Netflix’s foreign content is quite good. Especially the Korean stuff is pretty high quality and way cheaper to produce, seems like a good idea to me.
It's part of their Asia pivot. Netflix invests in fairly high quality Asian TV to try and compete for market share within Asia.
Amazon Prime is doing a similar pivot (fairly successfully I might add) in India.
Disney has dropped out of the Asian market because they just couldn't compete Asian competitors or Amazon+Netflix.
Edit: Seems, I wasn't up to date, they are planning to exit India also. Thanks, alephnerd
It's part of their larger pivot away from Asia and towards building a competitive American streaming presence
https://inc42.com/buzz/reliance-to-acquire-walt-disney-india...
https://www.digitaltveurope.com/2023/06/15/disney-shuts-down...
If I am in Spain, should shows in English be bundled in a "Foreign Language" along with Korean dramas, Japanese animation, and a couple of odd series in Dutch? How is this helpful?
Not saying that language categorization is a bad thing. Being able to filter shows that are available in a specific audio language, or with a specific language available for subtitles, would be a bad thing. But I seriously question the helpfulness of "English" and "Other"
It’s not about filtering out the content, it’s about making it easy to tell whether or not it’s going to start playing with dubbed audio so the viewer can make a better choice.
Just tag the content with the relevant languages and let the user create filters based on them. And assume that the user understands that languages don't form disjoint categories, because the content itself could be multilingual.
Besides, original audio with subtitles is usually superior to dubbed audio.
Netflix added KDramas in order to help it pivot into the Asian market. Most viewers will be watching the shows via subtitles.
The algo is heavily targeted to your own assumed tastes. The one time I did watch one, it was in Korean with English subs.
Maybe you watched a western marketed KDrama like Squid Games? Try watching Beyond Evil, Itaewon Class, Reply 1988, or Mr Queen and see if it reverts to English. I'm kinda curious now