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So as I understand it, the author is suggesting that NetFlix produce a bunch of low-rent pilots (or half seasons or so) throw them against their wall of subscri

So as I understand it, the author is suggesting that NetFlix produce a bunch of low-rent pilots (or half seasons or so) throw them against their wall of subscribers with a bit of recommendation-targeted magic, see what sticks, then spend the money to produce the "grown up" versions. At first glance, that isn't a terrible idea, but even if it were their eventual strategy, I still think it makes sense to spend big bucks on top shelf series to start. For one thing, they weren't totally "blind": If you believe their spin, they spent a lot of time analyzing their audience to target exactly the kinds of shows they should make, and they have a lot more data to go on than, say, AMC had seven years ago. For another, if they wanted their subscribers to take them seriously as an HBO-like content producer, it helps to actually produce some HBO-level content right out of the gate. Once subscribers trust that you can make Emmy-worthy shows, they're more likely to tolerate your ultra-targeted but cut-rate test-batch series. Even so, I'm not sure how the suggested strategy is supposed to play out: Say they made 100 cheap shows instead of 5 expensive ones. In order to be more interesting to any particular audience to overcome the fact that they aren't (yet) Hollywood-quality, one would think they'd have to appeal deeply to a narrow audience (I'd give a science fiction show about a generational ship a chance no matter how cheaply it was produced, for example). But now your show is in a trap: It's too focused, and will have a hard time gaining an audience even when the production values go up (and how do you "scale" to more expensive actors?) Time travel geeks loved the movie "Primer", which cost about the same as a small car to produce, but a million-dollar-an-episode show based on the concept has roughly 0 chance of making its money back.

