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> Cindy Holland, Netflix’s VP of content, said in 2019 that critical acclaim is important, “but we’re really about trying to stretch our investment dollars as f

> Cindy Holland, Netflix’s VP of content, said in 2019 that critical acclaim is important, “but we’re really about trying to stretch our investment dollars as far as we can and make good on our investors’ money — it’s theirs, not ours.” This is a huge red flag signal to me. A VP of content should be focused on the quality of shows and the editorial philosophy of a platform. That's not to say that Netflix shouldn't care about money, but that pressure should not be felt so strongly in that specific department IMO. While some cancellations make sense (Sense8, as much as I love it, the budget was a real reason), others are completely nonsensical (The OA, Tuca and Bertie, Santa Clarita Diet to name a few). It really is a shame that Netflix simply doesn't seem to have a philosophy anymore. They make good content still, but only because they do enough things that not everything can be a miss. I think we all know we are exiting the golden era of streaming, but I think when we look back, Netflix straying from its original principles may be seen as a notable part of that downfall. The sudden growth of separated streaming services was probably unavoidable, but I can't help but wonder that if Netflix stuck to its philosophy, the quality of the service may have kept other potential competitors around longer.

chrisseaton 7y ago
> A VP of content should be focused on the quality of shows The sole purpose of Netflix is to make money. That’s all it’s there for. So that the owners (which includes thousands of normal working class employees) can buy food for their families. Everyone should be focused on that goal, surely?
- adjkant 7y ago
  > The sole purpose of Netflix is to make money. No, that's the capitalist investors view. The problem is that Netflix now sees it as theirs. I'd bet quite a good sum of money that was not the goal when it started. I'd be surprised if that was the goal in 2010-2015 even. > So that the owners (which includes thousands of normal working class employees) can buy food for their families. If that were true, they would not be trying so hard to turn these excess profits. With how Netflix pays I don't think you can really call their employees "normal working class" either. Netflix is a classic case of greed and profit corrupting art. In some ways inevitable, but it's sad to see there's not even an internal tension between finance and content. That should be a battle that is waged daily in order to balance multiple purposes: both making money to support its employees and investors, and the art of shows and movies, among others.
  - __s 7y ago
    If your business is art & you sell out on your art, you might as well have sold out your business
  - coffeefirst 7y ago
    Related, I keep noticing that the people who make the psychopath-investor argument seem to forget the company exists to make money by actually doing something. Doing the something well enough that someone else wants to pay you for it (or keep paying you for it) is a pretty important part of that.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - kgwgk 7y ago
    From their 2000 S-1 filing: “Our goal is to be the definitive online intermediary for choosing movies and other video entertainment”. Why would they want to become that if not for the money?
    - 1123581321 7y ago
      - To make TV shows better - To reduce the number of product/political commercials - To spread the best media from every country to everyone There are legitimate reasons besides money.
- apk-d 7y ago
  The same way the sole purpose of humans is to eat burgers and reproduce, yes.
- mlyle 7y ago
  People should be working on making their area of work as awesome as it can be. P&L is important. But so are things like long-term opinion of Netflix's content brand. Equity valuations assume distant future returns. Yes, there's strategic decisions to be made at both the department and overall level about how much one tries to maximize current cash output vs. invests in the brand and infrastructure. Not to mention: it works better when you have different parties advocating for different parts of this picture and arguing. Let finance try and squeeze out every nickel that can be squeezed, today. Let content seek after a vision of success. And let creatives and finance argue and advocate and figure out a compromise that works and fits in as much of what each wants as possible.
- __s 7y ago
  Good content creates long term value. Focusing on money often leads to short term thinking. Focus on money often means investments are more likely to be seen as losses. Because the review is going to ask "What is the ROI?" & for long term things you're going to say "I'm not sure" because there's more unknowns. But you can know that you're making good content, so that should translate to good things Same goes for Research & Development. Quarterly profits are not the correct KPI for every department. Where will those quarterly profits be ten years from now?
- MereInterest 7y ago
