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- Netflix is about to face a bevy of new streaming-video competitors — some larger, with more experience developing TV and film, and with deeper pockets than itself.
- Disney, WarnerMedia, and Apple are all launching subscription services in 2019.
- Netflix is focusing on its growing international audience, building its reputation for Hollywood-grade films and children’s programming, and inking distribution deals with more wireless and TV providers to keep growing its subscriber base, in spite of the new competition.
- Meet the executives, like Ted Sarandos, Greg Peters, and Bela Bajaria, who are leading these key initiatives and more.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Netflix hasn’t won the streaming wars yet.
The subscription-video service has around 150 million members paying to subscribe to its library of series and films — an audience larger than the population of small islands like Aruba and Seychelles, and outstripping rivals like the US-based Hulu.
But legacy media barons like Disney’s Bob Iger, and tech titans like Apple’s Tim Cook, want pieces of that massive global audience for themselves.
Netflix is about to face a slew of new competitors — some larger, with more experience developing TV and film, and with deeper pockets than itself. Disney and WarnerMedia are launching new streaming services this year. Comcast’s NBCUniversal has a service due out in 2020. And Apple is beginning to take streaming TV seriously with a new aggregation platform that hit this month and a subscription for original programming that rolls out in the fall.
Netflix may say it’s not sweating its rivals. "Great competition makes you better," CEO Reed Hastings said on his company’s earnings call in April.
But Netflix saw the way the wind was blowing in Hollywood long ago, when it first started developing content exclusively for its platform in 2011. It has been moving to fortify and grow its armada by poaching execs and creators from Hollywood studios ever since.
Read more: How Netflix is using companies like Comcast and T-Mobile to drive its next phase of growth
Netflix has been in most of the world since 2016. Many of its competitors will be launching their services in the US this year before expanding overseas.
Netflix’s continued growth will depend on getting more people around the globe to buy into its vision for Hollywood-grade TV and film that is tailored to local audiences and languages before its rivals can catch up. The streaming service, which has already made a name for itself in TV, is also developing higher-profile and bigger-budget movies from directors like Martin Scorsese and Michael Bay to build its reputation in film. And, with Disney’s family-friendly streaming service on the way, Netflix has taken steps to shore up its children’s programming through the acquisition of kid’s entertainment company Storybots.
Then there’s Netflix’s recommendation engine and platform, which is racing to make it easier for people to find something good to watch amidst the thousands of titles on Netflix, and make it easier for them to access the service wherever and whenever they want.
Meet the power players leading these key initiatives and more:
Reed Hastings — cofounder and CEO
AP
Netflix cofounder and CEO, Reed Hastings, has never been one to underestimate his opponents.
Hastings, 58, considers nearly any activity — from sleeping, to playing video games like "Fortnite," to taking fictional pills that could one day allow people to hallucinate entertainment the way they imagine their surroundings in the "The Matrix" films — as competitors to his streaming-video service. He hasn’t characterized Disney Plus and WarnerMedia’s planned platform as direct obstacles for Netflix, seeing them as more niche services than Netflix’s own.
"You can learn things by looking at competitors, but you don’t want to get focused on them," Hastings said at a press event in March, CNN Business reported. "All we have to do to succeed is continue to do amazing content, stream it, make it personalized and relevant."
But the company’s recent content acquisitions, executive appointments, and Hastings’ own talking points about Netflix’s future suggest that he is serious about defending the company on all fronts.
In 2017, the day before Disney announced that it would end its deal to stream new movies on Netflix, Netflix announced its first-ever corporate acquisition. It bought the comic-book publisher, Millarworld, establishing its own mini-Marvel with which to build characters and franchises that could extend from print to screens big and small.
In May, weeks after Disney previewed its upcoming family-friendly streaming service, Netflix acquired the kids entertainment company, Storybots.
Netflix also went on a showrunner shopping spree last year, where it snapped up hitmakers like Shonda Rhimes, Ryan Murphy, and Kenya Barris, who previously worked with legacy-media rivals like Disney and Fox.
Lately, Hastings has even softened on the idea of expanding Netflix beyond its core business of selling streaming-video subscriptions. Nearly all of Netflix’s competitors, including Hulu, Amazon, Apple, Disney, and WarnerMedia, do other things besides sell subscriptions, like selling advertising or toys, or operating theme parks. It squeezes more money out of their existing media properties. Netflix, meanwhile, makes nearly all of its revenue from streaming subscriptions, in addition to a small and shrinking legacy DVD-by-mail business.
