The first full day of the TV Critics Association’s summer press tour in Beverly Hills Tuesday dedicated was dedicated to a network that isn’t in the set at all.
Netflix was having the first full day of presentations to writers. And like at home when the internet was slow, it was loading, loading, loading all day.
“It’s hard to believe this is only the second time I’ve been in front of you at the TCAs and only the third year that we’ve been in the business of creating original programming for Netflix,” chief content officer Ted Sarandos said.
Thirty months ago, they had just two shows, he pointed out. One was “House of Cards,” which put them on the map and the first to win an Emmy “having never aired on linear television in primetime or anytime.” The other was “Lilyhammer,” the Steven Van Zandt project that has been recently canceled after three seasons.
But this year, the original programming will amount to 16 scripted dramas and comedies, nine original documentary features, three documentary series, 12 original standup comedy specials and 17 original series for kids. “In total we’ll be releasing about 475 hours of original programming in the U.S. this year,” Sarandos said.
Eleven of their shows are currently up for 34 Emmys including three best series nominations. “And this is after winning the best animated series Emmy award for ‘All Hail King Julien’ at the Daytime Emmys and additionally being nominated for five News and Doc Emmys this year,” he said.
One of their celebrated series, “Orange is the New Black,” he said, “is the first show in television history to be nominated for Best Series in both the comedy and the drama categories.”
Six of the actresses from that show were on a panel that ended the day, without the show creator Jenji Kohan. Before that there were some unusual panels, including one for a program which, as is the Netflix way, had all of its episodes released as once and wasn’t sure whether it was coming back — “Sense8.” No announcement was made that it was, and there was no way of predicting whether it would since Netflix famously never makes its number of viewers for each show available.
This is a luxury for show runners, some of whom had shows that were canceled on other networks for that reason, they said in the day’s panels. “Longmire” was popular, but not with the right demographic — it skewed too old, its producers said. So Netflix was happy to pick it up because of its quality (and the fact that it doesn’t care so much the age of viewers, since their money is made from subscriptions, not advertising). It premieres Sept. 10.
And the number of subscribers (which it terms members)? 65 million in more than 50 countries, who watch more than 100 million hours of content a day.
There were glimpses at a couple of promising looking titles — “Narcos,” a hard hitting drug saga from Jose Padilha starting Aug. 28, and the newly named Aziz Ansari comedy “Master of None” coming Nov. 6.
Chelsea Handler came out of her talk show at E! and, she said, “had to get my brain working again” with a couple of Netflix projects. The first are four different documentaries due out later this year. Then next year, she will launch a couple times a week talk show for the service next year.
A handful of filmmakers who have made documentaries for the network peopled one panel — along with one subject of another, Tig Notaro. And there was an announcement for another in their series of music documentaries, “Keith Richards: Under the Influence” from Morgan Neville, who won an Academy Award for his last music documentary, “20 Feet from Stardom.” It premieres Sept. 18, and captures his recording of his first solo album in 23 years.
If there’s one thing critics wanted to know most about Netflix was how many people watched its original shows. But executives remained mum.
Sarandos admitted “Orange is the New Block” was the most popular original show on Netflix, but wouldn’t say by how much.
“The reason we don’t line them up against one another is it’s not the intent to draw the biggest audience from any single show,” he said. “The shows are built and designed and we invest in them based on the audience that we believe the show can attract. “None of those shows are designed for or built to attract the entire 65 million subscriber base to watch. So while one show there’s a temptation to say if, you know, a show does a couple million, it’s a hit, and if it does a couple million less, it’s a failure,” he says, But “in fact, these shows have been successful at addressing the audience segments that they were chasing.”
And that may be the most jolting thing about the Netflix operations — the metrics they keep on every viewer, such that it determines which shows they put on the home screen of every single person.
“We like to think of the Netflix experience as your fingerprint,” said Todd Yellin, vice president of product innovation. “Everyone is different, sometimes very subtly different, sometimes extremely different on what we are going to show you. We don’t want our members to constantly think about all of the complexity and the mathematics underneath the Netflix experience.”
But there is tons of math beneath the surface.
“We are not spying,” he emphasized. “We are using the data on your behavior only to make your experience better.”