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.

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. But in Sweden today, we can also choose to watch tele­vi­sion on Magine, Voddler, and Headweb. (Also, HBO just launched here.)

Television and the web are a match made in heav­en. And, I sure watch many videos for a per­son 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 a Netflix ori­gin­al 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 that the answer to that ques­tion 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? Well, Netflix has heard com­plaints from users crav­ing more content. 

It does­n’t take a geni­us to fig­ure out that Netflix would­n’t mind a little less hassle from 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 them­selves, which is under­stand­able. But unfor­tu­nately for them, their strategy is push­ing plat­forms like Netflix to pro­duce their con­tent.

So, 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 that 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 the music industry, Spotify has giv­en us a glimpse of the future of music consumption. 

However, Spotify man­aged to fill their lib­rar­ies with enough third-party con­tent nev­er to have to con­tem­plate cre­at­ing their music. 

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

Who knows?

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