Back to All News
Ted Sarandos Keynote: Royal Television Society London Convention 2024
Entertainment
17 September 2024
GlobalUnited Kingdom
Link copied to clipboard
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
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Back to All News
