Anushka Kartha Core Post 4

 While putting together our group presentation for this week, I found myself turning to the Netflix Investor Reports (all available online) for guidance in understanding the company ethos. In analyzing the diction and language used, notably in their letter to shareholders, we find a rich text laden with Netflix’s idea of the future media landscape. A lot of this landscape - both today and looking to the future - has been prophesied by Henry Jenkins in the Cultural Logic of Media Convergence all the way back in 2004, where he mapped out ‘sites of negotiation’ between producers and consumers.

In his list of nine such sites, mentions of ‘Revising audience measurement’, ‘Redesigning the digital economy’, and ‘Rethinking media aesthetics’ are but a few nods to some trends we see today. He preempts the shift towards fan communities as measurements of audience, the power of which we see with rapid cancellations and community campaigns for revising the futures of their favorite fandoms. We see fandom propel transmedia storytelling forward - see The Winchesters, a Supernatural spinoff seemingly birthed from the Tumblr homepage - and indeed dictate programming choices and even the fates of shows. Jenkins also nods to a crypto future with his posturing on future digital economies, and he sees the audience as globalized, engaged citizens with democratic boundaries being blurred on the daily. 

Echoes of Jenkins’ words and perhaps Netflixs’ future endeavors can be excavated from the aforementioned letter to the shareholders. In a section labeled ‘Content and Marketing’ we see a notable push towards experiential marketing and transmedia storytelling, catalyzed by the success of the likes of Wednesday, Stranger Things 4, and more. We see instances of creating experiences around their programming in efforts such as The Bridgerton Experience and The Stranger Things Experience allowing fandom to engage with each other and their content with full physical immersion. Cutting through the metrics scattered through the letter is a boastful paragraph of the effect of these shows beyond the spectrum of Netflix. Citing Billboard charts, Netflix takes pride in their contributions towards Kate Bush and Lady Gaga’s old tracks receiving a new lease of life via their content. Saying they ‘pierced the zeitgeist’ only solidifies their inclination towards fabricating cultural moments, and not just content. The letter even notes of a spike in home security sales following the success of Ryan Murphy’s The Watcher. That should speak for itself. They openly state their excitement in expanding their Intellectual Property across mediums, once again. The world of transmedia storytelling is obviously here to stay.