  I'm rather sick of the idea that corporations exist solely to make money. It is a relatively new idea, but is now stated and repeated without justification. Corporations are legal entities, and exist within the framework that is allowed for them. Where that framework promotes poor behavior, it should be changed. Ethics? Nope, money. Good art? Nope, money. Public benefit? Nope, money. It is a reductive view that assumes that the legal framework is static, unchanging, and aligned towards morally good benefit.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    You can take the money you earn from a company and invest it into the non-profit arts and public benefit if you want to.
  - tomnipotent 7y ago
    > It is a relatively new idea, It's been around for thousands of years. Can find examples throughout history as far back as Silk Road and probably further. What is a relatively new idea is doing things for non-profitable reasons.
    - bmm6o 7y ago
      Since the quoted comment was about corporations, you'll want to focus on the last 400 years.
      - tomnipotent 7y ago
        Fair enough. But corporations don't look too dissimilar from any power authority throughout time that's profited disproportionality from labour. Different name, same game.
    - bawolff 7y ago
      Weren't the original corporations basically perishes that had independent assets that were supposed to go to the officeholder instead of normal inheritence-sort of as a legal system hack? While there is a long history of corprate charters being to make money for the shareholders, i think there is a long history of other goals as well.
- dasil003 7y ago
  Though Experiment: Should a customer service rep to rush you off the phone because your problem is difficult and therefore not a good use of time for them to try to solve? Even from a purely economic standpoint this is a complex question to answer. They need to take into account how many others are experiencing the problem, how likely they are to cancel their subscription, and how the situation is likely to evolve over time. A similar, but infinitely harder problem exists for content production. You simply can't know with any certainty what a given strategy is going to do to long-term demand. If the VP of Content is too focused on the bottom line it will lead to a strategy of pruning production based on short-term viewership. This will decrease the viability of show-runners to do anything risky, ahead-of-its-time or with a longer-term payoff. Potentially even worse is killing cult classics (eg. The OA) which could lead to negative word of mouth both on the customer and on content maker side creating a long-term impact the bean counters can't see until it's too late. So while Netflix overall has fiduciary responsibility, it is not the best strategy for every single person to be focused directly on revenue and ROI. I'd expect Content to have a slightly more abstract objective that allows room for creative judgement. I think Hollywood and HBO understand this dichotomy and how to operate within it, but judging by the overall bland feel of their catalog, Netflix doesn't.
- rdiddly 7y ago
  As a customer or potential customer I am utterly indifferent if not hostile to that goal. In my world, the purpose of Netflix is to provide me with good stuff to watch. Preferably for free, so I can buy food for my working-class family. If the content is no good, Netflix can cease existing for all I care. And since I and millions of others like me are the ones who continue to allow Netflix to exist, I would say your list of "purposes of Netflix" maybe needs to be expanded to at least two items. Otherwise you've just defined the goal/purpose of a thief, not a commercial entity.
ses1984 7y ago
They know exactly who's watching what. Those shows were just not hits.
- adjkant 7y ago
  1. I don't believe a show is defined by its widespread popularity. I don't think someone on the content side should believe that either. TV and movies are forms of art, and good art is good art. If Netflix doesn't value that, it deserves to lose every bit of market share it's about to over the next decade. 2. We don't actually know how the popularity looks because we don't have the numbers. Even with the numbers, show popularity is a function of marketing and time allowed to grow, which is exactly what the article highlights.
  - segmondy 7y ago
    Netflix is a business. They need to be profitable, not just make art for the sake of making art. If they go broke, they won't live to make another art. It's a balancing art ;-)
    - adjkant 7y ago
      I never said it wasn't a balancing act (in fact I explicitly noted they should care about money) but the content team is exactly the team that should be fighting tooth and nail internally against those constraints. That quote makes it sound like they have rolled over, and their content decisions of the past 3 years tell a similar story.
      - bobthepanda 7y ago
        What VPs at any company stray from the unified front when doing PR? The lack of an external signal doesn't mean that everything is fine inside.
        adjkant 7y ago
