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How Will We Know If House of Cards Was a Hit?
- evan_ 14y agoWe'll have to watch it, and decide for ourselves whether it was good or not!
- hayksaakian 14y agoWatch the money. If there's a season 2, it was a hit.
- jacques_chester 14y agoThe original material went on to three novels and three series in the UK. Though it might be hard to translate To Play the King into an American context.
- alaskamiller 14y agoThey already bought 2 seasons.
- corin_ 14y ago> FX chief John Landgraf [...] "How will you determine if something's a hit?" The real question is why does anybody outside of Netflix need to know whether it's a hit or not? > Remember, with a subscription costing about $100 a year, adding 10 million subscribers over the next few years would bring in an addition $1 billion to Netflix's coffers. Am I missing something, or is this the most irrelevant sentence ever written in journalistic context? Genuine question. (Not to mention the fact that it seems to mix annual subscriptions to a one-off bank-balance boost?)
- sliverstorm 14y agoThe real question is why does anybody outside of Netflix need to know whether it's a hit or not? If they can prove it was a hit, that's good marketing material.
- alaskamiller 14y agoWould be classier if they don't, great speaks for itself. But I don't doubt they would share the numbers when they re-pitch every top tier Hollywood talent.
- zecho 14y agoInvestors would very much like to know how their $4 million dollar per episode investment is panning out.
- jonursenbach 14y agoIt also encourages other streaming companies to follow suit with more original content.
- corin_ 14y agoHow is Netflix not using something for marketing purposes a problem for us or for FX? Sure, there's arguments for releasing it, but I don't see any arguments for that "but it's my right to know!" feeling.
- gwern 14y agoInvestors might want to know. Consider the social utility of not propping up (via ignorance & secrecy) the stock price on a company that is cratering.
- corin_ 14y agoYeah they might, but since when have companies given out every single aspect of their private information just to appease investors?
- cwilson 14y agoExactly. I tell my investors lots of things I don't put on our website or pitch a reporter with, especially if it's part of a long-tail strategy.
- gwern 14y agoIsn't that pretty much the point of the entire elaborate SEC apparatus of reporting requirements? Making companies disgorge private information to enable the markets to judge them?
- lazerwalker 14y ago> The real question is why does anybody outside of Netflix need to know whether it's a hit or not? If you're in the media journalism industry (as, say, a writer at Vulture), of course you want to know whether it's a hit or not. Ratings numbers are the perfect excuse to write weekly opinion pieces about how Netflix is doomed/thriving to drum up pageviews.
- corin_ 14y agoMaybe I wasn't clear enough in my question - actually no, I was: why does anyone need to know, not want to know. Like in my two examples about why FX and I might want to know, journalists might also want to know, and again there's plenty of things they want to know without having a right to know.
- zecho 14y agoThere are quite a few ways to answer your question, so I'll do my best to address all of them that come to mind. First, why does anyone need to know anything? There's a favorite passage of mine in Walden about news being gossip, and those that read it being women over their tea, which cuts to the trivial nature of most news, but Thoreau failed to recognize some things because his focus was on living his own life and not worrying about the lives of others. He had no use for the type of information he derides, but never acknowledged that others may have use for such information. So, with that in mind, let's think about this from a few perspectives beyond our own myopia. The audience. Audience can be broken down into various sub-groups, but I will focus on the likeliest readers of Vulture. Media professionals may need to know this information because this information gives them greater insight into their own work. If Netflix produced and distributed a popular show in a novel way, I would very much like to know details like exactly how popular this show has been. Media consumers may like to know this information as well. If a new show (let's call it Jumping Off A Bridge) airs and it is reported that 5 million people watched, perhaps the show is good. If 5 million people are watching Jumping Off A Bridge, perhaps I would enjoy Jumping Off A Bridge, too. Such is the world of entertainment news, which is most definitely not hard news, but clearly has an audience. (Let's also not forget that audience is what advertisers want.) Which gets me to why journalists would need this information. There is a particular news value called magnitude. If something affects a large portion of their audience, then the news should be reported. As Vulture is a media blog, of course their audience is likely the one or both of the subgroups I mentioned above. However, this information has little value on, say, the front page of The Minneapolis Star Tribune or even most pages of The New York Times, as the number of viewers could not possibly affect a sizable number of their readers in general. Cultural proximity matters. Do journalists have a right to know this information? Sometimes, sometimes not. That's really irrelevant to journalists. The purpose of their work is to provide relevant information to their target audience, whether that is tech start ups or the 112 people of Podunk, Kansas or the citizens of the United States who expect and need a fourth estate as watchdog over its governing bodies.
- dfc 14y ago"Am I missing something, or is this the most irrelevant sentence ever written in journalistic context? Genuine question." Really? I cannot believe that is a genuine question. You actually think that there is more than a 1 in 1,000 (or 1 in 10, you pick the odds) chance of that being the most irrelevant sentence ever written?
- corin_ 14y agoI was clearly being somewhat hyperbolic, my "genuine question" was assigned to "Am I missing something", as in that wasn't rhetorical, I really want to know if that sentence is as stupid as I think it is. (And even within my hyperbole, you missed my "in journalistic context"!)
- dfc 14y agoSomewhat? Moreover, I caught your "in journalistic context[sic]" and I still thought your hyperbole was comical. It was almost as if you were attempting some sort of existential/postmodern parody of the original sentence by writing something that was even more absurd and irrelevant. Fluff journalism is all around us; a sentence that brings up the poorly understood economics of an expensive TV serial produced by a dotcom is hardly the most irrelevant sentence written in the last week, let alone ever.
