Reed makes haste to answer our Qs
Global media got the chance to pepper Netflix CEO Reed Hastings with questions. He never flinched one bit and seemed to tell us that this is the way to do it: be natural and stay true. Here are some of the best from the lively back-and-forth.
In the history of television and film, has their been a precedent on the amount of content that Netflix is making?
The answer is yes... The BBC are huge producers and Disney is bigger than us, so there are many producers that are on the scale of where we are, and the question is how do you sustain that on a low membership fee... and the answer is you’ve got to have a lot of members. We have over a hundred million members and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t just continue to grow as more people discover the benefits and that’s how we pay for it.
Is Fox and Disney the biggest threat to Netflix?
It’s hard to say. I don’t think so particularly. I would say they’re both great producers of content; combined, they’ll be even more of a producer. The threat is probably that we just slack off. I’s great that we’ve had this early success, but it’s so easy for companies to lose their edge. And what we have to do is always fight to do a little more, to tell the most bold story that we can, to share it openly — to really push ourselves to be great storytellers.
Amazon is now doing live streaming of sports. Do you think it’s in Netflix’s plans to focus on sports?
To follow a competitor, never, never, never. We’re not doing live sports. We’re doing our thing, our thing is great movies, great TV shows; we’re only this far in. We have so much we want to do in our area, so we’re not trying to copy others... but what we do, we try to do really well.
Are you not killing traditional TV?
No. In fact, we’re buying from them in many cases. But people’s habits are moving. Over 50 years linear TV will be much smaller and most of those networks will have become Internet networks. The BBC started as a radio network and then expanded into television, and so did many of the US networks. People can expand forward their new technology as an example.
How critical is India for your strategy?
I love it when someone from one of the largest nations on Earth says how relevant is India. It’s incredibly relevant; it’s a whole thousands of years of storytelling [and] incredible film traditions... I got asked on where would the next hundred million members come from and I said from right here, from India, because India alone has the potential of well over a hundred million members for an Internet service.
What do you think you need to do for to win the industry and what do you think about Amazon and Disney’s content?
So the question is all the big guys are trying to kill you, how are you going to stay alive... our core strategy is tune everyone out, try to stay focused. If we produce great series and great movies, customers will love us and we’ll continue to succeed. If we get distracted by trying to copy other people, like do our own prime service or do other things, we’ll never succeed at that. What we have to do is win by being focused. Their strategy is to win by being broad, a little bit of everything.
How much damage is piracy causing and how are you fighting it?
It’s hard to know. We don’t have a good way to fight it, except to be great and affordable. And what we’ve seen, for example, in the Netherlands, is that as we’ve grown. Now [piracy is] still not zero; students and rebellious people do it. But for the most part Netflix is so convenient and easy that [piracy] is significantly reduced... it’s a minor background threat, not more than that.
You’re growing in-house. Are you thinking about other ways to monetise with merchandise or others like theme parks?
Broadway, theme parks those are... who knows? Not in the next five or 10 years. That would be amazing; when I go to theme parks, I’m like, ‘can you imagine Netflix content here someday’, but not in the short term. Licensing and merchandising though, that’s a big one for us.
What are you doing regarding Arabic content, and do you have any specific plans for the UAE? Well, again, it’s one of the great storytelling pools of all time. and we just commissioned our first show [Jinn] that’s being filmed in Petra, Jordan. and what I like about it is it’s not a big political show, it’s not about like the same stuff that everybody was talking about; it’s about family dynamics. and that, I think is the key — is creating empathy between cultures