You are reading a preview of The Ankler, a newsletter about the business of Hollywood by Richard Rushfield. To get read the rest of this issue and get in on all the action each and every week, click below to subscribe now.
If, last month, Netflix had a humongous, John Carter, Howard the Duck, Heaven’s Gate-sized flop (or bigger), but no one came forward to call it a flop, would it still be a flop?
Since the first cave paintings, entertainment has been a game of hits and flops. The hits can become such runaway successes that they pay for everything. And flops, when they get out of hand, those can sink a whole company.
That’s the carrot and the stick that has always driven Hollywood. Create a hit and your company’s success is assured . . . for a couple of cycles. Stardom! Riches! All the blessings of Hollywood are conferred upon those who can defy the odds and create that most sacred of all elements.
For those who responsible for flops, particularly out-of-control, ruinous flops, there awaits the gutter, the maelstrom, ignominy, a bus ticket back to Palookaville.
The Gods of entertainment are brutal, but in the end, just, and so have her favors and wrath been bestowed in a system that when all was said and done, kept most people more or less on their toes.
However, the administration of this system always depended on the fact that we all work in the public arena. Our hits and flops are right out there for all to see, thanks to box office and ratings data.
Such was our world until The Service reared up and announced, first, that it was going to keep its numbers to itself—and not even share them with the talent. Who would stand for that?
It turned out that, as always, a big enough check makes a lot of objections go away. And so it went.
But then they took it even further. To throw the data-illiterate brutes some bones, they began to throw out numbers. “The Fourth Most Watched Show In Netflix History” “75 million views in the first 45 seconds,” and so forth. That is to say, partial, obstructed views at their numbers, completely stripped of any context, but enough for the trades to swallow it up and hype these “announcements,” burying the caveats down in paragraph 30.
Fair enough, to some extent. The numbers belong to them, and if their owners—the stockholders—are still fat and happy enough on the share price that they aren’t demanding any specificity, if the trades are slavish enough to lap this up, well then there’s no law that they have to tell us how many people watched The Kissing Booth from start to finish.
As we teetered on that slippery slope, though, Netflix gave us yet another “innovation” and started creating these lists, on the viewers’ home screens. The word “Trending” has been so stripped of meaning over the digital era that we can wave aside the notion that it has any empirical value. Trending is a thing that some people like and/or talk about and may or may not be watching. Or not. Who’s to say?
But trending did not sate whatever desire audiences, investors, and any pesky journalists had for more of a sense of what people actually watched on The Service. So they created other new lists that, in the olden days, we would have called “straightforward.”
“Top 10 in the U.S. Today,” for instance.
Ask 100 random people what they thought those words meant if found on Netflix, and I’d conservatively bet 99 of them would come back with something on the order of, “The ten things that the most people watched. In this country. On this day.”
So you would think, and so it seemed when they unveiled their new list. Sort of.
When they launched it, Netflix’s Director of Product Innovation shared with the world:
This new row—complete with its own special design—will enable you to see what is most popular on Netflix in your country. It will be updated every day and the position of the row will vary depending on how relevant the shows and films are to you.
So they were saying, the Top 10 is the Top 10, but if you’re immune to what the masses like, perhaps it’ll move down a row or two in favor of Trending, or the queue you once painstakingly set up.
Okay . . . well, that resembles facts. In the ballpark, anyway.
But apparently, when push came to shove, that was a little more transparency-dependent than The Service likes to be. For a company that genuflects hourly at the feet of Big Data, they sure do get squirrelly about the data-shaped tidbits they release into the world.
Last month, The Service shared a bit more color on the Top 10. Speaking to the most Netflix-connected of reporters, Vulture’s Joe Adalian, for an article titled, “The Real Story Behind Netflix’s Top 10,” which presumably was about Netflix’s Top 10, there was this little bit of clarification:
This has been a sneak peek preview of today’s edition of The Ankler, the industry’s secret newsletter. To read the rest of this issue, subscribe today for just $10 a month and don’t miss out on who’s in the hot seat next!
IF YOU’RE NOT ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER, HERE’S WHAT YOU’RE MISSING IN THIS WEEK’S EDITIONS!
Warners Gets the Old Razzle Zaslle!
Hollywood’s Godfather Warns!
The Trades Look the Other Way!
AND SO MUCH MORE! SUBSCRIBE TODAY AND DON’T MISS OUT ALL THE NEWS THAT’S GOT HOLLYWOOD IN A TIZZY!
The Ankler’s Got People Talking!!
If you are interested in advertising on the Ankler: write us at anklerads@gmail.com for rates and info.
Can’t afford The Ankler right now? If you’re an assistant, student, or getting your foot in the door of this industry, and want help navigating the craziness of this business but don’t have the money to spare right now, drop me a line at richard@theankler.com and we’ll work it out. No mogul or mogul-to-be left behind here at The Ankler.
Enjoy this issue? Why not click on the little heart below so it can surfaced to others in the Substack universe. Or better still – share it with the world!