- corin_ 14y agoI'm not sure why you felt the need for that "[sic]".
- dfc 14y agoI felt the need to use "[sic]" because that is the correct way to identify an intentionally transcribed error (An error in any context outside of twitter and txt speak).
- corin_ 14y agoI'm aware of its meaning, I was asking why you felt the need to use it. Admittedly I'm pretty tired, but I'm not seeing the error you noticed. Side note for when you've pointed out my error: in many places [sic] is extremely useful, in contexts such as this it serves as a rather passive aggressive way of complaining about a typo.
- _dark_matter_ 14y agoDear Jesus, another House of Cards post?
- geuis 14y agoI hear where you're coming from. It can seem annoying. But look at it as a coal mine canary. If no one was interested in the show, no one would talk about it. What multiple postings show has less to do with which show Netflix produces, but rather that Netflix is making its own show(s). We live in the transitional period of high price, high production content mainly being distributed via traditional means and lower quality content being produced by independents on places like YouTube and distributed independently. Netflix is one of the first major companies that bases it's business on Internet distribution rather than cable. That company is now making high production, high price content and distributing that online. People are interested to see how this experiment will pan out, thus generating things like multiple postings about House of Cards.
- _dark_matter_ 14y agoExtremely valid points. I was in no way demeaning the value of the experiment, or of the show itself; it was just my initial reaction to seeing the post. Anytime a company decides to shakeup the establishment (in this case, cable and pay-per-view), it is extremely interesting to the community as a whole.
- defrost 14y agoThis specific submission dovetails nicely with a recent submission about visualizations, summaries, and comparisons of HN user karma (aka cumulative instantaneous reactions); Netflix is rejecting TV karma in favour of sustained quality load.
- Gormo 14y agoOn the other hand, there have been at least three posts relating to Stoicism on the front page today. Fortunately, both topics are interesting.
- troymc 14y agoWhile Netflix may not release viewer numbers, there are plenty of other ways to tell if HoC is a "hit." How often is it mentioned in blogs, forums, Facebook, newspapers, Twitter, magazines, podcasts, etc.? Do fan groups, forums, and meetups emerge? Is there fan fiction? Does Netflix pursue merchandising, book versions, a video game, or a feature film?
- sliverstorm 14y agoIt's almost like Google built a tool that tracks exactly that sort of thing! http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=house%20of%20cards http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=house%20of%20cards Don't worry, I forgot about it too until just now.
- troymc 14y agoYep, that's another one (number of Google searches for 'house of cards').
- duaneb 14y agoTelevision would probably be far better without ratings. Just imagine if CNN didn't need to worry about viewers: they could actually report news instead of providing entertainment.
- eob 14y agoThis is an interesting statement to think about. At first, I nod in agreement. Upon second thought, I realize that it points right at the age-old debate about what makes art "art". Is good art that which sells, or is good art that which connoisseurs find taste in? Perhaps the only reasonable response is to admit that there is value in both definitions, and it would be a good thing if the television market allowed for both approaches to flourish. That said, even if public investors aren't provided viewership numbers, you can sure bet Netflix is paying attention internally. So this is probably just a more private version of the same old ratings game.
- duaneb 14y agoWell, I think ratings will always be useful—not all new shows are good, and ratings help weed the failures from the successes. I just hope for a future where ratings don't dictate income, as they currently do via advertisements. Netflix doesn't have this problem because they aren't beholden to advertisers. I hope they get The News Hour or something soon, I would watch the fuck out of it.
- corin_ 14y agoRatings for Netflix shows may impact revenue less directly, but they still very much do, else they wouldn't be making them at all. A good show could bring subscribers in, or convince subscribers to keep paying, while a bad show.. well, it probably won't drive people away on its own, but it certainly could bring in / keep less subscribers than it cost to make.
- duaneb 14y agoI more meant they don't have the advertiser problem.
- circa 14y agoOf course it's a hit. Who doesn't like radiohead?
- fsckin 14y agoOne could argue by their logic that Lilyhammer (the first original Netflix content) was a hit, now that House of Cards is out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilyhammer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilyhammer
- amalag 14y agoI am surprised noone else is mentioning that series as the first original content. I was so bad I couldn't watch the first episode.
- 27182818284 14y agoWe'll know it is a hit more than any other show newly released show, right? I mean Netflix could actually sort out the viewing habits and see who gave it a try and then stopped, and who ended up hooked and watched five episodes the same afternoon they watched it for the first time. That's super powerful in my opinion.
- philwelch 14y agoIndeed. They have the 21st century equivalent of Nielsen ratings.
- interurban 14y agoThe point is that Netflix will, but unlike traditional broadcast and cable, we won't. Unless I'm mistaken, Netflix isn't included in any sort of ratings, the main source of our information about television viewership. Netflix will indeed have some of the most powerful analytic tools available to apply to their programming, but we have no way of independent verification. Well, I suppose they may break it down in a quarterly report, but they may not have any reason to. I think lots of people are interested in the viability of this model. Television format entertainment hasn't been significantly "disrupted" by the internet yet and this could be a step in a new direction, but it'll be hard to tell without Netflix releasing their numbers.
- edouard1234567 14y agonetflix has a row with popular shows called "popular on netflix", if it shows up in the row it's a hit on netflix.
- Aron 14y agoI think there are a variety of external measures. The # of likes on the show, the critic reception, the avg rating on Netflix, the google trends for 'House of Cards' (close to 'game of thrones' last I looked).. probably twitter activity. Could probably get a decent model out of all that.