        A fair point, but the actions of the past few years align with that PR statement as well. There are also completely ways for the content team to say better things that would fit that unified front. Or perhaps that would worry investors that the company isn't singularly focused on them, which is 100% a part of this issue as well. The problem is that the company caved to that pressure from Wall Street. The best companies, with true vision, balance their philosophy with the interests of investors and are okay if not everyone is behind their short term moves. The statement IMO either has its original meaning in my first post, or it means Netflix overvalues its short term stock outlook, and that is affecting content. No matter how you slice it, content at Netflix will continue to suffer so long as that holds true / Netflix continues to make similar statements.
jogjayr 7y ago
> A VP of content should be focused on the quality of shows There are many definitions of quality. For Netflix's purpose, quality is probably defined in terms of viewership and stickiness. They have to build a content library from scratch. Ensuring it appeals to the most amount of people per dollar is the most efficient way to do it.
- adjkant 7y ago
  The thing is, they built the library from scratch already! That was explicitly done in the "Bojack era" referenced, by doing exactly what they are not doing now. We're now at the point where a library exists, and they are now going for easy wins quickly instead of continuing to invest in quality content that would actually grow that library. I suspect in an effort to keep their profit growth rate up for Wall Street.
downrightmike 7y ago
They also have to account for tastes, I didn't care for any of your examples: The OA, Tuca and Bertie, Santa Clarita Diet. Making more that may stick or keep a larger audience makes sense. But this winter has been meh, I really wanted October Faction to be good, but they cast some guy that is basically the Mike's dad from Stranger Things. The guy isn't a bad ass alien hunter, more like a zero energy guy that just wants to nap in his recliner.
- Bombthecat 7y ago
  Sounds to me like they adapted the "makes millions" or out strategy.
ReptileMan 7y ago
>This is a huge red flag signal to me. A VP of content should be focused on the quality of shows and the editorial philosophy of a platform. Some of the greatest TV shows and movies were made on very tight budgets. If your show is big budget, but not prestige drama groomed for the emmys then it has to have good audience asap. For me this is a good thing - it will push showrunners to be creative. After all the whole blackadder second season is literally 3 rooms and 4 suits budget wise - and it blows off season 1 out of the water which was with a bigger budget.
Shivetya 7y ago
fwiw, I never even heard of BoJack. I did read Netflix recently inked a 275 million deal with Adam Sandler for four movies [0]. I am not sure if that includes movies released to theaters as well. My first issue with Netflix is that that damn auto run of previews you get when trying to sort through the available content. My second issue is compared to D+ they are grossly over charging. [0] https://apnews.com/d52fbcbd99b9506efdf06eb9bc8540ec https://apnews.com/d52fbcbd99b9506efdf06eb9bc8540ec
- AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
  > I did read Netflix recently inked a 275 million deal with Adam Sandler for four movies [0] Taking a page out of Sony's playbook, I see.
- hermitdev 7y ago
  To be fair, a couple of the Adam Sandler movies haven't been half bad (at least for Adam Sandler), like Murder Mystery. Uncut Gems is also supposed to be pretty good, but I've not seen it yet.
  - basch 7y ago
    I don't think Uncut Gems counts as a Sandler movie, he was just an actor in it. Netflix is shooting for lowest common denominator television, TV that keeps engagement and attention. They shoot for just enough to get nominated for some awards, for the press. They are not Anapoura or A24esque.
- anchpop 7y ago
  My roommate has D+ and there's almost nothing on it that's interesting to me. I like Marvel movies, too, but it feels like half the time I try to play one it says "Sorry, this won't be available until x date". I started watching the new Star Wars show and didn't find it that entertaining. I'd much rather spend the money on Netflix or ad-free Hulu (also owned by Disney).
rdiddly 7y ago
Agreed - she should be fighting for quality content that she believes in, in meetings, while some moustache-twirling villain in a top hat patronizingly says to her that shit she just said (but occasionally is convinced/won over). That's the dynamic that keeps a film studio (or hell even a record label, back in the day) vibrant, relevant, and yes oddly enough, making money for years.
redis_mlc 7y ago
What Netflix needs is to hire Harvey Weinstein. He's one of the greatest content geniuses in American history. He did more for film art than anybody, and made money while doing it. I worked at Netflix, and their business model didn't make any sense then, and makes even less sense now that Disney is a goliath. Anybody can build and operate a CDN these days if they access to content that people want to pay for.
thrav 7y ago
The focus on ROI explains why most of the shows are commercials in disguise these days. Time to start converting all of those captive eyeballs into cash, just like Youtube.

