Noin June 2015, a few months before the official launch of Netflix (which occurred on October 22 of that year), Reed Hastings, co-founder and CEO of the platform, was featured on the front page of a well-known monthly magazine. The headline shouted: “This gentleman will turn off the old TV forever.” Fast forward ten years: Hastings passed the baton to Ted Sarandos, linear TV is still alive and Netflix has changed our consumption habitsbut something is changing.
The public is affected by a growing “serial fatigue”, i.e. tiredness from an overabundance of supply. How did we get here? And what happened to the much-heralded entertainment revolution? “Probably our expectations regarding something disruptive were excessive” summarizes Luca Barra, full professor in Television and digital media at the University of Bologna. «On the other hand, it is true that, for the first time since October 2015, our home public had access to a boundless catalog available whenever and wherever they wantfrom the phone to the tablet.”
Netflix has also contributed to the spread of the habit of consuming entire seasons of a series in one sitting. «House of Cards (initially broadcast in Italy by Sky, ed) was the first major global experiment in binge-watching” recalls Daniela Cardini, professor of History and Languages of TV at the IULM University of Milan. “For the first time, an entire season was distributed, rather than the traditional pilot episode, and everything changed: times, methods of viewing, even our relationship with waiting.”
Netflix and the invention of binge-watching
And so, already in 2013 in the United Kingdom, where Netflix arrived before us, the term “binge-watching” ranked second only to “selfie” in the Oxford Dictionary’s competition for word of the year. At that time Netflix itself, usually very data-sparing, published the results of a survey found that 61 percent of streaming viewers regularly “binged video” and 73 percent had a positive opinion of it. It doesn’t matter that in the meantime binge-watching has been blamed for everything from political apathy to insomnia, from lack of attention to declining birth rates; as the aforementioned Sarandos stated, thanks to streaming, “binge-watching is now the new normal”.
“Recommendation” algorithms
A further innovation was represented by the “recommendation” algorithms, which based on our viewing habits, crossed with approximately two thousand different “categorizations”, they suggest content in line with our tastes, broadening our cinematic horizonsbut also ensuring that we never cancel your subscription. This deadly mechanism is the secret that has allowed Netflix to become the most successful streaming company in the world. It currently has more than 300 million subscribers worldwide100 million more than its closest competitor, Amazon Prime Video.
Not just series, great films on Netflix
After attracting great directors (from Martin Scorsese to Alfonso Cuarón, whose film Roma won Netflix its first Oscars in 2019), Netflix released over 150 original films in 2021 alone. As for TV series, the platform has been able to select and make the most promising titles from each country global (like the Korean series Squid Game or Spanish The paper house) and has produced more than 1,500 original series, including the triumphs of Stranger Things and Bridgerton. As a result, Netflix has been able to establish the topics of online conversation in many regions of the world.
George Clooney is Jay Kelly in “Jay Kelly”. Cr. Peter Mountain/Netflix © 2025.
Let’s take it The queen of chess: In 2020, chess was a nerdy pastime. The series has transformed a niche game into a global phenomenon, causing sales of chess boards to soar (+275 percent on Ebay) and registrations on specialized sites, with a clear increase in female players. At the same time, without us noticing, «Netflix’s products have created a taste and spectatorial competence that have raised the bar of seriality» underlines Cardini.
His reasoning embraces both international series produced by other platforms, such as The Bear for Disney+, as well as those produced by Italian TV channels, such as A Professor, with Alessandro Gassmann, broadcast on Rai. But not everyone agrees: «In the last decade the way we consume images has radically changed» reasons Pietro Bianchi, researcher in Film Studies and critical theory at the University of Florida. «And it is true that previously we had to struggle to find particular contents, perhaps through film clubs and arthouse circuits, while now a world of abundance opens up to us. However, if the offer reflects the interests of each, it also regiments them and it is difficult to separate the two things. The algorithm is now one of the means of producing taste, rather than spreading it».
How much do subscribers count?
In short, more than elevating our choices or rewarding our curiosity, the risk is that the algorithm influences us. More generally, however, Bianchi believes that the real difference between Netflix and the others is not the sophistication of the products, but the enormous access to credit of the former Hastings company, which has attracted mega-productions and stars. Yet, something has cracked.
After the “formidable” 2020 (when the pandemic locked us up at home to watch TV) the platform recorded the first drop in subscribers in over a decade. «If the goal was to become the Spotify of videos, the operation failed» comments Barra. «Indeed, the TV market is much more fragmented than ten years ago: in addition to the public service, in Italy and elsewhere, there has been the entry of names like Disney+ and Amazon, plus growing competition from YouTube and other social networks». It is no coincidence, then, that Netflix has increased the standard monthly cost in the US and announced a basic subscription with advertising. Furthermore, «in the footsteps of generalist TV, it has inaugurated live sports, unscripted shows like Lol, crime insights and has even returned to dividing the seasons to build public anticipation» highlights Barra.
More TV models
It’s a shame, however, that in these ten years Netflix has weakened pay TV and cinemas, which cannot compete on stars and titles. Was it worth it? According to Cardini, streaming has improved seriality and, despite criticism, has not destroyed films«because the same was said in the 80s when the film catalogs were purchased by commercial TVs» and yet cinema is still here.
Roma, written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón distributed by Netflix. Photo by Carlos Somonte
On the contrary, according to Bianchi, in reality Netflix is not even an audiovisual content company, but rather “a company that uses cinema and TV series as bait: the real thing at stake are the behaviours, habits and tastes of the almost 200 million people who spend hours of their day interacting with that site”.
Not surprisingly, on US campusesBianchi already registers a disenchantment with all platforms, including Netflix, in favor of return to cinema and shared sociality. Barra instead believes that the future will see the coexistence of multiple TV models. But Netflix must be recognized for having changed the languages, multiplied the contents, broadened the public’s expectations. Now, however, caught between costs, competition and a disillusioned public, it is the platform itself that has to reinvent itself.