How Netflix Conquered the Transport of Media

 Netflix was made on August 27th, 1997 when two friends Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph wondered if a DVD would survive a trip through the mail, so they made a simple dare for themselves to find an answer to their question. They mailed themselves a DVD, found it returned to them unharmed which gave them a brilliant business idea. This is how Netflix began as nothing more than a simple website for people to rent DVDs through the mail but from there it blossomed into so much more.

However, this process was one of small steps and continuous hard work which continued to prove rapid success. Their decisions to create features like a review system for customers after they rented a movie and the ability for customers to make lists of their favorite movies were invaluable to Netflix’s quick success, as shown by their over one million subscribers after just six years of operation. This pool of people then expanded to five million in only three years after that. These days, Netflix is the name brand for at home movie streaming but streaming was not even a feature of Netflix until 2007. This was immensely successful for them as the only other names in the game back then were Hulu and Amazon Prime Video, both of which launched around the same time. Five years later, Netflix had quintupled their subscriber count again to twenty five million. If you thought that was impressive, currently Netflix sits as the top over all other streaming services in terms of subscribers with a whopping 238.39 million subscribers. This is more than Disney +, Hulu, and ESPN+ put together, which Disney did do with the Disney+ bundle.

However, has the rise of Netflix left a positive impact on the world? First off, you have to acknowledge that the success of Netflix has brought about the rise of most of the streaming service and free, ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) industry. With the rise of this industry has inevitably come the death and decline of several other industries. Most notably is video rental service stores such as Blockbuster, which have now famously become a relic of the late nineties and early two thousands (with the exception of the last bastion in Bend, Oregon). Next has come the slow decline of movie theaters. Even Dartmouth has begun to look into this trend and they have found via an online survey in 2022 that 41% of respondents rarely go to see a movie at the theater. The main two reasons they cited as to why streaming services have just now begun to win out the battle against movie theaters is the massively increased usage of streaming services during the Covid-19 pandemic and the fact that a monthly Netflix subscription is now cheaper than a single movie ticket. Although it would be sad to see movie theaters disappear, some could argue that in the United States’ capitalistic system, it is our very competitive nature that stronger businesses with better products will cull out the weak ones. Therefore, it is up for you to decide: Is Netflix a better product for distributing movies and TV shows and therefore deserves to be on top or has it become the Walmart of the entertainment industry, eating up little ma and pop movie theaters that cannot compete with their better prices from mass media dispersal? Personally, Netflix has won me over with some of their many Netflix originals. I know I appreciate them a whole lot for making “Stranger Things” and “The Umbrella Academy,” even their worst creations, like “Tall Girl,” have given people all across the globe something to entertain them for just a couple hours.

If you want to hear about Hastings and Randolph’s success story, you can read from it from this part of the official Netflix website: https://about.netflix.com/en

My other sources are here:

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NFLX/netflix/net-worth

https://www.hollywoodinsider.com/streaming-services-theaters/

https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2022/10/trends-streaming-services#:~:text=Over%20the%20last%20decade%2C%20interest,and%20damages%20the%20industry%20irrevocably.

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/01/08/netflixs-first-ceo-on-reed-hastings.html

Free Speech, AI, and “The Flash”

Out of the eight values of free expression, the one that has really resonated with me is number seven; “promote innovation.” I have kept a close eye on the continuing writers and actors strikes against the multimillion dollar studios that they work for. I have found it to be a really interesting moment in history that we are living through, especially when viewing it through the lens of innovation and freedom of speech.

The lynchpin of the complaints of the strikes has to deal with how large studios are using new, emerging artificial intelligence technologies. For writers, they are upset about how some studios have used AI to rewrite scripts and then underpay writers because they can claim that the final script was written by the AI with the actual writer just being a co-writer. This is on top of third party AI companies, like ChatGPT, making transformative content by using other writers’ work with no compensation. (OpenAI is a billion-dollar company. Writers deserve more for their contribution to its success) For actors, they are worried about the new face tracking softwares that is rapidly improving as studios have already proven that these programs can recreate a person’s face doing or saying anything with only footage of that person. () We already saw this in the recent movie, “The Flash” (2023) that was produced by Warner Brothers. In this movie, they recreated George Reeves and Christopher Reeve to make new scenes of them by using old footage and new AI face tracking programs. (The Flash Bringing Dead Actors Back With CGI Is Disgusting) This is incredibly concerning for actors because any one of them could be eliminated from being in any new jobs because they have been replaced by a digital copy of themselves. Studios are making the argument that this is perfectly legal as the digital reconstructions are made from recycled footage that the studios own. However, some people noted how sad it was that Reeve’s face was used in this despite his own disapproval of movies like “The Flash,” “What the majors do is take what grossed $100 million domestically last year and get the key ingredients back again and try to pump it up a few more times. Of course, the quality is a sliding scale of diminishing returns.” (Christopher Reeve Probably Would Have Hated His The Flash Cameo) It is truly sad to see the faces of the people we looked up to be manipulated like puppets in spite of their own beliefs.

