Against this backdrop, it was not enough for Netflix and other streaming services to provide access to film and television produced by established studios and networks. To fill the potential gap created by these emerging competitors, and understanding that any remaining licensed content could easily be pulled to provide a foundation for some other studio-owned streaming service, streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime began to develop their own content. These streaming services established production divisions, and began purchasing and financing their own media.
Naturally, this original content was shaped by the unique nature of the medium in which it would be broadcast. This is obvious in a number of different ways. Companies like Netflix and Amazon attempted to make themselves attractive to discerning consumers by recruiting known brands. Sometimes these brands were particular creators: Netflix has worked with directors like Bong Joon-ho, Martin Scorsese and Duncan Jones; Amazon has financed a television series written and directed by Woody Allen. Sometimes these brands were familiar concepts and premises: Netflix resurrected Full House as Fuller House, give or take the Olsen twins; Amazon delivered The Grand Tour as Top-Gear-in-all-but name. Similarly, streaming services like Netflix and Amazon invested heavily in prestige programming, investing heavily in content designed to draw attention and to win awards; Amazon financed the Oscar-winning Manchester by the Sea, while Netflix screened Okja at Cannes.
However, this television-but-off-television also changed the way in which stories were told. Streaming services distributed content that was free from many of the limitations of network television; the season order was not dictated by the shape of the gap to be filled in the schedule, the runtime was not fixed by the number of advertisements to be aired within an hour of television. Netflix and Amazon frequently release entire seasons of television all at once, allowing viewers to digest those series at their leisure, rather than spacing them out across half-a-year of broadcast time. This fundamentally alters the relationship between the audience and the media that they are consuming.
Some of this change is social in nature. The fact that streaming enables audiences to control the pace at which they consume media makes it harder to imagine a shared “watercooler” moment. It is difficult for viewers to engage with one another about a given event or episode, because there is no way to be sure that both people watching the series have reached the same point. Some viewers will blaze through a thirteen-hour season in an afternoon, others will digest it over a month. However, because of that dissonance, big narrative events are no longer universal. J.R. Ewing was shot in his office shortly before 11pm on March 21st, 1980. It is impossible to pinpoint any event on a streaming television series with that level of specificity.
30 CinÉireann / November 2017
Fuller House
Okja