Advice for Netflix
Online streaming service Netflix recently raised its subscription charges in the US by 13-18 per cent. This was in the offing considering how much cash the company has been burning to become a one-stop shop for everything the audiovisual world has to offer. It recently paid a whopping $100 million to WarnerMedia so as to show Friends, the popular 1990s sitcom, until the end of 2019. This kind of deal raises doubts about Netflix being serious about promoting quality content.
By now, anyone who had to watch Friends and revel in its shopworn humour would have already done so and would be happier to watch YouTube clips than sit through those 10 long seasons. Funnily, the TV show is not available on Netflix’s India platform, probably the only country where it still serves as chicken soup for the soul. This kind of serious money could have generated more original content like American Vandal, Black Mirror and Easy.
I wish someone would tell the panjandrums at Netflix that they need to get out of their ’90s funk and keep acquiring more intelligent TV shows from across the globe and produce exclusive content like Roma, which snaffled an impressive 10 Oscar nominations this year. In 2013, the company had zero Oscar nominations; this year, it has an amazing 14. Its stock has been on a constant upswing, apart from the one time it plummeted in the last week of December 2018 when the whole American stock market was in a Donald Trumpfuelled bear run. But the company needs to up its game strategically.
Earlier this month, Netflix immediately complied with the Saudi government’s request to drop an episode of Hasan Minhaj’s news comedy show, Patriot Act, for being overtly critical of the regime. And even though it was dropped only in the desert nation, it indicated how much Netflix wants to be in everyone’s good books.
The company also needs to up its India game if it wants to keep running the business. As someone who spent most of 2018 in USA, I can safely claim that almost every American household either has a Netflix account or knows someone who would gladly let them use theirs. The next big frontier will be our nation of 1.3 billion people. Right now, Amazon Prime beats Netflix on the murderously watchable roster of cinema that it has at its disposal. Prime is getting not just Hindi but lots of South Indian content, too. I have been spending a lot more time on Prime for Indian offerings because of the sheer volume available, while Netflix has barely scratched this extremely viable surface. Even though it’s aggressively priced at ~500 per month for a basic plan, Netflix needs to understand that there’s not much in it for the typical Indian audience. It’s only once in a while that a movie as unsparing as Soni comes through in the otherwise despair-inducing dross that Netflix offers to Indian audiences.
Personally, I love the fact that Netflix has lots of amazing Scandinavian and French TV shows in its kitty and a bevy of latest hits from the vibrant world of international cinema. Where else could I have been able to watch the uproarious French comedy, Call My Agent!, or the brilliantly executed Israeli thriller, Fauda? Netflix has irrevocably altered the viewing habits of everyone in the last half-decade or so. But as it becomes a company that is too big to fail, it has started accumulating needless tonnage in terms of content. In its quest to not let go of anything worth a watch, the company has been making a series of bad decisions, and this financial bloodletting needs to be staunched.
Instead of acquiring a lot of middling latest movies, Netflix needs to invest in classics. One look at the home page of the platform and it feels as though the bosses at Netflix are decidedly averse to cinema of the black-and-white era. Again, something Prime offers aplenty. Someone needs to shout out to the Netflix folks that even if their hearts are in the right places, the minds can be on auto-pilot.