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Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix, is challenging his streaming competitors to be as “transparent” as his company is when it comes to publicizing what viewers are watching. Touting Netflix’s next viewer report, due on Thursday, Sarandos said on Wednesday at the Fast Company Innovation Festival in New York City that “I don’t think we could be any more transparent than that,” and he added, “I’m hoping that the other folks in the business will follow suit on that.”
Sarandos intimated that Netflix would look very good in a side-by-side comparison, because people will be able to see a “phenomenal” amount of daily Netflix viewership happening across the globe. He said the viewership report will also demonstrate that “the biggest movies of the year are these movies that are made for Netflix and only playing on Netflix.”
Thursday’s report will show 94 billion hours total of viewing in the first half of 2024, Sarandos said. “That’s a lot of time.”
The top 4 are British-produced television shows, Sarandos said.
Fresh off a keynote address at RTS London, Sarandos arrived at the Fast Company festival with his company’s subscriber base and stock price at or near all-time highs following the introduction of a discounted ad-tier option for viewers. On Monday, the influential Financial Times of Londondeclared Sarandos the victor in the streaming wars over the likes of Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, Amazon and Comcast.
A potential black eye looms in the $170 million defamation suit filed by Fiona Harvey, the real-life “Martha” depicted in Netflix’s multiple Emmy winner Baby Reindeer. Sarandos at RTS defended the show and its creator as “not a documentary” and as “Richard Gadd’s true story,” one in which it’s “abundantly clear that there is dramatization involved.”
Sarandos also made clear that scripted programming remains the heart of Netflix’s content strategy, and to that end has sought to calm fears about AI’s capacity to wipe out industry jobs.
“If you look back over a hundred years of entertainment, you can see how great technology and great entertainment work hand in hand,” he said on an earnings call in July. “Animation didn’t get cheaper, it got better in the move from hand-drawn to CGI animation. And more people work in animation today than ever in history.
“So I’m pretty sure that there’s a better business and a bigger business in making content 10% better than it is making it 50% cheaper,” he added.
Sarandos also has said that Netflix never will be a breaking-news provider. As the company eases into live sports broadcasting, an area of aggressive expansion for rival streamers including Amazon, Sarandos has struck a note of caution about Netflix’s possible future as a sports outlet.
He’s all in, though, on the company’s acquisition of Monday Night Raw and other WWE pro-wrestling fare in a “drama of sport” category, as he’s called it, that fits with with Netflix’s storytelling ethos and its growing library of sports documentaries.
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