Ted Sarandos hints Netflix won’t add ‘Breaking News,’ blames algorithms for ‘Baby Reindeer’s’ success

meanwhile Netflix It has expanded the types of programming it offers, recently moving into live sports and other events. Ted Sarandos In a new interview, he suggested the news wasn’t meant for Netflix.

“We don’t do breaking news or anything like that because we feel like there are a lot of other outlets that do that. People don’t expect that from us,” Sarandos said. Said TThe New York Times In a wide-ranging interview In a response published online Saturday, when asked what’s at stake for Netflix, an executive at the company, which launched its ad layer a year ago, said in the same response that it’s open to new things: “I don’t think there’s a clear answer, because the best version of something might work really well for Netflix, but it just hasn’t worked well so far.”

Last week, after Netflix’s first in-person presentation, CNN acknowledged Despite popular streamers expanding into different types of content, live or pre-recorded news programming is still lacking, and there seems to be no intention of changing that.

“Long time ago Baby Reindeer “Star Wars would never have been seen in the US, or even if it had been shown, it would have been shown once on PBS,” Sarandos says. “It’s hugely popular in the UK, and just like Netflix, it’s been picked up by an algorithm and shown more and more, because if it’s popular in one country, there’s a good chance it has a large audience outside of that country. And it’s been a huge hit all over the world.”

Additionally, Sarandos said he believes international series can be successful in the U.S. without having to be produced for an American audience.

“You don’t have to adapt the storytelling for America to work. If a film or TV Seriesween is going to be successful in its home country, it has to be authentic,” he said. “And I think it’s that authenticity that international audiences pick up on. If you try to make something for the world, it doesn’t really appeal to anyone. I can’t think of any work that tried to be for the world that actually got made for the world.”

Last week, Netflix largely–Series and movies watched in the second half of 2023international shows score highly on the list of most-watched series (as measured by the streamer’s metric: total hours watched divided by airtime). Four of the top six shows were produced outside the US, including a German miniseries. Dear child,French Lupin British TV Shows Who is Erin Carter? and sex education Season 4. And the top series for the second half of 2023 are one pieceIt is a Japanese-American co-production.

Throughout the interview, Sarandos emphasized Netflix’s “consumer quality philosophy” and praised the buzz surrounding the live Tom Brady Roast, calling it “amazing.” Lindsay Lohan romantic comedy Ireland’s wishDespite my love of romantic comedies Times A reporter grimaces as he watches a movie.

“I look at it by the numbers, how many people are watching it. I mean, people watch the whole thing. In an on-demand world, people generally turn off things they don’t like,” Sarandos said. Ireland’s wish.

The Times reporter argues that fans of these films are “highly intent on seeing them through to the end.”

Still, Sarandos Ireland’s wish Compared to other television and film shows, the show is rated as “high on the Hallmark scale” but “not in the middle.” [Searchlight] scale. “

Later in the interview, during which Sarandos coincidentally mentions “breaking news,” he again praises the breadth of the streamer’s library, suggesting that the projects that will resonate with most audiences are “quality” TV shows and movies.

reference Ireland’s wish Sarandos reiterated: “We all have great contradictions within ourselves. crownand I love Is that a cake? And I love them both equally, but that doesn’t make sense! If you think about that and what we’re trying to do, we’re trying to make great movies. We define quality in terms of the audience. So if the audience likes the movie, that’s great. That’s quality. Ireland’s wish “We may not have satisfied your appetite, but 65 million people saw the movie. It was a big hit, and people love it. Critics and reviews are great. We want to please everybody. But sometimes the movies we make are not made for critics. But they are made for audiences who love movies.”

When asked about his concerns going forward, Sarandos said he was primarily worried about “internal execution.”

“When I joined the company, we had 175,000 subscribers in the U.S. buying DVDs, and now we have 270 million subscribers around the world, and it’s a very different company,” he said. “It’s about how we evolve the company and how we don’t get too nostalgic and romanticize the past. Movies, games, TV, stand-up comedy — these are all real art forms. If they’re not, they’re just a way to kill time. If that were to happen, I’d be very worried about TikTok.”