Netflix Nations by Ramon Lobato

Author:Ramon Lobato [Неизв.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York University Press

India

India, with a vast English-speaking middle class, is a prized market for multinationals. Internet penetration and smartphone use are rising rapidly among an overall population of 1.3 billion people. Satellite and cable systems are well established, with hundreds of available channels. Yet India’s demography, regulations, and infrastructure pose many challenges for foreign media companies. Higher-speed internet connections are still largely restricted to urban elites, and their typical bandwidth speeds of 1–2 Mbps are too slow to use video streaming services reliably. Meanwhile, data caps of 40–50 gigabytes per month mean that even those subscribers with high-speed home connections are often wary of using up their precious gigabytes on data-hungry video applications.

India has no fewer than 14 official languages, including Bengali, Gujarati, and Punjabi, as well as the widely spoken Hindi. There is no single language that is understood by all citizens across this vast nation. Proficiency in English, the default language of business, advertising, and elite communication, is limited to around a third of the population. What’s more, India’s film industry, Bollywood, is an unassailable force: it is by far the most popular form of moving-image entertainment, with Hollywood coming in a distant second. India has its own thriving star system, its own storytelling traditions, its own dream factory. There is no obvious need for foreign content, even though the market is certainly big enough to support a range of styles.

In India, Netflix has been licensing Hindi, Gujarati, and Punjabi shows, but at the time of writing its Indian content collection is still seen as poor compared to what is available on other services. Instead, Netflix is reliant on the pulling power of its original content among English-speaking elites. As a Netflix executive told the Times of India shortly after the local launch, “We are after a small base of English-speaking people, who travel abroad, are wealthy and want to watch the latest shows that are being launched in the US” (Sarkari 2016).

Netflix got off to a late start in India, arriving as part of the global switch-on in January 2016. By this time, the streaming market was already crowded. Rupert Murdoch’s Star TV had its own streaming service, Hotstar. Other popular services included Eros Now (from the Bollywood studio Eros), Sony LIV, and DittoTV (from the cable and satellite provider Zee TV). There were also smaller services, such as Spuul (specializing in Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, and regional-language content), Hooq (with a big catalog of classic Indian TV shows), and Muvizz (specializing in independent movies). Amazon Prime Video was another competitor and was starting to invest significantly in local content. Amazon premiered its first Indian original series, the cricket-themed drama Inside Edge, in 2017, along with a series of stand-up performances from popular Indian comics. Hotstar had already released a number of original productions, including romances, talk shows, and several comedy series. For its part, Netflix responded by commissioning several high-profile original series, including Selection Day, described as a “story of cricket and corruption” and based on a

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