PASADENA, CA -- Netflix is shrugging off a few jibes from traditional TV networks and doubling down on its charge into the new TV world.
Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos announced premiere dates for more upcoming drama, comedy, and kids’ series to TV writers Sunday.
These include the new Will Arnett comedy Flaked, which premieres March 11; the sitcom The Ranch, with Sam Elliott and Debra Winger, which premieres April 1; the supernatural mystery Stranger Things with Winona Ryder, which premieres July 15; and The Get Down, (top) a six-part series on the revolutionary New York music scene of the 1970s from Baz Luhrmann, is set to premiere August 12.
Days after announcing international agreements that will put Netflix into 190 countries, Sarandos also announced a May 5 premiere for its first French-language series, Marseille with Gérard Depardieu.
He announced a second season for the acclaimed Marvel’s Jessica Jones, with Krysten Ritter, and confirmed premiere dates for the return of the hits Orange Is the New Black, (right) on June 17, House of Cards, on March 4 and Grace and Frankie, on May 6.
He said the previously announced Lost in Space series is still in the works, and that the scheduling for future Marvel series will depend in part on when The Defenders series is ready for release.
He said Netflix is putting a new emphasis on family and children’s programming. “The Netflix’s user isn’t a 19-year-old guy anymore. Increasingly, it’s for everyone in the family.”
This is reflected in the new series Fuller House, a revival of the classic family sitcom that was once part of ABC’s TGIF lineup, which launches Feb. 26. New kids’ shows include the animated Kong: King of the Apes, which premieres April 15, and Word Party from The Jim Henson Company, which debuts June 3 and is designed to promote word-building.
Noting the discussion launched by FX President John Landgraf about whether there is too much content on television, Sarandos said, “If there is, then someone else is going to have to slow down,” because Netflix is not.
Landgraf earlier said Netflix had launched 55 new adult shows and another 45 children’s shows in three years, as many as FX launched in eight or nine. Landgraf said he wasn’t saying Netflix shows weren’t good, just that the TV business collectively could be creating viewer overload.
Sarandos also brushed aside a report by NBC last week that it had determined viewership for Netflix shows – figures Netflix itself has never released.
The NBC numbers “don’t reflect any sense of reality for anything we keep track of,” said Sarandos. He noted that while broadcast and cable networks concentrate on 18- to 49-year-old viewers because they are most attractive to advertisers, Netflix doesn’t care about age.
“The 18-49 number is so insignificant to us that we don’t even track it,” he said.
He pointed to Longmire (right), which Netflix picked up for original episodes, as the sort of show that might encourage older viewers to try Netflix.
He also said, not for the first time, that Netflix sees no point in releasing viewership numbers.
Nielsen ratings are used by commercial networks to sell advertising, he said, and because Netflix is subscriber-funded, the numbers are meaningless.
Internally, he said, “We obviously don’t want to spend a lot of money on shows people don’t watch – and they can let us know by unsubscribing.”
He also said Netflix gets much of its revenue from overseas subscribers. The company’s total subscription base is about 70 million, 43 million of those in the U.S.
Besides Marseille, Netflix is also producing native-language shows in Brazil and Mexico.