Failed Writer's Journey: Netflix and the Problem of Modern Capitalism

You have probably seen by now, but Netflix is worried that people are not watching as much. The causes and solutions are simple, but the way capitalism works today prevents them from seeing the causes and making the solutions.

Netflix’s problem is that it does not understand television. When it got into the streaming business, it had a library of decades of movies and television shows that it could put in front of people. People, not surprisingly, would watch their old favorites in a splurge fashion, several episodes at a time and in a row. Netflix saw, however, reasonably, that it needed to make its own shows in case the owners of its stable of shows backed out and put up their own streaming services, which eventually did happen. But because they did not understand television, they assumed that people wanted to binge watch everything. And they assumed that people would come back after a long hiatus while their algorithm decided whether or not to continue the shows. And that sort of worked for a while, especially when it was new, but they are now paying the price.

Television settled on long running shows released regularly because that system worked. People kept coming back week after week, and audiences had an opportunity to find out about the show as people and critics discussed it as it ran. The longer episode runs gave characters time to breathe, and characters helped hook viewers. The need to have a show every year for advertisers ensured that there were only months between seasons, not the years that is Netflix’s standard. There is a reason that the golden age of television largely resided in places like FX, AMC, HBO and other traditional television channels — they had shows with lengths that allowed people to grow attached to their characters, regular airing to give people time to talk up the shows, and regular seasons so that people did not have to wait years for the next installments. Netflix has none of that, and likely never can.

Capitalism, today, is not about running a profitable business. It is about running a growth business with the not-so-quiet expectation that the growth be built on software of some kind. In Netflix’s case, it is the all-mighty algorithm. There are several problems with algorithms as decision tools in general, but in the case of television, it needs to wait for data to come in in order to be able to work. And that means that production is delayed until the point where seasons are separated by years, not months. And people drift away. I do not watch new shows on Netflix — I am tired of waiting years to find out what happens. The algorithm is also geared toward generating new subscribers. It is not good enough to keep people, it is not good enough to make money — it must drive new customers, the only kind of customers that Wall Street likes.

There are other ways to run a streaming service, of course. Apple, Disney, HBO — they all release shows one week at a time and have new seasons that are much closer together. Several shows on Apple, for example, I would never have watched if it were not for the slow awareness their regular schedule built in me. People talked about them over the course of several weeks, allowing me to become aware of and then curious about them. That has never happened with a Netflix show. Now, none of those services is as large as Netflix, but that has more to do with Netflix’s early advantage than current efforts. They are much better positioned, I think, to be here in five to ten years than Netflix.

I suspect that Netflix is doomed long-term. It is run by people whose first loyalty is not to entertainment but to Wall Street. And Wall Street creates incentives that are poorly designed to sustain entertainment companies. Netflix was a giant success because of whims of modern capitalism. Those same whims are likely to keep it from surviving.

Weekly Word Count

About 30 pages of new material and re-writes on the cloning-school-shooting play. It is ready for another round of critiques/table reads.

I write such happy material.

While we are here, I am going to go completely grumpy old man on a completely meaningless topic: rejections. I got a couple in over the last few days which is never pleasant. Having proof that you suck is slightly worse than the expectation that you will receive proof that you suck. But they all had some version of “this is not a reflection on the quality of your work” in them. Yes it is! If it was good, you would have accepted it! I know the intent is to say that they had a lot of good works to choose from, but it still remains true that the work was not good enough. Pretending otherwise feels so, so patronizing. I don’t get better by not being told the truth. I am not arguing that the rejections should go full jerk, but a simple “we are sorry we could not move forward with your piece” should suffice. To me, that feels so much more professional than the equivalent of “good try, buddy!” that most rejections provide.

But I am a grumpy old man who wishes everyone would just get off my lawn.

Have a great weekend, everyone!