The Economics of Netflix's $100 Million Show

Very unlikely since Netflix is planning to further expand abroad and the key in their business is exclusivity...

The math in this post is bogus since it's only based on incremental revenue brought by new subscribers. Getting more exclusive content does not only bring new subscribers, it also increases retention.

I think the real news is not that netflix is producing its own content but that it's using state of the art analytics to design this new content predicting/modeling the type of scenario/actors/director that would best work for it's 30M+ subscribers.

That's where the true disruption is. If somehow they are better at predicting what people like or don't like, they can design the right show for a given audience and maybe one day change the scenario in realtime depending on your mood a this very specific time...

I'd pay for more Legend of the Seeker, or for someone to do a Mistborn series. I'd pay to see Game of Thrones.

It's not bad. Having Kevin Spacey as the lead is good. There's a good cast of supporting actors too. The writing is a bit mundane, but not terrible. I know the show is somewhat of a remake of a BBC show from a while back, but I never watched it so my take is purely on this experience.

I plan on watching the rest of it. It was interesting enough to have keep me up till 5am doing the "just one more" thing. The format of no commercials and having all the episodes available at launch is a really good thing. I was pleasantly surprised when the 2nd episode started playing as I finished the first one. I was fully expecting to have to wait a week to see the next one. No episode felt rushed, like things had to be crammed into a specific time slot.

The things that work for this format:

1) Release at once 2) Natural variable time lengths 3) Good production values 4) Good cast 5) Decent writing

If they use this as a framework for other types of genres, I think it will be good. I'd personally like to see the next show be sci-fi. Something with a unique premise that has never really been done by networks, because they screw it up. No time travel, or future detective, or alien invaders thing. Something gritty but uplifting, along the veins of Babylon 5, TNG, or BSG.

I'd like to see a near-future show about solar system colonization. Could have an entire system-wide, multi cultural backdrop like Firefly. Hell, try getting Josh Whedon to do it. Visits to Luna, Mars, asteroid mining colonies, deep space science labs, political intrigue from Earth, the companies that own colonies, immigration rights, etc. The solar system as a backdrop is big enough to have an infinite number of stories, but keeps everything so close together that it feels real. Star Trek provided a big galactic tapestry, but many times still felt distant and isolated.

Anyway, check out HoC if you have Netflix. Hopefully we'll see more shows from them.