Tag: Netflix

  • How Netflix revolutionalised the way we watch TV

    How Netflix revolutionalised the way we watch TV

    In the not-so-distant past, TV viewers were forced to wait a week for the next installment of their favorite shows, parceled out by networks in half-hour or hour-long increments.

    To understand how we got here, look at Netflix (NFLX.O).

    At the start of the decade, binge watching involved VHS tapes, DVD box sets or long nights glued to a DVR. TV cable hits included Homeland and The Wire – hour-long dramas with complicated plot lines that needed to be watched sequentially.

    Watching Saturday Night Live on a Sunday became normal, and viewers started to lose track of the broadcast schedule.

    In November 2010, Hulu, which debuted in 2008 as an ad-supported streaming video site, launched its subscription service, including full seasons of certain shows.

    Around the same time that the broadcast TV schedule was losing its hold on viewers, Netflix was beginning to invest in original content.

    In 2011, it struck a deal for its first original show, the political thriller House of Cards. It released all 13 episodes of the show’s first season on Feb. 1, 2013. That July it followed with the entire first season of Orange is the New Black.

    Viewers were hooked, and the cultural shift accelerated. “Binge-watch” was a runner-up to “selfie” for the Oxford Dictionary’s 2013 word of the year.

    Netflix championed this new kind of consumption, commissioning a survey to determine how many people binge-watch, and why.

    “Our viewing data shows that the majority of streamers would actually prefer to have a whole season of a show available to watch at their own pace,” said Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos at the time.

    While some say the decade technically ends a year from now, the end of this year will be marked by many as the conclusion of the second decade of the 21st century. And as the new decade begins, the trend may start to reverse.

    AT&T’s (T.N) forthcoming HBO Max streaming service will debut one new episode of its original series per week. Walt Disney Co’s (DIS.N) Disney+ is releasing episodes weekly for new series including the Star Wars-related The Mandalorian. Apple (AAPL.O) released three episodes at the same time for dramas The Morning Show and See – and is doing so for most other Apple series – followed by one episode per week.

    Media companies are hoping a longer release schedule will generate buzz and create more of a shared experience among viewers.

    Just like the old days.

  • Subscribers begin to quit Netflix over ‘Messiah’ controversy

    Subscribers have started quitting Netflix as the controversy surrounding an upcoming show, ‘Messiah’, intensifies ever since the streaming service provider launched its first trailer last week.

    Messiah is the story of a case assigned to a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative, Eve Geller, played by Michelle Monaghan. A Syrian man has grabbed eyeballs and headlines around the world by claiming that he is the promised Messiah. Geller has been tasked by the agency to crack the case and figure out whether the man is a con artist hell-bent on disturbing the status quo or if he really is what he claims to be.

    Mehdi Dehbi from ‘London Has Fallen’ plays the character of the Messiah. He has plenty of miracles up his sleeves which win him a legion of followers across the globe. However, many Netflix users across the world have voiced their unhappiness over the plot of the show.

    While some are afraid and think it is indicative of the times to come, others claim that the show is outright disrespectful towards their religious beliefs.

    Islam, Christianity and other religions across the world have predicted the arrival of the antichrist, something the show seems to have caught on and based its plot around.

    Earlier, people had been threatening to boycott the streaming service provider.

    https://twitter.com/DalenCarter/status/1202027729840771072
    https://twitter.com/imn_alissa/status/1202126955065176064

    The show debuts on Netflix on January 1, 2020.

  • ‘Friends’ to bid goodbye to Netflix

    ‘Friends’ to bid goodbye to Netflix

    A moment of silence for all Friends fans. US reruns of the popular television sitcom Friends will be moving from Netflix Inc to a new streaming service, HBO Max in 2020.

    The service, from AT&T Inc’s WarnerMedia is scheduled to launch next spring, and is expected to offer more than a dozen original shows and movies from stars including Reese Witherspoon and Anna Kendrick. Programming from AT&T-owned networks such as HBO and TBS and classics from the Warner Bros film and TV library will also be part of the service.

    A subscription price for HBO Max has not yet been announced.

    Friends, a TV hit in the 1990s, was the second-most-watched show on Netflix in the United States when measured by minutes streamed, according to Nielsen data for 2018. The most-viewed Netflix show is The Office, which will switch from Netflix to a planned digital offering from Comcast Corp’s NBCUniversal in 2021.

