Netflix Goes Back To TV Basics With Chris Rock Comedy Special

Netflix has always been eager to distance itself from traditional television. The streamer pioneered pushing content delivery forward. But an awful lot of its recent ideas actually seem to be moving back to the past.

The funny thing is, that change in approach could work.

As NetflixNFLX
struggles to stem a decline in subscribers, the streamer has introduced changes it hopes will do the trick. Earlier this month, it launched an ad-supported tier, something it once pledged it would not do. And this week, Netflix became the latest to embrace live streaming, which rivals have done with great success, by scheduling a live Chris Rock comedy special.

Netflix couches these changes as innovations. But they look an awful lot like echoes of the past, the things that traditional television (including cable and broadcast) have delivered in years.

The Chris Rock Live Stream May Be Just a Warmup

Live events have sustained traditional TV against the very effective onslaught of streaming competition. Sports account for almost all top-10 shows because there’s an urgency to them—they happen in real time, people talk about them on social media as they happen, and no one wants to feel left out. You can catch the latest episode of Abbott Elementary on your DVR and not feel like you missed any part of the experience. But live events carry an urgency and excitement that have kept traditional TV relevant, whether through the Olympics, Oscars, Super Bowl or MTV Movie Awards.

And now Netflix is doing it. Actually, the streamer is late to the party on this one. Everyone from AmazonAMZN
Prime to ESPN+ to Hulu carries live sporting events, and they have been effective buzz builders.

Retraining people to look for live events on streamers may take some time, but Netflix knows that; it’s probably why it took the streamer so long to commit. Now that it’s here, Rock’s special certainly won’t be the last thing it does. Netflix may experiment with live events in other parts of the world or go after a major sports rights package here. And it may need to do that to meet its new goal of focusing on revenue (easy to say when the focus on subscribers wasn’t going so hot).

Advertising Is The Bread And Butter Of Traditional TV

Advertising has long supported broadcast and basic cable. Streaming was supposed to be an alternative to that, a place where people could binge show after show for hours and not have to pay the piper, so to speak, in the form of watching commercials. They were already paying, shelling out money for subscriptions. The lack of ads is arguably the biggest differentiator between subscription video on demand (SVOD) and traditional TV.

And Netflix knows that. Since 2019, the company doubled down on its ad-free status in a letter to shareholders. “We, like HBO, are advertising free,” it noted. “That remains a deep part of our brand proposition; when you read speculation that we are moving into selling advertising, be confident that this is false. We believe we will have a more valuable business in the long term by staying out of competing for ad revenue and instead entirely focusing on competing for viewer satisfaction.”

The need for change can arise suddenly, and Netflix had been riding high with record subscribers during the pandemic. The adjustment afterward, when people canceled their services, making it necessary for Netflix to look at new ways to attract customers, and a low-priced, ad-supported tier was an obvious innovation. Still, it means that people who subscribe to Basic with Ads, as the service is called, will see very little difference between Netflix and, say, CBS—same ad lengths, same advertisers, same breaks in the action.

Analysts believe Netflix’s new ad tier could be very lucrative, raking in that money the streamer wants to focus on.

So what’s next for Netflix? Perhaps it will begin releasing more shows weekly instead of dropping them all at once, harkening to that old traditional TV trick of building anticipation. Or maybe it will embrace TV staples like news analysis, talk shows or late-night programs (things it’s tried before but abandoned quickly).

Whatever comes next, it will be interesting to see if it’s back to the future or back to true innovation, as was once the streamer’s hallmark.