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Comment by izacus | Hacker News Reader

IMO the fact that they can record "trash" is what will make them ultimately successful - their shows can target very limited demographics while still making profit. While on network TV your prime-time show MUST cater to as wide audience , Neflix doesn't have to. They can make Sense 8, Jessica Jones, Kimmy Schmidt, cooking shows, etc. etc. Each of those will only appeal to a part of audience, but because of that it can be more targeted and creative than watered down inoffensive prime-time schlock.

The fact that they're pretty much the only ones (with the exception of Amazon Prime lately which is shooting themselves in the food for not providing apps for Android TV and other platforms) that are open to world-wide audiences, they're in for a huge success.

Meanwhile, HBO and others still rather show "Not available in your country" than collect 10EUR/month from several TENS of millions of subscribers outside US.

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You're right. It's all about the long tail.

Netflix (and amazon) are in a powerful position to analyze and understand what people really want in a way that cable and networks (remember those) simply can't match.

Providing "hits" to relatively small demographics over and over again, I think, might make more business sense than going up against the more experienced competition for mass-appeal.

"Stranger Things" is a good example, it was a pitch-perfect, nuanced thriller series. I dare say it was an 80's period piece. That's niche. Definitely not everyone's cup of tea, but damn it was cool.

By appealing to the long tail, Netflix can make smaller demographics VERY HAPPY with their product, one demographic at a time. This is perhaps better than trying to please everyone at once with a blockbuster hit.

I think you just hit the nail on the head - for years and years, the MPAA and RIAA business model is "Bet Big and Big Wins Cover Big Losses" and there wasn't much market share or ability to use a different approach.

If there's not as much big margin, but conversely lacking a major bleed out of funds by failure, it's a much more even, perhaps sustainable model as tastes change in entertainment (or by expanding into other regions).

Very interesting point, nicely noted your way.

I agree strongly with this. I lost all interest in Big Bang Theory when they started appealing to a wider audience.

Also we have Amazon Prime but rarely use it for the videos. It's a pain to watch except on our one tv with a computer hooked up to it. It's also the only video app we have that we can't stream to Chromecast. Is that $20 device really worth losing viewers over?

you can but you have to send the who screen/device rather than the usual chromecasting. You use the home app

It seems that they can make trash and as long as it convinces more people to subscribe to netflix it ends up meeting their bottom line. And I guess they have figured out that that is what works, as unlike a normal tv station per show ratings don't matter if it is more shows that brings people in.

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