House Of Cards is Changing the Streaming Game

Netflix premi­eres a new show, House of Cards.

Nowadays, every­body loves to hate Netflix, espe­cially regard­ing the scarce selec­tion of movies and tele­vi­sion shows. What dif­fer­ence will one new show make, espe­cially a pilot that’s got­ten some pretty mixed reviews?

Well, House of Cards will most cer­tainly make a difference.

Here we go:

House of Cards — Not Just Another TV Show

Netflix is rel­at­ively new here in Sweden, but I got used to it when I lived in Manhattan. Today, we can also choose to watch tele­vi­sion on Magine, Voddler, and Headweb. (HBO just launched here.)

Television and the web are a match made in heav­en. And, I sure watch many videos for someone who does­n’t own a tele­vi­sion. I should be grate­ful I have so much to watch; we could all spend our life­times dis­cov­er­ing new YouTube con­tent if we wanted to.

But here’s the thing: 

It does­n’t work like that. We’re like blood-thirsty anim­als who just had their first kill; we want more. So when Netflix adds anoth­er tele­vi­sion show, it should only be yet anoth­er dis­trac­tion for many.

A New Breed of TV Shows: Originals

House of Cards is an ori­gin­al Netflix series. That means that Netflix has pro­duced their tele­vi­sion show.

“So, what? I knew that already!”

Let’s think about what an ori­gin­al tele­vi­sion show means. Putting togeth­er a tele­vi­sion show is no small moun­tain to climb in this day and age. Did Netflix suc­ceed? After watch­ing the first epis­ode of House of Cards, I’d say the answer is “yes.”

Not because it’s that good, but because I did watch it. And because I’ll keep watch­ing it — I believe many oth­ers will, too — and that’s not a tiny thing. After all, Netflix is a web­site, not a tra­di­tion­al tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tion company.

Yet.

House of Cards has qual­ity writ­ing and great pho­to­graphy. With all that’s going on in American polit­ics, it has relevance. 

House of Cards Will Disrupt Streaming

Why would Netflix take such a risk? Netflix has heard com­plaints from users who crave more content.

It does­n’t take a geni­us to fig­ure out that Netflix would be will­ing to endure a little less hassle when try­ing to land con­tracts for new third-party productions.

Why is it so dif­fi­cult for Netflix to land con­tracts? The own­ers want to make money from the con­tent, which is under­stand­able. Unfortunately, their strategy is to push plat­forms like Netflix to pro­duce their con­tent.

Netflix has asked itself if it can pro­duce such con­tent to cir­cum­vent the cur­rent sys­tem. And appar­ently, they can.

Now, who’s the loser when Netflix can pro­duce pro­pri­et­ary mater­i­al? Rights own­ers think they can hold on to the out­dated value chain — a chain where a movie hits the cinemas then hits DVD stands and then gets shown on tele­vi­sion after years and years.

But this mod­el won’t work in the age of the internet.

Coming Soon: “As Seen On Netflix”

If we com­pare the situ­ation to that of the music industry, Spotify has giv­en us a glimpse of the future of music consumption. 

However, Spotify man­aged to fill its lib­rar­ies with enough third-party con­tent that it nev­er had to con­tem­plate cre­at­ing its own music. 

But Netflix had to.
And now, this door seems to be open.

Who knows?

“As seen on TV” might become “As seen on Netflix.”

PR Resource: The Electronic Age

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The Electronic Age

Human cul­ture is often described based on our access to pro­duc­tion tech­no­lo­gies (e.g., the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age).

According to Marshall McLuhan and the Toronto School of Communication Theory, a bet­ter ana­lys­is would be to view soci­et­al devel­op­ment based on the prom­in­ence of emer­ging com­mu­nic­a­tions technologies.

McLuhan sug­gests divid­ing human civil­isa­tion into four epochs:

• Oral Tribe Culture. Handwriting marks the begin­ning of the end of the Oral Tribe Culture. The Oral Tribe Culture per­sists but without its former prominence.
• Manuscript Culture. Printing marks the begin­ning of the end of the Manuscript Culture. The Manuscript Culture per­sists but without its former prominence.
• Gutenberg Galaxy. Electricity marks the begin­ning of the end of the Gutenberg Galaxy. The Gutenberg Galaxy per­sists but without its former prominence.
• Electronic Age. Today, we reside in the Electronic Age. Possibly, we haven’t exper­i­enced the begin­ning of this age’s decline yet.

“The Gutenberg Galaxy is a land­mark book that intro­duced the concept of the glob­al vil­lage and estab­lished Marshall McLuhan as the ori­gin­al ‘media guru’, with more than 200,000 cop­ies in print.”
Source: Modern Language Review ¹McLuhan, M. (1963). The Gutenberg galaxy: the mak­ing of typo­graph­ic man. Modern Language Review, 58, 542. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​2​3​0​7​/​3​7​1​9​923

As a PR pro­fes­sion­al and lin­guist, I sub­scribe to the concept of the Electronic Age. My belief is that soci­ety is unlikely to revert to the Gutenberg Galaxy.

Thus, digit­al-first is the way for pub­lic rela­tions, too.

Read also: The Electronic Age and The End of the Gutenberg Galaxy

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