How consumers and creators soured on streaming
When “House of Cards” premiered on Netflix 10 years ago, it was treated as a very expensive lab experiment: Would original programming get more people to sign up for Netflix, then primarily known as the company that destroyed Blockbuster?
The service, which had become the best place to catch up on shows like “Breaking Bad” that had initially aired elsewhere, counted 25 million streaming subscribers in the U.S. and was trying “to become HBO faster than HBO can become us,” said Ted Sarandos, then chief content officer, just before “House of Cards” launched in February 2013.
As it turned out, the experiment was a resounding success. Viewers would pay $8 a month for the ability to watch original shows on demand, whenever they wanted. High-profile writers, actors and directors would make the leap to an untested medium in return for the freedom to tell stories as they pleased.
The first original series commissioned by Netflix, “House of Cards” heralded the beginning of a new era for the company and for TV, accelerating the gold rush of quality scripted shows sparked six years earlier by the premiere of “Mad Men” on AMC.
Amazon, Hulu and other streamers quickly followed suit, developing sophisticated shows like “Transparent” and “The Handmaid’s Tale” and ushering in the era FX chairman John Landgraf would famously dub “Peak TV.” In 2012, there were an estimated 288 English-language scripted series across all of TV, according to FX research; last year, that number reached an all-time high of 599, with Netflix competing against cable and broadcast
