This is the blog for the reflection of lecture 4. 

Internet Distributed Television, Netflix, as a representative of streaming television among others, has broken a lot of what has been agreed upon in this field. Below I will discuss Netflix’s impact on the television industry by the reforms that Netflix has made to change television shows and consumer habits.

Since Netflix is an online streaming platform, the content shown on Netflix is more flexible in terms of censorship. Therefore, some clips that can’t be aired in traditional television can be aired in Netflix, which provides more room for creators to play. As a result, some director’s whims can be presented in the form of video, so Netflix pushes the diversity of the video content and the inclusiveness.

It is well known that films and TV series are a problem for independent creators and small production companies in terms of distribution, auditing and production costs. However, on Netflix these are hardly a problem, whether it’s the platform’s share, distribution costs, or even funding gaps. Netflix platform will provide support for creators.

For example, the hugely successful 2021 TV series, Squid’s Game, generated unimaginable revenues on the streaming platform. Squid’s Game, which cost only $21 million to produce, cost a staggering $200 million to $300 million to produce for a TV series in the same genre.

Consumption patterns have also changed under the influence of Netflix. Because Netflix is a streaming platform so you can watch Netflix anytime, anywhere, as long as you have a mobile device with internet access. This is a major change which allows people to not just catch up on their TV, but watch the videos they want to see whenever they want to see them.

The Netflix platform is a subscription-based service, so you can watch any content on the platform for as long as you subscribe to it, without being tied to a TV schedule. Moreover, most of the content of Netflix platform is released at once, rather than updating an episode every day like some traditional platforms, so that the user can always watch the platform will not be due to the daily update caused by the incoherence of the viewing content, so that the audience can be more engaged.

—-posted by Donghan Duan, BA in Media and Communication