Monday, April 17, 2017

Netflix in Different Countries

In light of our discussion on global TV industries, I was wondering about how Netflix might impact this. For those of you that do not know, Netflix offers you different streaming titles dependent in which country you are streaming from. While studying abroad in the UK, I had to figure out how to make my browser think I was in the US to watch my regular programs online. On the other hand, I made use of all the British titles that I had wanted to see that now were available to me on Netflix for free. Why are only some British television titles available online and vice versa? How does this impact what becomes culturally popular? Furthermore, are all the Netflix produced series available in all countries streaming?

4 comments:

  1. I think the reason there are different films and shows streaming in certain countries is based on the fact that studios enforce copyright by country, even on streaming services like Netflix. And since different markets (i.e. different countries) have different demands for specific content, certain content is going to be more interesting in certain areas of the world. For instance, "In Latin America, for example. Peruvian TV audiences ted to prefer Mexican or Venezuelan telenovelas as opposed to Hollywood soap operas." (Curtin 110) The studios charge more for Netflix to offer streaming of specific titles in some countries compared to others based on what profit they will gain from it. Because these content deals are country specific, Netflix may choose to pay the studio-demanded price to stream a title in one country, while negotiations in other regions fall flat.

    What is interesting about that, however, is now Netflix is creating their own shows that can be streamed from every country, and therefore it could be argued that they're globalizing the system even more. However, what I think what they are actually doing is creating content based on their viewership data, and creating products that they know can catch the attention of man different country's interests.

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  2. Nicole you are correct. Many times Netflix only buys the right to stream a show or movie on a specific location. How they decide what location to screen what in I'm not sure, but I'm sure that is the responsibility of their content managers.

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  3. I agree with Nicole. I think all Netflix produced series are available in all countries in terms of streaming. Very smart move on them. Something that I did notice but I'm not so sure about is that Netflix is also authorized to show a select number of American television shows in different countries. Sort of like what Hulu does. They stream the latest episodes of certain American shows (Shadow Hunters & Riverdale to name a few) once it's midnight the latest episodes are available to stream in certain countries. They are usually advertised as "A Netflix original" even though the shows belong to other networks. Thus, that makes me think that Netflix is gaining rights to Network tv content that with current episodes.

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  4. Just chiming in late here to say that Netflix is probably the first place that I've ever watched Brazilian TV -- a totally new experience for me. It makes sense that the Netflix-created shows would be available globally on their service, they've invested the money to create the content, they might as well maximize its distribution through cheap subtitling. As a viewer, I see this as a real value-add for the most part, I'm getting more and more varied content types. Has anyone else found that they've watched or interacted with global TV in a new way because of Netflix's original series?

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