Binge times Inside Hollywood's furious billion-dollar battle to take down Netflix

Dade Hayes

Book - 2022

Examines the current efforts among media and tech companies such as Disney, Apple, and Comcast to catch up to Netflix in the streaming video business with multi-billion-dollar investments in new arenas.

Saved in:

2nd Floor Show me where

384.555/Hayes
1 / 1 copies available
Location Call Number   Status
2nd Floor 384.555/Hayes Checked In
Subjects
Published
New York : William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers [2022]
Language
English
Main Author
Dade Hayes (author)
Other Authors
Dawn Chmielewski (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
xxi, 355 pages ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages [323]-331) and index.
ISBN
9780062980007
  • Streamatis Personae
  • Preface
  • Introduction: The Reckoning
  • Part I. Netflix Sets the Bar
  • Chapter 1. The Discovery of Television Among the Bees
  • Chapter 2. Hollywood's New Center of Gravity
  • Chapter 3. Netflix Lives Up to Its Name
  • Part II. War Drums
  • Chapter 4. The Red Wedding
  • Chapter 5. "The Status Quo, We Knew, Was Not Sustainable"
  • Chapter 6. Live from Cupertino
  • Chapter 7. Cooking Up "Quick Bites"
  • Chapter 8. The Kid with the Cartoons
  • Chapter 9. Long Game
  • Chapter 10. The Birth of ClownCo
  • Chapter 11. The Flywheel
  • Part III. Showtime
  • Chapter 12. Touched by Tinker Bell's Wand
  • Chapter 13. "I Love That Show and I Think You Will Too"
  • Chapter 14. Quibi Vadis?
  • Chapter 15. "If You Want to Grab People's Attention, You Have to Tease"
  • Chapter 16. The IQ Test
  • Part IV. The Incumbent Responds
  • Chapter 17. Netflix Bets on Itself
  • Part V. Meeting the Public
  • Chapter 18. Liftoff
  • Chapter 19. In Space, No One Can Hear You Stream
  • Part VI. Navigating the Recovery
  • Chapter 20. To Everything (Churn, Churn, Churn)
  • Chapter 21. Amazon on the March
  • Chapter 22. Paciencia y Fe
  • Epilogue
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Index
Review by Booklist Review

It began as a DVDs-by-mail service and, later, was an early adopter of streaming technology, which made it possible to beam movies directly into people's homes. By any measure, Netflix was a spectacular success story, and it caught most of its potential rivals flatfooted. In recent years, however, companies like Disney, Apple, Comcast, and NBCUniversal have mounted expensive attacks on Netflix's supremacy in the streaming market. (Not to mention a whole string of startups that sounded good but didn't last.) This excellent book takes readers deep behind the scenes at Netflix and its challengers, showing us the people who had the ideas, made the decisions, and, in some cases, took the blame. In their writing, in their perceptive analyses, and in their vivid portrayal of a large cast of characters, Hayes and Chmielewski's book easily rivals such business-book staples as Barbarians at the Gate, The Informant, and Too Big to Fail. The authors, respectively a business media editor at Deadline Hollywood and an entertainment correspondent for Reuters, take a complex subject and make it not only understandable but riveting.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Deadline editor Hayes (Open Wide) and Forbes writer Chmielewski chronicle the rise of Netflix and the influx of streaming services in this smart, comprehensive take on how "a single monolithic company unsettled... Hollywood." The authors recount how Netflix was the brainchild of Reed Hastings, who saw a flaw in video rental chain Blockbuster's model and wondered, "What if there were no late fees?" Beginning in 1998 as a mail-order DVD rental business, the company transitioned to streaming in 2007 and picked up the rights to Disney and Sony movies. Then came original content in 2013 with the release of House of Cards, and the 2019 release of Oscar contender The Irishman, both of which further shook up the entertainment industry. The authors spend plenty of time on the "forces of Hollywood" that "allied against Netflix, seeking to knock it off its streaming throne" with competing services, including Disney's launch of Disney+ in 2019 and cable channel HBO's addition of streaming service HBO Max in 2020. Things get bogged down a bit with the long-winded and fawning appreciation of Netflix, but the copious research and astute analysis are worth the price of admission. This fascinating study will enthrall those interested in the business side of entertainment. (Apr.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Anecdote-rich tale of how Netflix came to dominate the streaming-video market. "Underestimating Netflix was an industry default," write entertainment business reporters Hayes and Chmielewski in their aptly titled study of the streaming giant and the many tech- and film-industry competitors that rose to challenge it. The authors begin their account with the Covid-19 pandemic, which sent the world indoors. "America, already accustomed to spending hours a day in a screen-filled cocoon, would respond to the crisis by serving itself more and bigger portions of comfort food," they write. This comfort food came in the form of bingeworthy series, freshly made or in the vault, and Netflix delivered a substantial portion of it, having essentially had a decade head start in delivering streaming video--though predecessors had paved the way. These included Mark Cuban's Broadcast.com, which, in the 1990s, pioneered the delivery of sports via the early internet, and Jonathan Taplin's early amalgamation of the libraries of several film studios--a holdout being Paramount, whose corporate parent owned Blockbuster, the now-defunct video-rental chain. Netflix arose from its ashes with a business model that once relied on mail-order rentals but then captured the market for streaming that resulted from ever faster internet speeds. It took years for rivals such as Disney, HBO, Amazon Prime, and other providers to catch up, and all but Disney still trail. Consumers are the beneficiaries, with an embarrassment of riches to watch. The "binge" model was a great hook, even if some insiders didn't quite understand it. When Lilyhammer star Steven Van Zandt complained that he'd spent months making the series in Norway only to have it dumped all at once, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos chuckled, "Yeah, just like an album." And the biggest hit of 2021? Squid Game, the Korean show that, the authors convincingly argue, "could really have been launched by only one company: Netflix." A revealing, highly readable look at the making of the modern home-entertainment environment. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.