chrisseaton 7y ago

> A VP of content should be focused on the quality of shows The sole purpose of Netflix is to make money. That’s all it’s there for. So that the owners (which includes thousands of normal working class employees) can buy food for their families. Everyone should be focused on that goal, surely?

adjkant 7y ago
> The sole purpose of Netflix is to make money. No, that's the capitalist investors view. The problem is that Netflix now sees it as theirs. I'd bet quite a good sum of money that was not the goal when it started. I'd be surprised if that was the goal in 2010-2015 even. > So that the owners (which includes thousands of normal working class employees) can buy food for their families. If that were true, they would not be trying so hard to turn these excess profits. With how Netflix pays I don't think you can really call their employees "normal working class" either. Netflix is a classic case of greed and profit corrupting art. In some ways inevitable, but it's sad to see there's not even an internal tension between finance and content. That should be a battle that is waged daily in order to balance multiple purposes: both making money to support its employees and investors, and the art of shows and movies, among others.
- __s 7y ago
  If your business is art & you sell out on your art, you might as well have sold out your business
- coffeefirst 7y ago
  Related, I keep noticing that the people who make the psychopath-investor argument seem to forget the company exists to make money by actually doing something. Doing the something well enough that someone else wants to pay you for it (or keep paying you for it) is a pretty important part of that.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- kgwgk 7y ago
  From their 2000 S-1 filing: “Our goal is to be the definitive online intermediary for choosing movies and other video entertainment”. Why would they want to become that if not for the money?
  - 1123581321 7y ago
    - To make TV shows better - To reduce the number of product/political commercials - To spread the best media from every country to everyone There are legitimate reasons besides money.
apk-d 7y ago
The same way the sole purpose of humans is to eat burgers and reproduce, yes.
mlyle 7y ago
People should be working on making their area of work as awesome as it can be. P&L is important. But so are things like long-term opinion of Netflix's content brand. Equity valuations assume distant future returns. Yes, there's strategic decisions to be made at both the department and overall level about how much one tries to maximize current cash output vs. invests in the brand and infrastructure. Not to mention: it works better when you have different parties advocating for different parts of this picture and arguing. Let finance try and squeeze out every nickel that can be squeezed, today. Let content seek after a vision of success. And let creatives and finance argue and advocate and figure out a compromise that works and fits in as much of what each wants as possible.
__s 7y ago
Good content creates long term value. Focusing on money often leads to short term thinking. Focus on money often means investments are more likely to be seen as losses. Because the review is going to ask "What is the ROI?" & for long term things you're going to say "I'm not sure" because there's more unknowns. But you can know that you're making good content, so that should translate to good things Same goes for Research & Development. Quarterly profits are not the correct KPI for every department. Where will those quarterly profits be ten years from now?
MereInterest 7y ago
I'm rather sick of the idea that corporations exist solely to make money. It is a relatively new idea, but is now stated and repeated without justification. Corporations are legal entities, and exist within the framework that is allowed for them. Where that framework promotes poor behavior, it should be changed. Ethics? Nope, money. Good art? Nope, money. Public benefit? Nope, money. It is a reductive view that assumes that the legal framework is static, unchanging, and aligned towards morally good benefit.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  You can take the money you earn from a company and invest it into the non-profit arts and public benefit if you want to.
- tomnipotent 7y ago
  > It is a relatively new idea, It's been around for thousands of years. Can find examples throughout history as far back as Silk Road and probably further. What is a relatively new idea is doing things for non-profitable reasons.
  - bmm6o 7y ago
    Since the quoted comment was about corporations, you'll want to focus on the last 400 years.
    - tomnipotent 7y ago
      Fair enough. But corporations don't look too dissimilar from any power authority throughout time that's profited disproportionality from labour. Different name, same game.
  - bawolff 7y ago
    Weren't the original corporations basically perishes that had independent assets that were supposed to go to the officeholder instead of normal inheritence-sort of as a legal system hack? While there is a long history of corprate charters being to make money for the shareholders, i think there is a long history of other goals as well.
dasil003 7y ago
Though Experiment: Should a customer service rep to rush you off the phone because your problem is difficult and therefore not a good use of time for them to try to solve? Even from a purely economic standpoint this is a complex question to answer. They need to take into account how many others are experiencing the problem, how likely they are to cancel their subscription, and how the situation is likely to evolve over time. A similar, but infinitely harder problem exists for content production. You simply can't know with any certainty what a given strategy is going to do to long-term demand. If the VP of Content is too focused on the bottom line it will lead to a strategy of pruning production based on short-term viewership. This will decrease the viability of show-runners to do anything risky, ahead-of-its-time or with a longer-term payoff. Potentially even worse is killing cult classics (eg. The OA) which could lead to negative word of mouth both on the customer and on content maker side creating a long-term impact the bean counters can't see until it's too late. So while Netflix overall has fiduciary responsibility, it is not the best strategy for every single person to be focused directly on revenue and ROI. I'd expect Content to have a slightly more abstract objective that allows room for creative judgement. I think Hollywood and HBO understand this dichotomy and how to operate within it, but judging by the overall bland feel of their catalog, Netflix doesn't.
rdiddly 7y ago
As a customer or potential customer I am utterly indifferent if not hostile to that goal. In my world, the purpose of Netflix is to provide me with good stuff to watch. Preferably for free, so I can buy food for my working-class family. If the content is no good, Netflix can cease existing for all I care. And since I and millions of others like me are the ones who continue to allow Netflix to exist, I would say your list of "purposes of Netflix" maybe needs to be expanded to at least two items. Otherwise you've just defined the goal/purpose of a thief, not a commercial entity.

