“You don’t want to invest in things that are dying”, Reed Hastings, the co-founder and CEO of Netflix, said of live news programs at The New York Times’ DealBook Conference in New York on Tuesday, prompting scattered snickering from the audience. “And yet the inability of that ecosystem to execute on that for a variety of reasons has been troubling”.
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Netflix is set to target worldwide markets with Bollywood and anime original programming, according to the subscription VoD service’s CEO. “But as Matt knows, making these shows is very challenging and I’m sure we’ll have issues over time”, added Hastings. “On-demand and the internet really gives you that power when you have incredible distribution, then you have to open the front end of the funnel to have incredible producers around the world”. I think that’s the key in that enablement.
Hastings cited Netflix’s new Colombian crime drama based on Pablo Escobar, “Narcos”, as an example of a success when experimenting on shows.
Earlier in August, FX head John Landgraf said a large number of TV shows in a short span would become overwhelming for the costumer, and there is a risk that this would adversely affect otherwise successful shows. Anime is also not a stranger in the company’s lineup of shows, WIRED points out that the United Kingdom version of Netflix already has at least two shows in this genre.
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Netflix chief said entertainment has an wonderful capacity, and great content can find great viewers. The company plans to spend a massive $5 billion developing original shows in 2016.
