House of cards (II)

The decision to bypass a pilot episode wasn’t the only difference between Netflix’s approach and that of the “suits.” Instead of following the traditional broadcast model of releasing one episode per week to build an audience, Netflix planned to release all of season one’s thirteen episodes at once. This was unheard of in the television industry. Television broadcasters are limited to a common broadcast schedule that must meet the needs of all their viewers, and a 13-hour show would crowd out all of the network’s other programming for a day.

Netflix had a clear advantage over the broadcasters: its streaming platform didn’t restrict viewers to watching specific episodes at specific times. Rather, they could watch episodes at their convenience, or even “binge watch” the entire season, as 670000 people reportedly did with the second season of House of Cards. They also didn’t have to put up with the annoyance of commercial breaks, having paid, through their subscription fee, for the right to watch the show without them.

In addition to opening up new opportunities and new flexibility for viewers, the “all-at-once” release strategy for House of Cards opened up new creative opportunities and flexibility for Beau Willimon, the show’s head writer. When writing a typical weekly series, he would have to fit each week’s story into precise 22- or 44-minute chunks, depending on whether the show would be broadcast in a 30-minute or a 60-minute slot.

Then, within these slots, he would have to build in time at the beginning of each episode to allow viewers to catch up with plot elements that might have been missed or forgotten, time in the middle of episodes for act breaks to accommodate commercials (the main source of revenue for broadcast content), and time at the end of episodes for “mini-cliff-hangers” to build interest for the next week’s episode. In an all-at-once release, none of these things were necessary, so Willimon was free to focus his energies on creating what he has called “a 13-hour movie.”

Knowing that they had an up-front commitment to a two-season deal, instead of the typical 6- or 12-episode deal, also helped the writers by giving them more time to develop their story. “When they opened the writer’s room, they knew there was going to be a 26-hour , and they wrote accordingly,” Sarandos said in a 2013 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “I think we gave the writers a different creative playground to work in, and the show is better because of it.”

Netflix’s subscription-based business model and on-demand content provided creative freedom for the writers in other areas as well. For example, Beau Willimon’s script for House of Cards began by having Frank Underwood, the show’s lead character, strangle his neighbors’ injured dog – a scene that made a number of TV veterans at Netflix uncomfortable. “Early on,” Willimon observed at the 2014 Aspen Ideas Festival, “there were a few people… who said, ‘You can’t kill a dog, you’ll lose half your viewership in the first 30 seconds.’ So I go to Fincher and I say, ‘Hey, man, I’m really into this opening. I think it really works for the opening of the show. People are telling me we’ll lose half of our viewers when we kill this dog. What do you think about that?’ And he thinks for a second and goes, ‘I don’t give a shit.’ And I go, ‘I don’t either.’ And he says ‘Let’s do it.’”

For most television shows, that sort of creative freedom would have been almost unthinkable. In the same Aspen Ideas Forum panel, the industry veteran Michael Eisner noted that if he had tried to include a similarly violent scene in an episode for broadcast television “the president would call me, the chairman of the board would call me, I would be out in 10 minutes.”

Why would this scene work for Netflix but not for broadcast television? First, Netflix wasn’t pursuing an advertising-supported business model, so it didn’t have to worry about offending its advertisers by including a controversial scene. Second, because Netflix provided an on-demand streaming platform with many different options, it could risk offending individual subscribers with the content in some of those options. In a broadcast world, you can deliver only one show at a time to your audience, so that show must appeal to as many viewers as possible.

But a Netflix subscriber who was repulsed by Frank Underwood’s actions could choose from more than 100,000 hours of other Netflix content. In fact, by observing how individual viewers responded to this scene, Netflix was able to gather important information about their preferences. As Willimon said, “if you weren’t going to be able to survive this dog strangling, this probably wasn’t the show for you.”

Customer data, and the ability to personalize the Netflix experience for its subscribers also gave Netflix new options to promote its shows. Incumbent television networks know the general characteristics of viewers from Nielsen estimates and other surveys, but they rarely know who their viewers are as individuals; even if they do, there is no easy way for them to promote content directly to those consumers. Typically, the best they can do for a new show is promote it alongside a similar established show, in the hopes that viewers of the latter will be interested in the former.

Netflix, because it knew its customers as individuals, was able to do much more with House of Cards. It could see what each subscriber had viewed, when, how long, and on what device, and could target individual subscribers on the basis of their actual viewing habits. Netflix even created multiple “trailers” for the show. One featured Kevin Spacey (for subscribers who had liked Spacey’s movies); another featured the show’s female characters (for subscribers who liked movies with strong female leads); yet another focused on the cinematic nuances of the show (for subscribers who had liked Fincher’s movies).

While Netflix was working hard to expand the use of digital channels to distribute and promote content, the networks were trying to find ways to limit the use of digital channels to avoid cannibalizing viewing (and advertising revenue) on their broadcast channels. Some people at the major TV studios understandably saw new digital channels as a threat to their current revenue streams and judiciously avoided licensing content for digital delivery. It’s hard to fault them for that choice – killing the golden goose is a good way to get fired in any business.

When shows were licensed on digital channels, they were typically delayed by 1-4 days after the television broadcast to avoid cannibalizing “live” viewership. This followed a standard practice in the creative industries: delaying the availability or degrading the quality and usability of “low-value” products (e.g. paperback books and DVD rentals) to protect revenue from “high-value” products (hardcover books, Blu-ray discs). The practice made sense – in an à la carte business model, price discrimination is the most economically efficient way for creators to sell content.