ses1984 7y ago

They know exactly who's watching what. Those shows were just not hits.

adjkant 7y ago
1. I don't believe a show is defined by its widespread popularity. I don't think someone on the content side should believe that either. TV and movies are forms of art, and good art is good art. If Netflix doesn't value that, it deserves to lose every bit of market share it's about to over the next decade. 2. We don't actually know how the popularity looks because we don't have the numbers. Even with the numbers, show popularity is a function of marketing and time allowed to grow, which is exactly what the article highlights.
- segmondy 7y ago
  Netflix is a business. They need to be profitable, not just make art for the sake of making art. If they go broke, they won't live to make another art. It's a balancing art ;-)
  - adjkant 7y ago
    I never said it wasn't a balancing act (in fact I explicitly noted they should care about money) but the content team is exactly the team that should be fighting tooth and nail internally against those constraints. That quote makes it sound like they have rolled over, and their content decisions of the past 3 years tell a similar story.
    - bobthepanda 7y ago
      What VPs at any company stray from the unified front when doing PR? The lack of an external signal doesn't mean that everything is fine inside.
      - adjkant 7y ago
        A fair point, but the actions of the past few years align with that PR statement as well. There are also completely ways for the content team to say better things that would fit that unified front. Or perhaps that would worry investors that the company isn't singularly focused on them, which is 100% a part of this issue as well. The problem is that the company caved to that pressure from Wall Street. The best companies, with true vision, balance their philosophy with the interests of investors and are okay if not everyone is behind their short term moves. The statement IMO either has its original meaning in my first post, or it means Netflix overvalues its short term stock outlook, and that is affecting content. No matter how you slice it, content at Netflix will continue to suffer so long as that holds true / Netflix continues to make similar statements.

