Netflix and it’s Affect on Television
In 2009, Netflix founder and CEO, Reed Hastings, boldly proclaimed, “There is a revolution happening, and within two years I think that Wi-Fi and Netflix will be built into all the televisions (Stone, 2009).” Revolutions are commonplace in television history, however. In the first half of the 20th century, technological innovations helped facilitate television’s emergence as a mass media. After becoming a mass media, consistent innovations like color television and the establishment of cable caused television to become even more popular. In 1997, an innovative company named “Netflix” emerged that was trying to find a way to instantly play video content on television without the use of DVDs. However, in the mid-2000s high speed internet facilitated video-streaming on computers and Netflix used the technology to stream its content onto televisions. Since Netflix began streaming its content, the company’s impact on television has been substantial and very evident. First, as Netflix’s popularity increased, an increasing number of hardware devices began offering the service. Second, consumers increasingly started viewing Netflix as an alternative to cable while insiders viewed it as a potentially serious threat. Lastly, Netflix has impacted the movie industry by adversely impacting box-office revenue, DVD sales, and DVD rentals. Thus far in the 21st century, Netflix has made the biggest impact on television as it has changed the way many consumers view television and has substantially impacted the two most influential players in television, cable and the movie industry.
The history of television was one filled with innovation and the contributions of many individuals. Transmitting an image onto a screen had been experimented with since the early 1900s. Remarkably, some of the technology used to conduct these experiments was the