Netflix, Media and Content

The rise of Netflix in the early decade was predicated on the company’s revolutionary approach to media. Allowing content to be easily accessed on a portable device. Otherwise introducing a new medium by which content is to be accessed aside from cable. In the face of quarantine in the last year, Netflix had proven itself to be the go-to platform and streaming media of the upcoming digitizing era. However, for the first time in over a decade, Netflix reported a net loss of 200,000 subscribers, plunging the stock price by over 26 percent. Despite being hit hard in its quarterly earnings, Netflix remains steadfast in its effort of localizing content and altering its media.

It is widely known that Netflix’s prestige over other competing services entails its global outreach. Offering dubbed language options for a variety of their original shows, as well as catering to specific local genres of content to respective regions. For example, Netflix does not only provide exclusively American tv shows, however, french, german, and Japanese content are also supported.

In fact, the highest-grossing Netflix original was a Korean show that took the global audience by storm. One may think that Korean content may not fly well outside of its region, but Netflix’s localizing efforts in dubbing the show in over 40 languages opened its doors to a global audience. Though the English dubbed version of Squid Games was heavily criticized and was at times comical, one cannot ignore the impacts dubbing had on localizing niche contents to be universally consumed.

In essence, dubbing was a new experimental alteration to the form of media that Netflix had prided itself on for so long. And in the case of "Squid Games", the localizing and global outreach that the altered medium (dubbing) had is widely acknowledged.

With a similar mindset and approach towards localizing, dubbing, and globalizing media, Netflix remains positive in its efforts of altering its subscription policies and media format to bounce back from the “proliferation of password sharing”.

Accordingly Netflix’s co-Chief Executive, Reed Hastings quotes, “Think of us as quite open to offering even lower prices with advertising as a consumer choice,” (LA Times). This suggested claim of experimenting with altering their subscription prices comes with the optimism of reaching a wider audience whereby individuals are not seeking to pay the “high price” of subscriptions, opening the door to a wider demographic. In essence, if Netflix does go through with experimenting with lower subscription prices and advertisements, a process of localization will be done in catering to niche(r) socio-economic demographics, thus globalizing a wider audience.

Aside from this, Netflix also seeks to incorporate the gaming sphere into its streaming arsenal. With the hopes of retaining users of their subscription, Netflix seeks to purchase smaller gaming companies in growing their selection of Netflix games. While this is an interesting approach that other streaming services are not known to have taken, Netflix hopes to reach a younger audience via the games. So far, games are to be downloaded separately from the Netflix app (separate media), with the exception of some mergers in the content of the games. For example, the TV show Stranger things have a Netflix original game corresponding to it, but yet again it needs to be downloaded separately. Bearing this in mind, it would be interesting to see Netflix fiddle with some media mergers between the streaming and gaming interfaces (like their interactive content) in the upcoming quarters.

Bearing this in mind, while Netflix had a variety of original content supporting its rise and influence, sensational original content (like squid games) cannot be solely relied upon. Netflix needs to remember the roots of revolution in their approaches to the form of streaming media, not solely original content.