jogjayr 7y ago

> A VP of content should be focused on the quality of shows There are many definitions of quality. For Netflix's purpose, quality is probably defined in terms of viewership and stickiness. They have to build a content library from scratch. Ensuring it appeals to the most amount of people per dollar is the most efficient way to do it.

adjkant 7y ago
The thing is, they built the library from scratch already! That was explicitly done in the "Bojack era" referenced, by doing exactly what they are not doing now. We're now at the point where a library exists, and they are now going for easy wins quickly instead of continuing to invest in quality content that would actually grow that library. I suspect in an effort to keep their profit growth rate up for Wall Street.

downrightmike 7y ago

They also have to account for tastes, I didn't care for any of your examples: The OA, Tuca and Bertie, Santa Clarita Diet. Making more that may stick or keep a larger audience makes sense. But this winter has been meh, I really wanted October Faction to be good, but they cast some guy that is basically the Mike's dad from Stranger Things. The guy isn't a bad ass alien hunter, more like a zero energy guy that just wants to nap in his recliner.

Bombthecat 7y ago
Sounds to me like they adapted the "makes millions" or out strategy.

ReptileMan 7y ago

>This is a huge red flag signal to me. A VP of content should be focused on the quality of shows and the editorial philosophy of a platform. Some of the greatest TV shows and movies were made on very tight budgets. If your show is big budget, but not prestige drama groomed for the emmys then it has to have good audience asap. For me this is a good thing - it will push showrunners to be creative. After all the whole blackadder second season is literally 3 rooms and 4 suits budget wise - and it blows off season 1 out of the water which was with a bigger budget.

Shivetya 7y ago

fwiw, I never even heard of BoJack. I did read Netflix recently inked a 275 million deal with Adam Sandler for four movies [0]. I am not sure if that includes movies released to theaters as well. My first issue with Netflix is that that damn auto run of previews you get when trying to sort through the available content. My second issue is compared to D+ they are grossly over charging. [0] https://apnews.com/d52fbcbd99b9506efdf06eb9bc8540ec https://apnews.com/d52fbcbd99b9506efdf06eb9bc8540ec

AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
> I did read Netflix recently inked a 275 million deal with Adam Sandler for four movies [0] Taking a page out of Sony's playbook, I see.
hermitdev 7y ago
To be fair, a couple of the Adam Sandler movies haven't been half bad (at least for Adam Sandler), like Murder Mystery. Uncut Gems is also supposed to be pretty good, but I've not seen it yet.
- basch 7y ago
  I don't think Uncut Gems counts as a Sandler movie, he was just an actor in it. Netflix is shooting for lowest common denominator television, TV that keeps engagement and attention. They shoot for just enough to get nominated for some awards, for the press. They are not Anapoura or A24esque.
anchpop 7y ago
My roommate has D+ and there's almost nothing on it that's interesting to me. I like Marvel movies, too, but it feels like half the time I try to play one it says "Sorry, this won't be available until x date". I started watching the new Star Wars show and didn't find it that entertaining. I'd much rather spend the money on Netflix or ad-free Hulu (also owned by Disney).

rdiddly 7y ago

Agreed - she should be fighting for quality content that she believes in, in meetings, while some moustache-twirling villain in a top hat patronizingly says to her that shit she just said (but occasionally is convinced/won over). That's the dynamic that keeps a film studio (or hell even a record label, back in the day) vibrant, relevant, and yes oddly enough, making money for years.

redis_mlc 7y ago

What Netflix needs is to hire Harvey Weinstein. He's one of the greatest content geniuses in American history. He did more for film art than anybody, and made money while doing it. I worked at Netflix, and their business model didn't make any sense then, and makes even less sense now that Disney is a goliath. Anybody can build and operate a CDN these days if they access to content that people want to pay for.

thrav 7y ago

The focus on ROI explains why most of the shows are commercials in disguise these days. Time to start converting all of those captive eyeballs into cash, just like Youtube.