While completely original online content is still largely in its infancy, one series appears to be providing those that come after it a diagram of how they should operate.
On February 1st, Netflix released its original series House of Cards in its entirety. Rather than releasing one episode a week the site decided to release all 13 episodes.
This allowed those who wanted to see the series to sit down and do it marathon style. It also meant that there wasn’t any chance that people would lose interest from one episode to the next.
If a viewer did find a particular episode less than intriguing, they could simply go right to the next one and give it another go. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings told Deadline that this approach made the series a “great success.”
At the moment, we’ll have to take Hastings’ word for it as Netflix hasn’t released any concrete numbers for House of Cards . Hastings did mention that it is currently the online video streaming company’s most watched programming.
While there aren’t solid numbers to peruse, it appears that the Kevin Spacey led show did well enough to convince Netflix that more original programs were needed.
The company has long had plans to put out yet another season of the cult comedy Arrested Development as well as a kids show called Turbo: F.A.S.T.
Southern California Public Radio points out that Netflix would be remiss if it thought that all original content would automatically be as successful as House of Cards .
They point out that the political thriller hit a sort of viewer drawing tri-fecta by having big name stars such as Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright attached.
It helped that David Fincher is also a well known name as far as directors go. In short, House of Cards might have been a huge success for Netflix, but that doesn’t portend huge success for the site’s other original programming.