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Ted Sarandos Keynote: Royal Television Society London Convention 2024
Entertainment
17 September 2024
GlobalUnited Kingdom
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Good morning, everybody. Thank you for inviting me. It's a privilege to be here with you.
The Royal Television Society always holds a special place in my heart because it was here, back in 2016, that I showed you the first trailer for the first season of The Crown.
Over the next seven years, The Crown went on to become the most nominated British TV series in Emmy history - and only one of three to win best drama.
But I'll always remember it as a show that stood conventional wisdom on its head.
Peter Morgan's pitch was for a six-season show with a rotating cast. A show that would take ten years to produce. It was something that no one had ever tried before - and something that most people thought would never work. But it did, introducing a new generation of stars to the world.
Besides being one of the best shows of the last decade, The Crown is also a perfect example of why Britain remains one of the best places for TV and film.
You have some of the very best writers, directors, producers, actors, crew, crafts and locations anywhere in the world. I have always thought of the UK as the birthplace of prestige television - a creative culture unlike any other.
It's why Netflix invests more here than any other country outside the U.S. Since 2020, we've invested $6B in the UK creative community - and worked with over 30,000 cast and crew.
Today we have over 100 productions active in the UK.
And I've recently had the pleasure of visiting some of those sets - like Thursday Murder Club, My Oxford Year and Wake Up Dead Man, our new Knives Out movie.
So I've seen the scope and ambition of these British-made shows and films first-hand.
This wealth of talent is a Great British success story. Because it didn't happen by accident.
It happened because you have great public service broadcasters and institutions that nurture British talent and creativity. Institutions like the RTS, the oldest television society in the world.
It happened because you've consistently supported regulations that encourage creativity, innovation and long term thinking.
And it happened because you invested in education and training in the creative arts at every level, as well as investing in your amazing facilities. All of which have been supported by highly competitive tax incentives which make the UK an even more attractive place for anyone looking to make a film or show.
Filming here in Britain is always a privilege, and never a sacrifice.
In other words, Britain became one of the best countries in the world for TV and film because you made it happen.
And now, with competition for people's time and attention so high - and barriers to entry in entertainment so low - its time to make it happen again.
The question is how?
I'll start with a disclaimer: I am obviously not British, and Netflix is not a British company. But we operate in over 190 countries around the world - including this one - and that's taught us a lot over the years.
Today I want to share a few of those lessons with you.
First, to succeed we need to put the audience first - and that means embracing change.
The entertainment industry has always been defined by change. New technology comes along, new companies pop up, and patterns of consumer behavior shift.
We saw it with cable, then home video, then streaming.
And now we're seeing it happen again.
Today, choice and control are the price of admission in modern entertainment. It's streaming that consumers want. And it's how our industry stays relevant - and grows - in the face of intense competition from all directions.
Like cable TV and home video before it, streaming also opens up new opportunities for creators to make their voices heard. For distributors to reach bigger audiences. And for those audiences to have more choices of what to watch.
Just look at this summer. It's been a blockbuster few months for streaming, with Bridgerton, The Bear, and House of the Dragon - three wonderful but very different shows. And all attracting enormous audiences.
Now, at this point you may be thinking, It's easy for Netflix to talk about change. You're the one driving it. But we have struggled to adapt, too.
Back when we first started streaming, the technology wasn't great, and we had two big competitors: piracy and our own DVD business.
To succeed at streaming, we knew we had to create something better than free. And we knew we had to let our DVD business go. Because as Steve Jobs said, if you don't cannibalize your business, someone else will.
And it was painful to split the company in half. We told our DVD employees that they could not even attend company meetings any more, in essence saying: you're the past, not the future .
But it's the reason that we adapted and grew.
Today, our members can watch a world of entertainment for a fraction of the price of a box set of The Sopranos in 2007.
And they don't have to wait two months for all the episodes of a show to come out, or for a film to finish its theatrical run.
I know the TV business was built on windows, but audiences don't care about them at all.
When you work in our business long enough, it can be easy to get distracted by all of the complexities. Rights. Distribution. Technology. It goes on and on.
These are all important things. But what really matters is how well we serve our audiences. What are we willing to do to serve them better.
Which brings me to the next lesson: audiences care a lot about variety and quality.
People often ask me if we really need so many movies and TV shows on Netflix. It's a debate you've been hav
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