Netflix's Reconfiguration Of Flow

Today, Film and Television are among the most internationally supported commodities. Financially, their contributions are enormous: both industries are responsible for the circulation of billions of dollars each year. Since their respective explosions into the new media markets during the mid-twentieth century, film and television have produced consistently growing numbers of viewers and critics alike. Sparking debate over the nature of their viewing, film and television are now being questioned in social, political, and moral arenas for their potential impact on an audience. Critics claim that watching films or television is a passive activity in which the viewer becomes subconsciously

Jenkins talks about how the consumption of media products is a collective process, in other words, the collective intelligence is seen as an alternative source of media power. He describes how within popular culture, the collective meaning making is shaping and changing the ways religion, education, laws, politics, advertising and how the military operate (4). Jenkins discusses a process called “convergence of modes”, he explains that media and communication are becoming interconnected like the telephone and television.

Lisa Nakamura argues in her article, “Words with Friends”: Socially Networked Reading on Goodreads, that Goodreads is a successful Web 2.0 business, worth studying by literary scholars. By applying the argument Carolyn Miller makes for a successful genre, in her text, Genre as Social Action (1984), Revisited 30 Years Later (2014), one can examine why Goodreads is successful in terms of fulfilling its requirements to its public. Miller defines genre as being “a multidimensional construct”, that is a “typified rhetorical response to” an uptake of a situation, “a ‘macro’ speech act”, “a mediation between private intentions (purpose) and socially objectified needs (exigence)”, and above all she emphasizes that genre must create social action,

Q 1. Some of Netflix’s capabilities and core competencies are mentioned in the case. Go

Contrary to the article’s title, Netflix is not the cause of the cultural echo chamber. It is hardly even a symptom. Our proclivity for personalized selection on Netflix is moreso indicative of egocentrism and the simple fact that people have different interests. What Farhad Manjoo suggests in this article is that the digital age has isolated us in our thought processes, but that is not the case. We have chosen to isolate ourselves.

Occasionally, people use to go out and rent DVD’s to watch a specific movie from rental stores. Advancement in technology has brought a sufficient change in customer’s behaviors, today DVD rental stores have almost gone. Moreover, by time we saw enormous increase in channels being provided by cable providers, but today even that has been replaced by streaming media devices, thus my time, role of cable providers might also disappear due to the introduction of devices such as Netflix, Apple TV etc. “DVD sales have also been hit. The Los Angeles-based Digital Entertainment Group estimates DVD sales in 2008 fell 8% to $21.6 billion from a year earlier, while DVD rentals were flat.” Charny, Ben. "Viewers Tap Free Web Content." Wall Street Journal, Eastern

Darrin Brown, Sharon Lauricella, Aziz Douai and Arshia Zaidi composed a study focusing on the uses and grats of the aforementioned genre as a means of better understanding the relationship between television and its audiences (Brown, Lauricella, Douai, Zaidi, 2000). Blumber and Katz’s theory on uses and gratifications suggest that audience’s choose to watch certain programs as it satisfies a particular need; in other words, people use a program to gratify or please themselves (Who Watches Crime Dramas and Why?, 2012). They identified four main uses and grats: entertainment and diversion, where there is an idea of escapism; surveillance and information, where people have an urge to become more knowledgeable in a particular area; personal identity, where there is a comparison between the characters and audience members; and finally, personal companionship, where audience’s become involved with characters as if they were real (Who Watches Crime Dramas and Why?, 2012). The uses and Gratification theory assumes that audiences use mass media as an outlet for satisfying certain needs and desires (Brown, et. al, 2000). According to another group of scholars, the gratification individuals get when using such media are both social and psychological in nature (Brown, et. al, 2000). In

The producers will develop a test and the audience will tell the producers whether it is something they want to see or they are not going to see. This can affect the next text to be produced in an attempt to conform to the audience demands. Looking at the development of different types of genres and the development of films within the same genre, it’s possible to look at similarities and differences and identify changes in society and audience ideologies and tastes.

In our society, there are many forms of mediated texts ranging from newspapers and magazines to films and television shows. Each of these media forms can be seen from different theoretical perspectives and analyzed to understand the different concepts that may influence them. Television shows are one of the most popular media texts with approximately 400 new shows airing each year (Ryan, 2016). However, it is often very unlikely for these television shows to strive as 65% are cancelled after their first season (Ocasio, 2012). This then, brings Marxist scholars into the picture as they are interested in how economic factors affect the production and distribution of media content (Mack & Ott, 2016). The Marxist theoretical perspective allows Marxist scholars to study television shows in order to understand why they were cancelled and how certain roles in the media lead to this.

To differentiate between the huge ranges of TV shows, viewers would usually make use of genre labels. Which helps them to identify each show. By doing this the viewer fulfils their viewer’s needs and preferences. Genres are normally defined through specific codes and conventions. These codes and conventions are agreed upon by the viewers and are used in practice by the film industry. Some of these codes and conventions are obvious through the titles and characters of TV shows. For example, a viewer that is

Genres assist individuals in categorizing related topics within a group in order for people to differentiate between different subjects. However, with so many genres, we often do not stop to consider what features contribute to making a specific topic, a topic of its own. For advertisements, the conventions of the genre demonstrate to the reader that the author has a strong desire to share their product or message by using strategies that subconsciously triggers our senses in order to attract our attention. For food recipe blogs, the conventions of the genre prove that the author provide images and methods to receive feedback if they need more assistance in order to successfully recreate the recipe

As the world entered into the 21st Century, humanity has witnessed an ecology of innovation that ranges from artificial hearts and livers to iPods to Bluetooth technology to smartphones and many more ("21st Century Inventions That Made an Impact”). Each with its own unique attraction has become a catalyst in nature for how individuals think, act and live. Along with these state of the art developments, Netflix has become the cutting – edge service for internet streaming media. Deemed as “a worthless piece of crap” from Wall Street analysts, Netflix with tremendous leadership gained control of their industry and swiftly transformed the delivery of movie rentals ("How Netflix Beat Blockbuster: An Exemplar of Emerging Technologies”). Faced with impossible odds, we will discover how Netflix was able to survive, conquer and prosper as the emerging technology in their industry.

Today, digital technology and the Internet are deeply reshaping the motion picture industry with a trend toward the digitalisation and disintermediation (Zhu, 2010). Media streaming services are an example of this current restructuration. Providing an access to a wide collection of entertainment online at a cheap price, they have penetrated the monopoly that cinema once enjoyed (Herberg, 2017). A significant example can be found in the US company ‘Netflix’, source of nearly a third of all North American downstream internet traffic at peak hours (Hallinan & Striphas, 2016). Once a small DVD subscription service created in 1997, it offers today to its subscribers to watch its own produced movies and shows as well as content of other

In Netflix’s own description of its vision for sustainable long-term future, the company describes a few critical elements necessary for growth [Netflix.com]. Its vision encompass the evolution of internet TV, replacement of “linear TV” by the internet TV, development of interactive applications, and enhancement of streaming capability to virtual limitless access capability.

What do we really mean by television? The way we watch television has drastically changed over the last fifteen years due to new technologies such as digital television and services providing on-demand access. These drastic changes have had a huge effect on viewers and have “allowed online streaming platforms to dominate and revolutionize the way the audience consumes” (Aliloupour) media, ultimately allowing the viewer to be in total control of how, when and where they want their content. The idea of only being able to watch television on a television set is now a thing of the past. Due to technology, the audience now has a vast variety of options on how they can access content. By using scholarly articles, research in new media and Internet sites I will be analyzing current television and where the future of television will be heading.