Netflix has now officially been in operation for over a quarter of a century and in that time have largely upended the traditional business models around film and television, for better and worse. Speaking in a recent interview with Variety, Ted Sarandos recalled the reception he received from longtime executives over choosing to release entire seasons of shows all at once, creating the binge model.
“I got a phone call from then CBS head Les Moonves,” said Sarandos, “who said, ‘Do you know how television works?’ He goes, ‘You give them one at a time, and you can drag it out over 13 weeks before you need to find something new.’”
Forced to resign from CBS over a number of sexual harassment allegations and denied his $120 million severance package, Moonves is largely in the rearview of the entertainment industry while Sarandos now continues to push it forward. Between him and Chairman of the Board Reed Hastings, they saw a vision for how the internet would alter viewing habits and stuck to their guns, even contributing to the downfall of the physical media business that started their company in order to stay ahead.
“When I first met Reed, he described Netflix almost exactly like it is right now,” Sarandos said to Variety. “He didn’t use the word ‘streaming.’ He called it ‘downloading videos’ then, but he was very clear that he thought all entertainment would come into the home on the internet. And this was at a time when no entertainment came into the home that way.”
In terms of the creative side of the business, it turns out there were lessons to be learned from Moonves as Sarandos’ initial prestige goals for the studio’s output would have to be adapted as Netflix started to understand what their audience was interested in watching.
“Ted really kept us focused on HBO as the target,” said Hastings. “He wanted us to see ourselves as a content network rather than an Amazon-like retailer. Later, he came to regret that slightly, because he said it should have been HBO and CBS. Because we didn’t want it to be just elite programming, we wanted it to be mainstream as well.”
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