In 2016, Netflix--with an already enormous footprint in the United States--expanded its online streaming video service to 130 new countries, adding more than 12 million subscribers in nine months and bringing its total to 87 million. The effectiveness of Netflix's content management lies in its ability to appeal to a vastly disparate global viewership without a unified cache of content. Instead, the company invests in buying or developing myriad programming and uses sophisticated algorithms to "narrowcast" to micro-targeted audience groups. In this collection of new essays, contributors explore how Netflix has become a cultural institution and transformed the way we consume popular media.

In 2016, Netflix--with an already enormous footprint in the United States--expanded its online streaming video service to 130 new countries, adding more than 12 million subscribers in nine months and bringing its total to 87 million. The effectiveness of Netflix's content management lies in its ability to appeal to a vastly disparate global viewership without a unified cache of content. Instead, the company invests in buying or developing myriad programming and uses sophisticated algorithms to "narrowcast" to micro-targeted audience groups. In this collection of new essays, contributors explore how Netflix has become a cultural institution and transformed the way we consume popular media.

This book provides a transnational perspective on Netflix's changing role in the media landscape through chapters from leading international scholars in television and internet studies.

A Companion to Television is a magisterial collection of 31 original essays that charter the field of television studies over the past century Explores a diverse range of topics and theories that have led to television’s current incarnation, and predict its likely future Covers technology and aesthetics, television’s relationship to the state, televisual commerce; texts, representation, genre, internationalism, and audience reception and effects Essays are by an international group of first-rate scholars For information, news, and content from Blackwell's reference publishing program please visit www.blackwellpublishing.com/reference/

The New York Times bestseller Shortlisted for the 2020 Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings reveals for the first time the unorthodox culture behind one of the world's most innovative, imaginative, and successful companies There has never before been a company like Netflix. It has led nothing short of a revolution in the entertainment industries, generating billions of dollars in annual revenue while capturing the imaginations of hundreds of millions of people in over 190 countries. But to reach these great heights, Netflix, which launched in 1998 as an online DVD rental service, has had to reinvent itself over and over again. This type of unprecedented flexibility would have been impossible without the counterintuitive and radical management principles that cofounder Reed Hastings established from the very beginning. Hastings rejected the conventional wisdom under which other companies operate and defied tradition to instead build a culture focused on freedom and responsibility, one that has allowed Netflix to adapt and innovate as the needs of its members and the world have simultaneously transformed. Hastings set new standards, valuing people over process, emphasizing innovation over efficiency, and giving employees context, not controls. At Netflix, there are no vacation or expense policies. At Netflix, adequate performance gets a generous severance, and hard work is irrel­evant. At Netflix, you don’t try to please your boss, you give candid feedback instead. At Netflix, employees don’t need approval, and the company pays top of market. When Hastings and his team first devised these unorthodox principles, the implications were unknown and untested. But in just a short period, their methods led to unparalleled speed and boldness, as Netflix quickly became one of the most loved brands in the world. Here for the first time, Hastings and Erin Meyer, bestselling author of The Culture Map and one of the world’s most influential business thinkers, dive deep into the controversial ideologies at the heart of the Netflix psyche, which have generated results that are the envy of the business world. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with current and past Netflix employees from around the globe and never-before-told stories of trial and error from Hastings’s own career, No Rules Rules is the fascinating and untold account of the philosophy behind one of the world’s most innovative, imaginative, and successful companies.

