Cord-cutting feels like it’s been the “next big thing” for a decade now, but according to one new report, 2017 is going to be THE YEAR. We promise it’s true this time.
Management consultancy firm cg42 has published a report into the state of the cable industry, and it makes for bleak reading if you’re a Comcast exec.
Just over six months after Daredevil’s second season premiered on Netflix, Marvel returns to the streaming service with a new show: Luke Cage.
When we last saw Luke, he was recovering from a serious case of Kilgrave’s mind control in Jessica Jones. Mike Colter (Luke Cage) has said in interviews that we’ll “still feel the residue of Kilgrave” going into the first season of his show.
With the TV landscape populated with so many critically acclaimed and revered shows, keeping up with everything is practically impossible. As a result, viewers are increasingly becoming more discerning about what shows they choose to watch. After all, who has time to sit around and watch 4 hour-long episodes of a show that goes nowhere when there’s so much quality programming to digest.
As a result, when a particular TV show is recommended to someone, a common response is: “well how many episodes before it gets good?” It’s a fair question, to be sure, because some shows need a bit more of a runway before getting off the ground and hooking users in.
Interestingly enough, Netflix has all sorts of advanced algorithms underpinning its site and it knows, with startling detail, which episodes of which shows are the ones that lure users in for good. Believe it or not, there’s even a name for this type of data: hooked episode research. According to Netflix, they determine which episode of a show is the lure by determining which episode, upon completion, can maintain 70% of viewers for the duration of the season.
This one hurts. Every month, Netflix loses a chunk of licensed content from its library. Most of the time, there are a couple of solid titles, a bunch of forgettable junk and a ton of stuff no one has ever heard of. This month is different.
This week, Netflix said that its long-term goal is to have a site filled with 50% licensed content and 50% original programming. Although the streaming service is quite a ways off from achieving that goal, this October might be the biggest month for Netflix originals to date. By my count, there are 24 original shows, movies and specials coming next month, which might even be a new record.
Netflix is no stranger to abrupt transformations. In fact, you might say that the company’s entire history has been defined by it. Netflix first burst onto the national stage as a company that mailed out DVDs to customers all across the country. At the height of the DVD-by-mail boom, it almost seemed as if Netflix’s recognizable red and white envelopes were as ubiquitous as those free AOL CDs from the early-to-mid 90s.
Netflix’s popularity and ongoing growth beginning in the early 2000s was undoubtedly impressive, but Netflix CEO Reed Hastings sensed a sea change was on the horizon. With the proliferation of high-speed Internet access, Hastings had the foresight to realize that the Internet, as opposed to physical media, would serve as the backbone of a new age of media consumption. So in a transformation that was ahead of its time, albeit executed poorly at first, Netflix began to slowly shift the focus of its business model towards online streaming.
For most of us, data caps are just annoying. But for Netflix, they pose an existential threat to its way of doing business. If people have to pay extra to watch internet TV, it gives Comcast and TWC the edge.
So it’s not surprising that Netflix feels strongly about the emerging trend of data caps, but the company really pulled no punches in a letter to the FCC.
Even though some users might complain about periodic price increases, Netflix still offers users the best bang for their buck relative to any other streaming or cable service currently on the market.
The content on Netflix is tremendously engaging and addictive, but it can admittedly be hard to keep up with every title that’s coming in and every title that’s on its way out the door. Truth be told, even keeping up with Netflix’s growing stable of original programming can be tough. In short, if forced to pick a Netflix shortcoming – a challenge in and of itself – I might venture to say that the process of picking out a movie to watch or deciding on a new TV show to binge can be a bit muddled.
Suffice it to say, sometimes you want someone to do the dirty work for you and just pick something at random. Netflix doesn’t have a random-title selection feature built-in to its software, but there’s a new extension for Chrome that does just that.
Stranger Things might be the talk of the town right now, but it’s not the only hot Netflix show worth watching. Narcos is another original Netflix series that’s been getting a lot of attention, and the streaming giant has just renewed it for not one but two more seasons. Even more good news: a trailer for season 3 is already available. Careful though, because some spoilers may follow below.
Netflix has approved a brand new series, and this time around we’re looking at an unscripted original reality TV show that might be similar to Discovery’s extremely popular Mythbusters series. It’s not a Mythbusters successor, but rather a spin off. The ‘build team’ from the original show and the company that produced the original Mythbusters series are working on the series. That’s very exciting, as the implications are pretty clear.
We can’t say we didn’t see this one coming, but Netflix certainly took its sweet time to renew one of its best series ever, and probably the best series of the summer across all networks. Stranger Things season 2 is now official, and will be released by Netflix at some point next year. More →
Netflix has decided to break my heart this September. Although most of the titles being rotated off the service next month are somewhat forgettable, there are also a few important losses that will have many subscribers rushing to their screens one last time before the shows and movies vanish for good.
