In Riley Guttman’s blog post, he writes on how Netflix, an American DVD rental and online video streaming company, has taken up a strategy of restarting previously discontinued T.V. series.

His post piqued my interest despite the fact that I hardly watch American T.V. shows. Having lived in Asia for most of my life, the concept of a T.V. series getting prematurely cancelled was something fresh to me.

As Riley states, I agree that it is a cost-efficient method to gaining new Netflix subscribers. The reason being that compared to producing a brand new T.V. series, continuing a discontinued one allows for Netflix to tap into its already existent fan-base. And by only distributing the continuation on Netflix, fans are forced to subscribe in order to watch the show.

However, Riley linked his blog post to the activity that was done in class where students gave advice on possible strategies adoptable by Netflix. I would like to question his classification of reviving discontinued T.V. series into “producing original content”. Despite the original story-line, can it truly be considered purely original given the already existing settings and characters? I personally do not think so.

Sources:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/merrillbarr/2013/11/15/is-netflix-playing-a-tv-game-of-moneyball/

http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/netflix-publishes-isp-speed-index/