The Rise of Netflix

A television was a marvel back in the early 60’s, and to many it was a box filled with magical and wondrous capabilities. People found it strange how entire worlds could be housed within this bulky frame. Televisions were invented back in the 1920’s, but they came into wide circulation only around the 1950’s when people were finally earning enough to be able to purchase one. In its early days, televisions, or TV’s as they were abbreviated, only had about 3 to 5 set channels, and  displayed visuals in just black and white. Over the years, the bulky and almost primitive-like TVs matured into flat screens, capable of showing more than three hundred channels, and displayed visuals in an array of vibrant colors. Till the early 2000’s, most people thought that movies could only be seen and streamed in theatres and picture halls, and through TV’s. Apart from those options, the only other alternative for watching movies was to own or rent DVD’s. That is how Netflix started out.

Netflix was started in California in 1998 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph. It started as a DVD rental company, which a person had to be subscribed to. Upon subscription, one was entitled to an unlimited supply of DVD’s which could be sent to their house. It grew from seven hundred thousand subscribers in 2002, to three million in 2005. It finally launched as an online streaming service in 2007, and soon became a cult favorite. In 2010, Netflix’s services were extended to Canada, and thereafter went worldwide.

Netflix’s popularity kept on growing, as more and more people found it a more convenient option as compared to cable TV’s. It was more accessible than TV’s as it could be used on mobile phones and laptops, and could be accessed from anywhere in the world. TV’s were too bulky, and as the world started getting busier and people started to become constantly on the move, stationary TV’s weren’t cutting it. A study done by Cowen and Co. in 2017 showed that Netflix had become more popular than cable and broadcast television as well as Youtube for viewing content on TV. Sophomore Chhavi K. feels that,  “Netflix is more preferable than traditional TV because it allows [her] to watch whatever [she] wants too, without adhering to any strict timeline, on TV, there is no control over what people watch and when people watch it.”

Netflix also started to create exclusive content in 2013, in the form of shows and movies. House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, and Stranger Things were some of Netflix’s originals which become huge phenomenons and garnered massive audiences.

It seems that global expansion is now on Netflix’s mind as it has been creating foreign language shows, such as the Israeli drama, Fauda. In 2016, Netflix expanded to 130 more countries, yet surprisingly, China was the only major market not included. In a statement released by Netflix, it was mentioned that Netflix was choosing not to expand into China because of the government’s high scale regulation of foreign language shows which made the environment challenging for streaming companies such as Netflix. Netflix stated that it would license content to Chinese streaming sites instead of operating their own service. This makes life tougher for expatriates who have to resort to using VPN to access the site.

Netflix now boasts a huge content library across a spectrum of genres. More and more people are subscribing to it, and television has truly gone global. One can now access American shows all the way from India, and Korean dramas can be viewed in places as far away as Latin America. Netflix has managed to shrink time and space, and revolutionized the TV and streaming industry.