Netflix and the Re-Invention of Television

This book deals with the ways Netflix has influenced the contemporary television landscape and built the infrastructures of streaming. It focusses on various ways Netflix reconceptualises television as part of the process of TV IV. As television continues to undergo a myriad of significant changes, Netflix has proven itself to be the dominant force in this development, simultaneously driving a number of these changes and challenging television's existing institutional structures. This comprehensive study explores the pre-history of Netflix, the role of binge-watching in its organisation and marketing, and Netflix's position as a transnational broadcaster. It also examines different concepts of control and the role these play in the history of ancillary technologies, from the remote control to binge-watching as Netflix's iteration of giving control to the viewers. By focusing on Netflix's relationship with the linear television schedule, its negotiations of quality and marketing, as well as the way Netflix integrates into national media systems, Netflix and the Re-invention of Television illuminates the importance of Netflix's role within the processes of TV IV. This Second Edition particularly highlights the role Netflix plays in the so-called streaming wars and incorporates recent research in television studies. It also re-evaluates the companies' incorporation of issues of diversity in its focus on middlebrow television. The book also includes a new chapter on the transnational streaming franchise, networks of texts developed internal to platforms to build infrastructures of transnational streaming.