 until 2018 it had never won an Academy Award for a feature-length film In March of that year that changed with the win for Best Documentary Feature Icarus tells the true story of the widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs by Russian professional athletes It stars Grigory Rodchenkov the head of Russia’s anti-doping agency who broke the news about the problem His revelations led to a ban on Russians participating in the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang South Korea though some athletes were eventually reinstated 7
charge them 8 or 8 a month you’ll land and expand You’ll grow and grow and grow said Jim Cramer host of CNBC’s Mad Money The more Netflix knows about what people love what you love the more it can scale that love into subscribers 6 A MAJOR SUCCESS STORY In the 2010s Netflix made some important decisions that paid off and ultimately transformed the company’s business model The first major success story happened as the result of a risky venture On February 1 2013 Netflix released House of Cards a remake of a 1990 British political drama The new adaptation was about fictional US Congressman Frank Underwood a Democrat from South Carolina’s 5th congressional district But Netflix didn’t just release one episode at a time week by week as is typical for a prime-time series Instead the company put the entire first season of 13 episodes online at once for viewers to watch as they wished At first some consumers were skeptical Would anyone really watch all the episodes in one sitting And what about spoilers How could you prevent your friends from talking about what happened in episode five if you were only on episode two Some members of the media 8
Some Netflix customers watch the company’s programming while doing other activities such as knitting weren’t entirely sold on the idea either They searched for ways to report on an entire season of television without knowing if all their readers had caught up For its part Netflix wasn’t worried Our viewing data shows that the majority of streamers would actually prefer to have a whole season of a show available to watch at their own pace said Ted Sarandos chief content officer of Netflix in 2013 Netflix has pioneered audience choice in programming and has helped free consumers from the limitations of linear television Our own original series are created for multi-episodic viewing lining up the content with new norms of viewer control for the first time 7 9
