Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) are currently competing hard in the ‘on-demand video’ industry. Netflix has recently crossed the 50 million subscribers mark globally. They made their debut in this industry way back in 1999 and are clearly the pioneers of this industry. Amazon made their debut back in 2006 and has shown tremendous growth since then, turning out to be a strong competitor for Netflix.
BBC Newsnight’s David Grossman feels that companies like Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) changed the perception and got the control back to the viewers, through their ‘on-demand video’ service. Using these services, the viewers can decide on what to watch and when to watch.
Todd Yellin, Product Innovation Vice-President at Netflix thinks that they have just a few minutes to get the attention of viewers and in that few minutes they need to impress the viewers with the list and make them pick the videos.
“[…] You literally know how much of a program people watched, what time they watched it, the velocity that they go from one episode to the next episode if it’s a TV Show, or if it’s a movie, did they watch the whole thing or they punt on it after 5 minutes,” Yellin said.
Yellin feels that based on this data they can effectively plan their content display.
Head of Amazon Studios, Roy Price thinks that people could miss some episodes ten years back, but with on demand TV, they cannot miss any of these intervening episodes. He added that from a TV point of view, episodes need not be completely stand alone.
Price said that invent of on demand TV, takes the power from Executives and gives it to writers and creators. He talked about Jill Soloway, who has the writing credits for funeral parlor drama series, ‘Six Feet Under.’
“We have to create an environment where artistic vision can come out. […] It’s not about me telling people how to make a TV show, it’s about finding people like Jill Soloway, who have a very specific, compelling vision that can attract a passionate audience, because they are passionate themselves about creating something new and terrific,” Price said
Soloway talked from the set of her new series for Amazon named, ‘Transparent’, which is about a transgender father coming out to his family. She talked about the difference that she feels from traditional to on demand TV.
“We have so little of the typical network interference that you would normally see. Normally there would be 15 or 20 people here on the set giving notes on every performance, and they would be generally giving notes that are related to their fears about what might not work,” she said.
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