"Someday, many, many years from now, we may need to diversify," said Hastings, on an October earnings call. "There is so much growth ahead that’s possible in streaming-video entertainment, so we’re just going to focus on that for a very long time. Unfortunately, lots of other companies are also focusing on that. But that’s going to make it exciting for us for the next few years."
Ted Sarandos — chief content officer
Paul Bruinooge/Patrick McMullan/Getty Images
The higher Netflix’s star rises in Hollywood, the higher Ted Sarandos’ star rises within Netflix.
The chief content officer, who joined Netflix in 2000 after being an executive at a video-rental chain, was pivotal to establishing the company as more than just an online-video store. He lead the team that acquired content for Netflix’s video library, and oversaw the company’s push into original series and films.
In the six years since Netflix premiered its first slate of original programming, Sarandos has showed that Netflix can compete with veteran movie and TV studios like HBO and Disney, not only in buzz but in critical acclaim. Netflix earned its first best-picture nomination at the Oscars in 2019 for Alfonso Cuarón’s "Roma," and has won numerous Emmys for its original series.
(Sarandos also enlisted one of Hollywood’s top awards strategists, Lisa Taback, in 2018, to help the company campaign for the accolades.)
Thanks to Sarandos’ impressive output, Netflix is looking more like a media company than a Silicon Valley tech darling these days. All at once, Netflix is trying to make the types of features that win Oscars, movies that would sell out theaters if they screened in them, TV dramas and comedies that would trend around the metaphorical water cooler, as well as everything in between, like talk shows, documentaries, comedy specials, teen movies, romantic comedies, cooking shows, and children’s cartoons.
It’s now remaking all the series and movies that its customers watch, so it doesn’t have to go through "the gun-to-your-head renegotiation" with outside studios for them every couple of years, as Sarandos said in the October earnings call. That’s critical for Netflix now that studios, like Warner Bros., Disney, and NBCUniversal, which supplied its licensed content, will have their own streaming services to put their series and movies on.
Also on Sarandos’ to-do list: Keeping the handful of very popular shows from other studios, like "Friends" and "The Office," on its service for as long as possible.
"Friends" or not, content has become Netflix’s power center — so much so that when Netflix needed a new chief financial officer to replace retiring executive David Wells, Hastings decided that person should be based in Los Angeles, where Sarandos spends most of his time. The chief marketing officer who replaces outgoing executive Kelly Bennett, when chosen, will also move under Sarandos’ purview.
Sarandos has taken a broad view of Netflix’s rivals for a long time. "Every time we put out a new show, we’re competing with everything ever made," Sarandos said, in a roundtable discussion hosted by the Hollywood Reporter in 2016.
Cindy Holland — vice president, original content
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After Sarandos, no one has had a bigger hand in building Netflix into a leading creator of TV and film than Cindy Holland, vice president of original content.
While Sarandos oversees all content on Netflix, including the series like "Friends" and "The Office" that are licensed from outside studios, Holland is focused on Netflix’s original programming — the stuff that sets it apart from other platforms.
Holland has been with Netflix since 2002, when the fledgling service’s main business was hawking DVDs. Before Netflix, the Stanford-educated exec worked at the internet startup Kosmo.com, as well as a few film and production companies. She took the lead on original programming at Netflix back in 2011, around the time the company commissioned "House of Cards."
Holland worked closely with showrunners like Jenji Kohan on "Orange Is the New Black," and considers herself a straight-talker who just wants to tell great stories.
"I’m all about helping creators get the best of their vision," Holland told Rolling Stone. "People know me to be straightforward. I try to be very clear and give a fast answer. There’s a real trust and simplicity that comes from that, like we have the same agenda."
While Netflix is already releasing an eye-popping amount of programming, it’s Holland’s job to spot the gaps where the company could be doing more. "Stranger Things," for example, was partly a reaction to the family-friendly titles from the 1980s that people were watching on Netflix.
Holland prides herself most on the stories that don’t always work on paper. Another network might have told "Stranger Things" from the sheriff’s point of view, for example. Netflix’s version hit because "it was a misfit family, the sense of wonder, and the sense of family in addition to some scares and the supernatural," Holland said at an event, reported on by Deadline.
Netflix, under Holland’s leadership, has been investing more recently in unscripted programming, such as cooking and competition shows, as well as titles with international appeal.
Holland’s team also controls much of Netflix’s multi-billion content budget, with about 85% of new content spending going toward original series and films. She helps decide how to much to invest in each title — and when to stop investing if people aren’t sticking with the show.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
See Also:
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Source: Business Insider – arodriguez@businessinsider.com (Ashley Rodriguez)