Overall, I think that it is very interesting how new AI technologies and computer science innovations are being used by others to stifle the creativity and innovation of writers and actors. We have come to this point where one group’s innovation is going to need to be stifled for the sake of the other. If the government did step in to make new AI technology research illegal, they would be controlling the innovation of computer science engineers, which falls under the eight values of free speech so would these engineers have the right to make a constitutional claim. If that happens, it could easily lead to another Supreme Court case where a potentially immoral or unethical ruling could be made because it is upheld by a Constitution written by people who could not even imagine technology as complex as artificial intelligence. If this were to happen, I imagine the public outcry could easily reach heights comparable to that of the recent Roe v Wade turnover in 2022. New technology has immense potential to do good or bad and the writers and actors are trying to make this clear now, so the people can make the right decision on how to wield this new power.

SCOTUS History Article

I just read this article by History.com about the history of the Supreme Court (https://www.history.com/topics/us-government-and-politics/supreme-court-facts). Throughout my entire life, the federal government has been a rather static yet powerful institution. It is hard to imagine that it has ever been anything else, and that the three branches were created exactly as they are now by the founding fathers. I thought the only things that changed about them were their members. However, the Judicial branch in particular has had a rather turbulent history.

First off, I always thought the Supreme Court had 9 justices because an odd number just made sense, but it actually began with 6 justices as stated in this quote from the article, “Though the first court comprised of six justices, Congress altered the number of Supreme Court seats — from a low of five to a high of 10 — six times over the years. In 1869, Congress set the number of seats to nine, where it has remained until today. As of June 2022, 115 Justices have served on the Supreme Court.” This truly shocked me. Six changes is quite a lot and the fact that congress settled on such a large range of five to ten is also odd because both Congress and the President seem to really rush getting a new justice to fill the seat of the last one. If the number of justices can range so much, then it seems that there should not be so much pressure, other than the president getting in someone they trust before the end of their term.

Another interesting interaction with the presidency that the supreme court has is that the chief justice oversees impeachment trials. This seems problematic to me as the same president that nominates the chief justice could end up being on trial presiding under them, which would be a clear conflict of interest, in my opinion. Another interesting thing I learned about the chief justice was that, “In cases where the chief justice is a member of the majority opinion, the justice has the authority to assign who will write the court’s opinion.” Is this still true? I could not find a clear answer online. After reading this in the article, it felt like a fact that should be pretty obvious but I have never really thought about the small details of how the supreme court deals out rulings. This article definitely made me stop and think about those details for the first time.

This article also mentioned several notable chief justices, who had very interesting facts about them. Most notably was Chief justice John Marshall who revolutionized the Supreme Court during the case Marbury v Madison (1803) when he created the power of “judicial review” for the Supreme Court to deem what laws, orders, and actions of the other two branches are constitutional. These days, this power seems so integral to the Supreme Court that I thought the court always held this power. Fun fact - he also held the longest ever term for a chief justice at 34 years. Two other chief justices who stuck out to me were Earl Warren, who created the Miranda rights in the case of Miranda v Arizona (1966), and William Howard Taft, who served as both a president (1909-1913) and a chief justice (1921-1930). This was great for reminding me just how interesting of a history the United States has, despite its relatively short existence, and revitalizing my interest in studying that history.

The top five sources I get my news from:

1. Head in the Office podcast (https://open.spotify.com/show/0i3nQ0AUhJ62urYdpfBpin)

This is my favorite way to get the news. I listen to the “Head in the Office” podcast on spotify plus many of their extra clips on TikTok. I am not a huge podcast person but Jeremy and Gage have a lot of great witty banter that helps keep their relatively dry topics fun to listen to. I also enjoy that they usually keep their episodes closer to an hour. My only gripe is that they are heavily left leaning. However, they clearly market themselves as “a leftist point of view.”

2. The View Point Newspaper (https://www.theviewpointnews.com/)

The View Point Newspaper is a new, up and coming, online paper by High Point University students about news for High Point University students. Therefore, it is both incredibly relevant to me and a good way for me to receive local and campus news. For example, they just recently posted a great story about Miss Val, the HPU security guard that went viral. Plus, it is always great to support student journalism, especially when they are my peers!

3. Social Media/Word of mouth

Very often I will hear about a breaking story from someone I know. What is also very common for me is for a story to get big enough online through social media that I end up hearing about it from a random video on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube before I hear about it in real life. Whether I hear about a breaking story via online or in person, this will usually lead to me looking up a more credible source online to find out more about what has been proven to have happened.

4. CNN (https://www.cnn.com/cnn10)

When I was younger, my teacher would show my class a short weekly video series called CNN 10 on every friday. CNN 10 covered the news of the week in a short, easily understandable format. It was perfect for students. Due to this, I have a soft spot in my heart for CNN so I will usually go to them first to read stories. Sometimes, I will check in on CNN 10 to see one of their videos too. They are still really good, but not anywhere near as good as when Carl Azuz was the host.

 

5. My Dad

I often find myself talking to my dad about current events and politics because he keeps very up to date on the happenings in the country. Plus his favorite sources are Fox News and Newsmax, which are both strongly right leaning. I find that this difference of opinions is healthy for me to see some of the many perspectives on the current issues of the modern world.