HE didn’t have much choice to be honest but the announcement from the BBC's director general Tony Hall is still pretty extraordinary. Viewers will soon be able to download entire series on iPlayer before they are broadcast so they can watch in one long binge rather than wait for weekly episodes.
Lord Hall says one of the aims is to double the numbers using the iPlayer and in the longer term make it the most popular video-on-demand service in the UK. “We need it to make the leap from a catch-up service to a must-visit destination in its own right,” he said.
But we all know why the corporation is doing this: Netflix has getting on for 90 million subscribers and now has that other, more elusive quality: critical respectability – their latest biggie The Crown has just been nominated for a Golden Globe for best drama. The behaviour of young viewers has also changed profoundly and the idea of them sitting all night watching programmes dictated by the schedulers is laughable.
For an organisation like the BBC that can still look like a diplodocus that has survived the strike of the digital asteroid, this is not comfortable territory. Netflix can spend way more than the BBC and this year virtually all the event TV will be on video-on-demand: the new series of Star Trek for instance as well as new series of House of Cards and Orange is the New Black.
But, for once, I’d like to defend the BBC way of doing things and point out some of the risks of the Netflix model. There is no doubting the convenience, but I have already noticed the kind of effect it is having, first, on the kind of shows being made, and secondly, the kind we are choosing to watch.
The Crown is a good example. It has been a hit, but it is hardly experimental or exciting. In fact, the head of content at Netflix, Ted Sarandos, says he made The Crown for one simple reason: everyone knows the Queen. In other words, Netflix’s strategy makes them more likely to make programmes with broad appeal on safe subjects, or remakes of previous hits such as House of Cards and Star Trek, rather than new programmes that are inventive, exciting or shocking even.
The way Netflix is set up is also a problem. With regular TV, there is a chance you will sit down and stumble on something you know nothing about or a programme that undermines or challenges your views of the world.
Web-based services work in the opposite way. On Facebook, we “like” a page and our newsfeeds are full of posts from people who have the same interests – and prejudices – as us (this was an obvious problem in the independence referendum and the American elections). Netflix is similar – we move programmes we like into “My List” and end up watching our own little world on a loop.
In some ways, Netflix has been positive and can be more diverse than TV – there are numerous films about gay culture, for example, and Orange is the New Black features a transgender actor. But the problem is that the programmes are so clearly labelled that those who want to will avoid anything that is not of their world. Netflix shuffles us into cultural holding pens with people just like us – so should the BBC really be copying it?
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