How Netflix threatens to change the television industry

A recent example on how the streaming media network Netflix threatens to change the television industry is the recent release of the whole television series of House of Cards to Netflix subscribers. Netflix has funded the entire series in return  for it to be showed only on Netflix to their subscribers  Almost two weeks ago Netflix premiered all 13 episodes of the television series House of Cards online to it's Netflix subscribers. By Netflix offering this to the public for as cheap as £5.99 a month to watch anything anytime anywhere is a very small amount for such a large variety of fast and current television shows and movies.

House of Cards is new exclusive to Netflix US political drama series featuring Kevin Spacey. The entire series of House of Cards debuted on February 1st 2013 exclusively on Netflix for it's users. One of the advantages of this is that Netflix users can view all episodes one after an other anytime they want. Whereas on the other hand if House of Cards was to be broadcasted on the television channels such as ABC or HBO as two examples, the audience would have to wait each week for a new episode, this would last for 13 weeks, but with House of Cards broadcasting their television show this way it is of constant risk of 'leaking' via Torrent websites on the Internet and the audience seeing it in advance anyway for free.

Another good feature of Netflix is that before user's subscribe to the £5.99 a month subscription, Netflix offered the audience a 1 month free trial to experience Netflix. A problem of this in my opinion is from my own experience with a 1 month free trial is that Netflix only offer a limited amount of TV shows and movies, the TV shows and movies shown tend not to be major blockbusters and up to date content. I wanted to watch The Dark Knight Rises but I couldn't on my free trial, and that the up to date blockbusters and other content are included in the paid packages. This entices the audience to pay for their service.

Netflix was founded in 1997 and was not always an instant anytime anywhere service where the audiences got to watch a title instantly. Before the digital age of digital distribution in 1999 Netflix had started a subscription based distribution service, and as time past and technology began to develop, Netflix offered a collection of over 10,000 titles and had at least 10 million subscribers in the year 2009. DVDs where delivered by Netflix to subscribers via the postal service. Where subscribers would place an order to rent a DVD and it would be sent to them in person, not digitally today which is much easier. This ment that the subscribers of Netflix had to wait in order to rent their DVD, whereas now, it is instant.

Because House of Cards is shown exclusively to Netflix the audience has to sign up for Netflix's monthly subscription costing the audience £5.99. And at present House of Cards is the most viewed program on Netflix since debuting on the 1st of February. Proves that people are subscribing to Netflix to watch House of Cards. In an article on http://www.worldtvpc.com/blog/netflix-will-not-be-sharing-house-of-cards-viewing-figures/ Netflix have stated that they will not be revealing the show's figures for the benefit of the television companies or media because Netflix's Chief Creative Officer, Ted Sarandos has "... no motivation..." to release these figures.