Cory Barker - The Age of Netflix

ALSO OF INTEREST AND FROM MCFARLAND

Edited by Cory Barker, Chris Ryan and Myc Wiatrowski
Mapping Smallville: Critical Essays on the Series and Its Characters (2014)

Edited by James F. Iaccino, Cory Barker and Myc Wiatrowski
Arrow and Superhero Television: Essays on Themes and Characters of the Series (2017)

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-3023-6

2017 Cory Barker and Myc Wiatrowski. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Front cover images 2017 iStock

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The editors would like to thank all 11 contributors for their meticulous work, consistent kindness, and true patience as the collection grew from a compelling idea into a satisfying final product. Their wonderful insights found within these essays made it easy to remain committed to this project amid grueling schedules, job changes, and much more.

Cory would like to thank his coeditor Myc for his work and commitment to bringing a great idea to life. Cory would also like to shout out to his friends in the critical and scholarly community for always lending their time and ears to workshop ideas big and small and his family for their warmth and support.

Myc would like to thank his coeditor, Cory, whose enthusiasm and dedication brought this collection together. Without his hard work, this book would never have come to fruition. Myc also owes his greatest debt to his family, Laura and Lucas, whose endless patience and understanding have made this all possible and worthwhile.

CORY BARKER and MYC WIATROWSKI

In 2016, citizens in the United States and around the globe were forced to confront the deep-seeded political, economic, and cultural divisions among themselves. From shocking voting results in the U.S. presidential election and the United Kingdoms departure from the European Union to heated debates about fake news and the filter bubbles of social media to the (re)emergence of fringe groups driven by nationalism, hatred, and conspiratorial thought, the modernized world experienced more tumult than usual. Nonetheless, despite the very real partitions among people, one entity continues to bring us togethersort of. Already with an enormous footprint in the United States, Netflix expanded to 130 new countries in early 2016.

The brilliance of Netflixs strategy is in how its streaming video library manages to appeal to disparate groups of people across the world without a unified cache of content. Indeed, the company takes the opposite approach, using its sophisticated algorithm and seemingly endless resources to buy, develop, and distribute as many different types of content to as many micro-targeted audience groups as possible. This data-driven narrowcasting manifests in a variety of genres of programming tailored to particular audiences, including the prestige drama (House of Cards [2013] and Bloodline [20152017]), the rebooted multi-camera sitcom (Fuller House [2015] and One Day at a Time [2016]), and the superhero franchise (Marvels Daredevil [2015], Jessica Jones [2015], and Luke Cage [2016]). However, in 2016, Netflix took this approach even more globally, introducing more nonEnglish language series such as Frances Marseille (2016) and Brazils 3% (2016).

Netflixs worldwide expansion almost guarantees that the company will further integrate itself into our everyday lives. Since its now-famous shift from physical media rentals to a high-definition streaming video platform, Netflixs stature has grown significantly. In North America, the company finds itself at the fulcrum of countless industrial, cultural, economic, technological, and political developments. Its role in the popularization of streaming video has fundamentally altered the ways in which we watch, discuss, and generally consume media. From the rise of binge-watching and password-sharing to intermittent debates about spoiler etiquette and how critics should cover programs that are released all at once, Netflix is the central force in the contemporary experience of media consumption. The company has an equally notable impact on how television and film is produced, distributed, and marketed. Armed with a large operating budget, Netflix has improved its position within Hollywoods inner circle since 2012, outbidding HBO for A-list talent as well as spending lavishly on independent films across the festival circuit. Much of what Amazon or Hulu or even HBO has done in recent years has been in response to Netflixs embrace of original or exclusive content, setting off an arms race to craft the most valuable subscription streaming video service.

Meanwhile, Netflix projects are not only meticulously targeted with audiences taste profiles in mind, they are also immaculately marketed and eventized to cut through modern popular cultures dense clutter. The companys streaming of full seasons all at once situates those releases as must-watch and must-complete occurrencesand is a tactic that networks and cable channels have mimicked in recent years. Yet, the existence of the ever-changing Netflix library taps into the phenomenon of the long tail, with consumers always having another new-to-them series or film to watch years after its initial release. As a result, the company manages to imbue its library with a sense of perpetual personalized discovery that, in theory, offers enough content to keep consumers subscribing from month to month and year to year.

Although much of the attention paid to Netflix hinges on its influence on consumers and industry practice, the company is similarly relevant in other arenas. The influx of cord cuttingconsumers unsubscribing to traditional cable packagesover the past five years is regularly attributed to streaming video and Netflix more specifically.

Netflix has also been a key figure in the discourse surrounding net neutrality and data caps, perhaps most notably when it reached an agreement with Comcast to ensure that subscribers would receive Netflix content at faster and more reliable speeds.

Altogether, these efforts illustrate the prominence of Netflix beyond binge-watching and all-at-once release strategies. Both Netflix and its opponents within the government have displayed a predictably inconsistent perspective on who can access its streaming library, and what those people should be required to door, perhaps better said, how much they should be required to payto make that access possible. Likewise, as a technology company driven by the contemporary Silicon Valley ethos of get big fast, Netflix has been less concerned about what content is left behind in the march toward the great streaming video singularity.

Although these headline-grabbing data points and anecdotes underline Netflixs disruptions of culture, less discussed is the companys uncanny ability to build on pre-existing business models or industry practices. The DVD rental service of course combined the video store with Amazons nationwide shipping practices. The move to streaming video followed both Apples iTunes store and similar streaming platforms developed by U.S. and UK broadcasters. The shift from licensed content to original products mirrored the path traveled by countless American cable channels, from HBO to TNT to MTV. These realities do not limit Netflixs centrality to modern life, but simply serve as a reminder that, as Lisa Gitelman asserts, media are themselves denizens of the past. Even the newest media today come from somewhere, whether that somewhere gets described broadly as a matter of supervening social necessity, or narrowly in reference to some proverbial drawing board and a round or two of beta testing. Still, authors resist the urge to proclaim Netflix as a singular power among changing protocols.