Netflix and How Supervening Social Necessity Led to its Success
Thesis:
The success of Netflix has revolutionized the way people consume television, resulting from supervening social necessities. In turn, its success has also led to developments of other streaming services.
In this website, we will be exploring the history of Netflix and how it grew to become the leading streaming service for entertainment in television and film. We will explore its history through the social-constructivist lens of Brian Winston’s (1998) framework for technological innovation, and argue that it is supervening social necessity that has led to its invention and success. Moreover, the different phases or prototypes that Netflix has gone through that has led to its successful invention as a streaming service. Lastly, we will explore Winston’s idea of diffusion and suppression and how it relates to Netflix's competitors.
In April 2017, Netflix hit a milestone when it hit a hundred-million subscribers. That is more than any “over-the-top” (a broadcasting term for media delivered over the internet, rather than cable or satellite) streaming network, including Amazon Prime and Hulu. Netflix is currently available in over 190 countries. Although based in the US, 63.7% of Netflix’s subscribers are from outside the US and Canada (Dean, 2021).
The Supervening Social Necessities
Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, Netflix began as a mail-order DVD service. Instead of going to a local store like Blockbuster, Netflix delivered entertainment right to their customers’ doors. According to Winston (1998), the “supervening social necessity” are social factors that define and influence the prototypes. With his model, the supervening social necessities acts as an accelerator that transforms the prototype into an invention (p.11). There are no limits to these, as they can range from changed social circumstances to subjective perceived needs.
Netflix’s mail-in service was directly feeding into a social need of not having to go outside and physically rent out a show or a movie. This first variation of Netflix is also credited to the bankruptcy of Blockbuster Video and the general demise of video rental in the United States (Lobato, Lotz, 2020). However, with the growing popularity of the internet, Netflix adapted their business into the changing social climate. The platform had moved on to target another social necessity: instant delivery and consumption of entertainment. Thus, ten years later after delivering its billionth DVD, Netflix expanded into internet video-on-demand. What they offered was a revolutionary new way of watching TV. Rather than watching aired episodes weekly, viewers could instead consume an entire season in one go —what is now known as “binge watching”.
Prototypes
Winston (1998) describes four prototypes: “rejected, accepted, parallel and partial” (p.8). We can consider the mail-in-service version of Netflix as an accepted prototype, or an early and incomplete operation that “has created a partial need which the prototype partially fills”. Indeed, the mail-in-service was a direct successor to Blockbuster’s and other local rental stores’ bankruptcy, however the internet video-on-demand model outgrew it.
Thanks to this new model, some shows that struggled to attract an audience week in, week out managed to avoid cancellation. The most famous example is Breaking Bad. In the 2013 Emmys, the show’s creator Vince Gilligan said, “Netflix kept us on the air” (Andreeva, 2019). Improvements in streaming technology and a rise in the use of handheld devices helped Netflix’s growth, as did the platform’s vast library of films and TV shows. However there was one significant problem: none of the content belonged to Netflix. That means the company was not only paying the original network for each show, but they also had no guarantee that they would be able to keep the rights forever. It can be argued that this stage of Netflix would be a partial prototype, which Winston describes as prototypes which “simply did not work very well” (p.8). Netflix’s solution: to go from streaming TV—to creating it.
Invention
Netflix’s first original show, House of Cards, was launched in February 2013 and made history later that year by becoming the first online-only television series to receive an Emmy nomination. Directed by the renowned David Fincher, it had proven that Netflix could attract top Hollywood talent to work on a web TV series. By 2016, Netflix grew to producing around 126 original programs a year, from children’s cartoons to feature-length documentaries. So far, they’ve won 226 awards, including 8 Oscars, 1 Grammy, 173 Emmys, and 12 Golden Globes.
Author Mareike Jenner (2018) regards Netflix as a process and a discourse folded within a multitude of conversations which re-conceptualise what television is, and what it means in regards to power relations between audiences and industries in various national and transnational contexts (p.19). She ultimately argues that Netflix’s interface, publication model, discourses, and transnational productions have fundamentally reshaped what online
streaming audiences consider television.
Diffusion and Suppression
Winston (1998) describes ‘diffusion’ as caused by an “invention being pushed out into the world” (p.11). Moreover, he also discusses the ‘law of suppression’ that “ensures any new communications technology takes decades to be diffused” (p.13). Netflix are no longer the only players in the game. Other on-demand services such as Hulu have developed original programming, while networks like HBO and Disney have created their own online streaming services. So how will Netflix continue to compete against the crowd? The company plans to increase its original programming content, meanwhile also expanding on native language content (Penner, Straubhaar, 2020). Beyond that, they could even one day venture into live television, covering content such as concerts and sports events. Whatever the future holds, one thing is certain: Netflix has changed the way we consume television, film, and entertainment forever, and that streaming services like it will continue to grow and be relevant for years to come.
References
Andreeva, N. (2019). Vince Gilligan’s ‘Breaking Bad’ Movie Headed To Netflix & AMC. Deadline. Retrieved from deadline.com.
Dean, B. (2021). Netflix Subscriber and Growth Statistics: How Many People Watch Netflix in 2021? Retrieved from backlinko.
Jenner, M. (2018). Netflix & the Re-invention of Television.
Lobato, R., Lotz, A. (2020). Imagining Global Video: The Challenge of Netflix. Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. P.132-136.
Penner, T.A., Straubhaar, J. (2020). Netflix originals and exclusively licensed titles in Brazilian catalog: a mapping producing countries. Retrieved from usp.br.
Winston, B. (1998). Media, technology and society: A history: from the telegraph to the Internet. Retrieved from monoskop.org.