jonnathanson 13y ago
Author here. I don't disagree with you, especially in the second paragraph. To some degree I think it was smart for Netflix to make a big splash this early on. But the perception that they're "paying for quality" is a bit suspect, given that Hollywood itself -- ostensibly "paying for quality" in its entire process -- has a 98% failure rate on developing projects. Quality talent doesn't always yield a quality product in the creative business. Even the best writers, directors, producers, and actors have their failures. I have no reason to suspect Netflix was any smarter in its approach to developing House of Cards than networks would have been -- though I could be wrong (and hope I am). At the end of the day, the $100M for HoC was a big bet. It was a signaling tactic, a marketing tactic, and a bet on top-tier talent. But it was a bet, nonetheless, and an expensive one. That it seems to have paid off (to an extent? jury is still out) shouldn't fool us into 20/20 hindsight bias. It could just easily have busted. "So as I understand it, the author is suggesting that NetFlix produce a bunch of low-rent pilots (or half seasons or so) throw them against their wall of subscribers with a bit of recommendation-targeted magic, see what sticks, then spend the money to produce the "grown up" versions." Not necessarily, and I should clarify here. I think pilots can be shot for a lot less than they are, and I think audiences are proving themselves quite receptive to previews and other short-form "pilot" systems as proofs of concept. A lot of movie trailers are increasingly being made before the movies even start shooting ("teaser" trailers). I think there are ways Netflix can take the guesswork out of the development process, even if production is still an expensive endeavor. You have to pay for a quality product, but the system right now also pays heavily for the risk in the pre-production process. That process can probably be de-risked considerably. I would not recommend testing 100 half-baked concepts to see what sticks. But I do think Netflix could test or tease concepts in development to determine which ones to develop, and/or how to present new shows to the right early adopters. Something I probably wasn't as clear about as I could have been: half the battle in finding a hit is developing an audience, not just a show. Netflix has better audience-development capabilities at all stage of the production equation. It doesn't need to guess quite as much as networks do. Maybe -- to your point -- Netflix's audience-segmenting capabilities give it the ability to play the big bets game more than networks can. But historically, people have been shockingly bad at predicting what will actually hit and what will miss. Star Wars was laughed out of every major movie studio in town, for instance, and at the script level, it sure didn't look like "quality" to the eyes of the execs reading it. On the other end of the spectrum, a show like Firefly -- which fans (including myself) consider one of the most brilliant things ever made, has repeatedly failed to gain mass appeal beyond its limited niche, despite many attempts at re-marketing home video, a feature film, etc. The operative lesson here is that "quality," as an objective concept, is hard to parse and hard to pin down. "Quality" is more of a function with a lot of variables, and many of the biggest variables are on the production side and the audience side -- not the development side. Tldr: People are over-investing in development, when they could be investing more heavily in production -- whether at greater scale, or in greater depth per project.
- twoodfin 13y ago
  I want to believe you're on to something here, but how do you "tease" a show like "Mad Men" at low cost? The best tease for that show would be something like the incredible "Carousel" pitch from the end of Season 1[1], and indeed, a link to that from reddit was how I finally decided to check the show out a couple of years in. But that arose organically, after a ton of money had been spent on script, casting, production... [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRDUFpsHus http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRDUFpsHus
  - jonnathanson 13y ago
    I'm not saying I have a fantastic answer, and I want to admit that. (I'd be a lot more successful right now if I did!) I made some edits to my reply, and I think the answer I can best come up with is this: spend less money on development, and reallocate more of that money to production (either of more series in general, or on fewer and better series, or on licensing of exclusives from shows on other channels). Money in production seems to have better ROI, while money in development is a spin of the wheel. Another thought: a lot of great shows get canned from the networks simply because advertisers don't grok them, or networks bungle the marketing and scheduling of them. Perhaps Netflix can get into the business of picking up these wasted opportunities? That seems to have been the operating logic behind its investment in Arrested Development, and I don't see why that model wouldn't work for other shows like it. Small anecdote from personal experience: when I worked in development at NBC, we invested a ton of money into a high-profile Aaron Sorkin dramedy about life at a TV network. It was a fantastic script, by a confirmed creative genius with a track record ten miles long. As bets went, it was about as much of a sure thing as anybody had seen. That same year we spent a much smaller sum on a quirky workplace comedy about life at a network. Of the two shows: Studio 60 lasted all of a season. 30 Rock ran for seven. As great a show as 30 Rock became, it wasn't all that great from the get go. A lot of the magic happened in production, with the hiring of a fantastic writing staff and the time to let the whole thing gel and find audience fit. I'm not sure what the operative lesson is from that experience. But it did teach me quite a bit about how you can't tell quality when you supposedly see it. Especially early on. :)
    - 13y ago
thenomad 13y ago
"I'd give a science fiction show about a generational ship a chance no matter how cheaply it was produced, for example" Thanks, that's extremely useful market data, albeit only one data point. (I'm a microbudget show producer, so I'm very interested to hear this sort of thing.)
wtracy 13y ago
I'd give a science fiction show about a generational ship a chance no matter how cheaply it was produced, for example Something like The Starlost?
apendleton 13y ago
The low-rent-show model is almost exactly what Amazon ended up going with, and to be frank, the shows are crap. Nobody joined Prime for those. Netflix apparently knows they have to have solid shows with name-brand talent for anyone to care.