How streaming services and internet distribution have transformed global television culture. Television, once a broadcast medium, now also travels through our telephone lines, fiber optic cables, and wireless networks. It is delivered to viewers via apps, screens large and small, and media players of all kinds. In this unfamiliar environment, new global giants of television distribution are emerging—including Netflix, the world’s largest subscription video-on-demand service. Combining media industry analysis with cultural theory, Ramon Lobato explores the political and policy tensions at the heart of the digital distribution revolution, tracing their longer history through our evolving understanding of media globalization. Netflix Nations considers the ways that subscription video-on-demand services, but most of all Netflix, have irrevocably changed the circulation of media content. It tells the story of how a global video portal interacts with national audiences, markets, and institutions, and what this means for how we understand global media in the internet age. Netflix Nations addresses a fundamental tension in the digital media landscape – the clash between the internet’s capacity for global distribution and the territorial nature of media trade, taste, and regulation. The book also explores the failures and frictions of video-on-demand as experienced by audiences. The actual experience of using video platforms is full of subtle reminders of market boundaries and exclusions: platforms are geo-blocked for out-of-region users (“this video is not available in your region”); catalogs shrink and expand from country to country; prices appear in different currencies; and subtitles and captions are not available in local languages. These conditions offer rich insight for understanding the actual geographies of digital media distribution. Contrary to popular belief, the story of Netflix is not just an American one. From Argentina to Australia, Netflix’s ascension from a Silicon Valley start-up to an international television service has transformed media consumption on a global scale. Netflix Nations will help readers make sense of a complex, ever-shifting streaming media environment.

In the tradition of Phil Knight's Shoe Dog comes the incredible untold story of how Netflix went from concept to company-all revealed by co-founder and first CEO Marc Randolph. Once upon a time, brick-and-mortar video stores were king. Late fees were ubiquitous, video-streaming unheard was of, and widespread DVD adoption seemed about as imminent as flying cars. Indeed, these were the widely accepted laws of the land in 1997, when Marc Randolph had an idea. It was a simple thought—leveraging the internet to rent movies—and was just one of many more and far worse proposals, like personalized baseball bats and a shampoo delivery service, that Randolph would pitch to his business partner, Reed Hastings, on their commute to work each morning. But Hastings was intrigued, and the pair—with Hastings as the primary investor and Randolph as the CEO—founded a company. Now with over 150 million subscribers, Netflix's triumph feels inevitable, but the twenty first century's most disruptive start up began with few believers and calamity at every turn. From having to pitch his own mother on being an early investor, to the motel conference room that served as a first office, to server crashes on launch day, to the now-infamous meeting when Netflix brass pitched Blockbuster to acquire them, Marc Randolph's transformational journey exemplifies how anyone with grit, gut instincts, and determination can change the world—even with an idea that many think will never work. What emerges, though, isn't just the inside story of one of the world's most iconic companies. Full of counter-intuitive concepts and written in binge-worthy prose, it answers some of our most fundamental questions about taking that leap of faith in business or in life: How do you begin? How do you weather disappointment and failure? How do you deal with success? What even is success? From idea generation to team building to knowing when it's time to let go, That Will Never Work is not only the ultimate follow-your-dreams parable, but also one of the most dramatic and insightful entrepreneurial stories of our time.

Christmas Day 2021 sees the release of a Netflix series, Stories of a Generation with Pope Francis, based on this book. Pope Francis views elders as reservoirs of wisdom and historical memory and believes their insights will offer future generations much-needed understanding and direction. More than 250 people were interviewed and Loyola Press sent a collection of stories to the Vatican. These encompassed universal themes of love, loss, survival, hope, peace in the face of unimaginable tragedy, and above all, faith. Pope Francis received every story, prayed over them, and responded with sensitivity and grace to 31 of the stories and the issues they raise. In his Preface, Pope Francis lays out his reasons for this collection of wisdom stories and the movement he hopes it inspires. He also contributes as a fellow elder, offering a story from his own life at the start of each chapter . And in his own wise and compassionate way, he serves as a spiritual shepherd, commenting on dozens of heartfelt stories.

Explore the creation of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Netflix’s highly-anticipated new prequel series from The Jim Henson Company, with this all-access look at the show’s journey to the screen. Delving into the incredible creative process behind the series, this deluxe volume reveals how Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, legendary character and costume designer Brian Froud, and director Louis Leterrier brought Thra and its characters to life alongside the artists and puppeteers who are continuing the legacy of the original film. Filled with exclusive interviews with the creative forces behind the show, plus concept art, set photography, puppet designs, and more, this is the definitive exploration of The Jim Henson Company’s epic return to Thra.

Introduction -- Why we need film and series suggestions -- How algorithmic recommender systems work -- Cracking the code, part I : developing Netflix's recommendation algorithms -- Cracking the code, part II : unpacking Netflix's myth of big data -- How real people choose films and series -- Afterword : robot critics vs. human experts -- Appendix : designing the empirical audience study.