Netflix

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Netflix’s video streaming service is booming while its steadily shrinking DVD-by-mail business has turned into an afterthought. The company’s latest quarterly report showed the streaming service […]

Continuing its aggressive move into the comedy space, Netflix has signed a deal with Jerry Seinfeld for two stand-up comedy specials as well as exclusive rights to his well-known online show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.

Here are three, starting with the fact that the field is dominated by four players: Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and YouTube, though Amazon is emerging as the real revenue-generating juggernaut among the lot. Sahil Patel notes that TV networks are also finding it worth their while to go directly to consumers now.

Since its first commissioned series House of Cards was released in February 2013, the streaming service has expanded its original (and acquired) programming at a dizzying rate. What began as a steady flow — the Arrested Development reboot a few months later, followed by the premiere of Orange Is the New Black — has turned into a full-blown torrent. But as Netflix’s profile has grown, its once-sharp identity has grown more diffuse.

While Netflix steadily built its original content business into a $5 billion-a-year juggernaut based on solid reviews from TV critics, Hollywood awards recognition and — most of all, explosive subscriber growth both domestically and abroad — the pricey period drama Marco Polo stands out as a sore thumb.

The streaming service won’t release shows’ numbers, but a new study details their behavior after bingeing a show. It helps fill out the portrait of the average Netflix user.

Just-released Netflix data shows that 59% of TV binge viewers wait three days before starting a new series, and 61% took a break after a series by watching a movie. Lisa Respers France looks at viewers’ unusual migratory patterns that emerge in the data.

The ascent, which leapfrogs Netflix over “Candy Crush Saga,” Pandora and Spotify, comes on the heels of the app allowing downloads on its iOS and Android apps. It also tops the lists in India, Mexico, and Colombia.

Netflix Inc. helped make binge-watching a national pastime with its tens of millions of subscribers eagerly gobbling up their favorite shows. But now the streaming giant is facing accusations of a different kind of binging — the poaching of executives from the competition.

Netflix’s Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos says that the company currently has 30 scripted shows in release or various stages of development, and it’s planning to go big on unscripted content with 20 such shows slated for next year. Content will ramp up to at least 1,000 hours next year, more than double what Netflix has done in 2016.

The long-awaited offline option announced Wednesday gives Netflix’s 87 million subscribers offline access to videos for the first time in the streaming service’s decade-long history. Netflix is matching a downloading feature that one of its biggest rivals, Amazon.com, has been offering to its video subscribers for the past year.

The download option was announced Wednesday and a number of shows and movies were made instantly available, including Breaking Bad, ‘Narcos and Spotlight.

January’s semi-annual Television Critics Association press tour will be without some of the industry’s biggest executives, as well as another streaming outlet. Amazon has opted to join Netflix and completely sit out the January TCA press tour. Additionally, NBC, ABC, Fox and CBS have all eliminated executive panels from their day-long sessions. Instead, insiders say, each of the Big Four networks want to focus on their midseason fare.

Now that the Netflix four-part installment has been released, the question turns to whether there will be more to come.

Beloved as it was by critics and fans, Gilmore Girls was never known as a ratings blockbuster when it first aired on the WB network (and, for a season, the nascent CW). For most of its original 2000-07 run, the show reached close to 5 million viewers each week. But even if Gilmore was never a juggernaut, it was actually a sizable hit among early-2000s millennial women. And based upon a close examination of Nielsen ratings data, there’s ample evidence to suggest its fan base has grown exponentially in the decade since it left the air thanks to heavy exposure on the network formerly known as ABC Family. This combination of OG (original Gilmore) viewers and more recent converts means there’s a pretty good chance Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life will break the Internet — or at least heavily tax Netflix’s servers — when it launches Friday.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A man whose homicide conviction was overturned in a case profiled in the Netflix series “Making a Murderer” could be celebrating Thanksgiving at home with his […]

Scripps Networks Interactive will not be renewing a streaming deal with Netflix when it expires at year’s end, COO Burton Jablin said on the company’s earnings conference call Monday. He explained that the company made the “strategic decision” because the arrangement does not provide the kind of dual revenue model that Scripps feels best monetizes its content.

A month after Netflix was lambasted in the courts by Fox for allegedly “illegally” poaching two executives still under contract, the streaming service today struck back with a hard-hitting counter-complaint charging “unlawful and anti-competitive business practices” by the other side.

Relativity Media filed suit against Netflix for breach of contract and libel on Tuesday, asserting that the platform used Relativity “to gain standing in Hollywood, and then ruthlessly attempted to dissolve an output deal so lucrative that Relativity became dependent on its guaranteed payments to survive.” The company is claiming in excess of $1.5 billion in damages.

Netflix’s stock surged 20% after hours on Monday as original hit shows like Stranger Things and Narcos helped the streaming video company crush Wall Street expectations.

After an eight-year absence from television, the multiple Emmy-winning comedian has signed a massive pact with Netflix for two stand-up specials. Sources say Rock has secured a whopping $40 million for the specials, which sets a new high-water mark for a stand-up comic.

The news comes four months after the well-liked executive was ousted as president of Universal Television.

Netflix’s stock was up as much as 4.9% Monday to $103.39 (its biggest jump since May 31) on talk of a possible takeover ahead of its forthcoming quarterly earnings report. Lucas Shaw reports that Disney has been speculated about as a potential buyer, but at the same time, Netflix isn’t signaling that it wants to be acquired.

Three years after it entered the original content business, Netflix looks to have originals make up about half of its offerings, CFO David Wells told investors today at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference. “It will take us a couple more years” to hit that target, he says. “We’re a third to halfway to where we want to be.”

21st Century Fox on Friday filed a lawsuit against Netflix Inc., accusing the streaming video giant of illegally hiring two of its executives who were under contract. The suit  alleges that Netflix has run a “brazen campaign to unlawfully target, recruit, and poach valuable Fox executives by illegally inducing them to break their employment contracts with Fox to work at Netflix.”