Hollywood Whitewashing – Last Week Tonight With John Oliver

“How is this still a thing?”

Kevin Spacey, Netflix and Challenging Traditional TV

Legendary actor Kevin Spacey gave this speech at the Edinburgh Television Festival on August 23rd. Spacey stars in and produces House of Cards (an awesome show that everyone should watch), which premiered February 1st of this year on Netflix. Instead of following the traditional television model of releasing a new episode each week, Netflix released all 13 episodes at once. This gave viewers the ability to “binge watch”. Many, like myself, relished in the new-found freedom and spent an entire weekend watching Spacey’s character dish out cold one-liners and slither his way through the US government. The show quickly became a hit amongst both fans and critics and earned nine Emmy nominations.

During Spacey’s speech, he talks about the success that can be found in simply giving the audience what they want.

“…we have learned the lesson that the music industry didn’t learn – give people what they want, when they want it, in the form they want it in, at a reasonable price, and they’ll more likely pay for it rather than steal it.”

He also touches on the shift in the television industry and makes an amazing point when he explains how medium by which TV is consumed is becoming less and less relevant.

“If you watch a TV show on your iPad is it no longer a TV show? The device and length are irrelevant … For kids growing up now there’s no difference watching Avatar on an iPad or watching YouTube on a TV and watching Game Of Thrones on their computer. It’s all content. It’s all story.”

Cross-platform entertainment is very prevalent today and could very well become the norm someday soon. What I’m curious to see is if traditional television will react the growth of online streaming and how this will change standard techniques in marketing and publicity.