    According to The Hollywood Reporter, Netflix lost Friends in a bidding war with WarnerMedia, which agreed to pay $85 million per year for five years for the show. Netflix reportedly made a Herculean effort to keep the show, spending $80 to $100 million to keep the series for 2019, but couldn’t manage beyond that.

    Netflix, in a comment on Twitter, said it was “sorry to see ‘Friends’ go.”

    “Thanks for the memories, gang,” the company said.

  • Based on True Stories, Series That Will Blow Your Mind

    These three
    docu-dramas series are so good that while watching them, you’ll be googling to
    see how true they really are.

    HBO’s CHERNOBYL

    IMDb: 9.6

    Unbelievable.
    Many of us have never heard of Chernobyl and the nuclear disaster that history
    suggests, was also a part of the downfall of the Soviet Union. In five riveting
    episodes you’ll be transported to April 1986 when an explosion at Chernobyl, a
    nuclear power plant in Russia caused one of the world’s worst catastrophes. The
    series details how the Soviet Union tried to downplay the disaster and how many
    lives were affected by the event. It’s so unbelievably real, that you’ll have
    to google it just to confirm that such a big event took place in our recent
    history and you weren’t aware of it. When the series was released people said
    it was better than Game of Thrones and Chernobyl has now become a tourist
    attraction.

    NETFLIX’s WHEN THEY SEE US

    IMDb: 9.1

    https://youtu.be/u3F9n_smGWY

    Racism at its peak, this four episodes series
    will leave you shocked at the how deeply engrained racism was in American
    society. The series tells the 1989 true story of four black and one Hispanic
    teenagers who were convicted of a rape they did not commit. They were called
    the Central Park 5, who were forced into false and convoluted confessions and
    convicted for many years. The episodes chronicles the conviction and the
    release and the director of the series says it was compiled after many years of
    research and is “very accurate.”

    NETFLIX’s MINDHUNTER

    IMDb: 8.5

    Questions were never seem to ask or think of,
    and once you start an episode of Mindhunter, you think, damn, why didn’t I
    watch this earlier? Set in the late 1970s, two FBI agents interview serial
    killers to find out what causes them to do such heinous crimes. They interview
    serial killers, (who have done crimes you will not believe), and use the information
    to solve cases. Want to know how the term serial killer first came into existence?
    Watch this.

  • Miley Cyrus to be part of ‘Black Mirror’s’ season 5

    Miley Cyrus to be part of ‘Black Mirror’s’ season 5

    Sci-fi series Black Mirror is all set to return for its fifth season on June 5, Netflix announced. The star-studded cast of the technology-fueled paranoia includes pop singer Miley Cyrus, Avengers actor Anthony Mackie, That 70s Show’s Topher Grace and Fleabag star Andrew Scott.

    Creators Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones return with three new stories, six months after the release of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, an interactive special edition of the show that offered viewers the chance to pick from a range of scenarios.

    The streaming giant shared a trailer for the new series that opened with Scott’s character sitting in a car holding a gun while in a stand-off with police.

    A bored-looking Mackie then appears in a domestic scene, while in a third story, a purple-wigged Cyrus takes to the stage to perform in front of an audience.

    Black Mirror, whose stories look at the effects of advanced technology on modern society, debuted in the United Kingdom in 2011.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bVik34nWws
  • Netflix reveals the cast of ‘Sacred Games 2’

    Netflix reveals the cast of ‘Sacred Games 2’

    Netflix India’s superhit series Sacred Games is returning with a second season and some new characters. While the streaming platform has not yet announced a release date, Indian media reports suggest that the series will be released around the end of July/first week of August.

    The cast of the second season was revealed in a short video shared by Netflix. While Saif Ali Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui will be reprising their roles as cop Sartaj Singh and gangster Ganesh Gaitonde respectively, new members include Kalki Koechlin and Ranvir Shorey.

    Pankaj Tripathi, the Guruji who was introduced in the first season as Gaitonde’s ‘third father’, will also have a bigger role in Season 2.

    According to reports, the second season picks up with Sartaj pursuing his relentless quest to save the city, and Gaitonde facing bigger challenges to retain his position as the legendary kingpin of Mumbai.