jonnathanson 13y ago

Author here. I don't disagree with you, especially in the second paragraph. To some degree I think it was smart for Netflix to make a big splash this early on. But the perception that they're "paying for quality" is a bit suspect, given that Hollywood itself -- ostensibly "paying for quality" in its entire process -- has a 98% failure rate on developing projects. Quality talent doesn't always yield a quality product in the creative business. Even the best writers, directors, producers, and actors have their failures. I have no reason to suspect Netflix was any smarter in its approach to developing House of Cards than networks would have been -- though I could be wrong (and hope I am). At the end of the day, the $100M for HoC was a big bet. It was a signaling tactic, a marketing tactic, and a bet on top-tier talent. But it was a bet, nonetheless, and an expensive one. That it seems to have paid off (to an extent? jury is still out) shouldn't fool us into 20/20 hindsight bias. It could just easily have busted. "So as I understand it, the author is suggesting that NetFlix produce a bunch of low-rent pilots (or half seasons or so) throw them against their wall of subscribers with a bit of recommendation-targeted magic, see what sticks, then spend the money to produce the "grown up" versions." Not necessarily, and I should clarify here. I think pilots can be shot for a lot less than they are, and I think audiences are proving themselves quite receptive to previews and other short-form "pilot" systems as proofs of concept. A lot of movie trailers are increasingly being made before the movies even start shooting ("teaser" trailers). I think there are ways Netflix can take the guesswork out of the development process, even if production is still an expensive endeavor. You have to pay for a quality product, but the system right now also pays heavily for the risk in the pre-production process. That process can probably be de-risked considerably. I would not recommend testing 100 half-baked concepts to see what sticks. But I do think Netflix could test or tease concepts in development to determine which ones to develop, and/or how to present new shows to the right early adopters. Something I probably wasn't as clear about as I could have been: half the battle in finding a hit is developing an audience, not just a show. Netflix has better audience-development capabilities at all stage of the production equation. It doesn't need to guess quite as much as networks do. Maybe -- to your point -- Netflix's audience-segmenting capabilities give it the ability to play the big bets game more than networks can. But historically, people have been shockingly bad at predicting what will actually hit and what will miss. Star Wars was laughed out of every major movie studio in town, for instance, and at the script level, it sure didn't look like "quality" to the eyes of the execs reading it. On the other end of the spectrum, a show like Firefly -- which fans (including myself) consider one of the most brilliant things ever made, has repeatedly failed to gain mass appeal beyond its limited niche, despite many attempts at re-marketing home video, a feature film, etc. The operative lesson here is that "quality," as an objective concept, is hard to parse and hard to pin down. "Quality" is more of a function with a lot of variables, and many of the biggest variables are on the production side and the audience side -- not the development side. Tldr: People are over-investing in development, when they could be investing more heavily in production -- whether at greater scale, or in greater depth per project.

twoodfin 13y ago
I want to believe you're on to something here, but how do you "tease" a show like "Mad Men" at low cost? The best tease for that show would be something like the incredible "Carousel" pitch from the end of Season 1[1], and indeed, a link to that from reddit was how I finally decided to check the show out a couple of years in. But that arose organically, after a ton of money had been spent on script, casting, production... [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRDUFpsHus http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRDUFpsHus
- jonnathanson 13y ago
  I'm not saying I have a fantastic answer, and I want to admit that. (I'd be a lot more successful right now if I did!) I made some edits to my reply, and I think the answer I can best come up with is this: spend less money on development, and reallocate more of that money to production (either of more series in general, or on fewer and better series, or on licensing of exclusives from shows on other channels). Money in production seems to have better ROI, while money in development is a spin of the wheel. Another thought: a lot of great shows get canned from the networks simply because advertisers don't grok them, or networks bungle the marketing and scheduling of them. Perhaps Netflix can get into the business of picking up these wasted opportunities? That seems to have been the operating logic behind its investment in Arrested Development, and I don't see why that model wouldn't work for other shows like it. Small anecdote from personal experience: when I worked in development at NBC, we invested a ton of money into a high-profile Aaron Sorkin dramedy about life at a TV network. It was a fantastic script, by a confirmed creative genius with a track record ten miles long. As bets went, it was about as much of a sure thing as anybody had seen. That same year we spent a much smaller sum on a quirky workplace comedy about life at a network. Of the two shows: Studio 60 lasted all of a season. 30 Rock ran for seven. As great a show as 30 Rock became, it wasn't all that great from the get go. A lot of the magic happened in production, with the hiring of a fantastic writing staff and the time to let the whole thing gel and find audience fit. I'm not sure what the operative lesson is from that experience. But it did teach me quite a bit about how you can't tell quality when you supposedly see it. Especially early on. :)
  - 13y ago

thenomad 13y ago

"I'd give a science fiction show about a generational ship a chance no matter how cheaply it was produced, for example" Thanks, that's extremely useful market data, albeit only one data point. (I'm a microbudget show producer, so I'm very interested to hear this sort of thing.)

wtracy 13y ago

I'd give a science fiction show about a generational ship a chance no matter how cheaply it was produced, for example Something like The Starlost?

apendleton 13y ago

The low-rent-show model is almost exactly what Amazon ended up going with, and to be frank, the shows are crap. Nobody joined Prime for those. Netflix apparently knows they have to have solid shows with name-brand talent for anyone to care.