Netflix Originals were initially thought of as low-budget filler for the company to pad their inventory with. Now, Netflix Originals are gaining a lot of fans and the company is pouring a ton of money into them. Netflix Originals for 2018 cost the company over US$12 billion to produce. This year, the company is expected to drop over US$15 billion on more original content.
Original content is important for the streaming giant as studios are starting to look into their own streaming services. This means movies from studios like Disney won’t be coming to Netflix once contracts expire. So the company has been hard at work in developing their own brand identity around its original programming. As a matter of fact, BMO Capital Markets analyst Daniel Salmon anticipates Netflix will up the ante and spend nearly US$18 billion on Netflix Originals in 2020.
According to Variety, all of this investment has Netflix operating in the red but it is necessary in order to compete against companies that they once had contracts for content with. Not only is Disney working on their own streaming service but NBCUniversal and WarnerMedia are as well. All these streaming services are a cord cutters worst nightmare as streaming is becoming fragmented and we will be forced to subscribe to multiple services or simply miss out.
Some analysts have expressed concern that Netflix will lose access to content from Disney, WarnerMedia and others, and will need to find a way to replace it. But there’s no reason to worry, according to Nathanson: With the exception of the combined Disney-20th Century Fox, “the rest of the media industry is more than happy to sell Netflix whatever they want as long as the bid is high enough and the check clears.”
Netflix original programming is currently a mixed bag, but overall I think they’re improving and bringing value to the table for the consumer. It will be interesting to see how the rest of these streaming service affect Netflix’s numbers. Consumers reactions to multiple streaming services from multiple studios will be even more interesting.
What do you think of Netflix Originals? What do you think of the studios branching off into their own streaming services? Let us know in the comments below or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook. You can also comment on our MeWe page by joining the MeWe social network.
[button link=”https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/netflix-content-spending-2019-15-billion-1203112090/” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: Variety[/button]Last Updated on February 3, 2021.
