Netflix: The Needle that Broke Blockbuster's Back

When I’m at home in the beautiful San Fernando Valley, there is only one place I visit more than Starbucks – Blockbuster. One by one, the stores in my area have been closing – one was even replaced by a Starbucks. During the time I was home in March of this year, I visited my nearest Blockbuster and found it in the process of shutting down.

Netflix may be, as it were, the “ultimate” business model for easy and efficient movie-watching, but it has completely extracted the social component from the movie experience.

Movie-going was once a shared, community experience. Before the advent of television, people had to leave their homes to see a movie. Right now, going to the movies is a costly event, and it seems theatres will never be as full as they once were. Though nothing quite beats going to the movie theater, going to the video store is the next best thing. But with Netflix and similar digital delivery services, renting a movie is no longer an activity. When we don’t actively choose a movie for ourselves, the entire process becomes another instance of our passive indifference.
With a Netflix account, you can take endless multiple choice quizzes that indicate your “taste preferences.” The quizzes ask such questions as “How often do you watch campy movies?” or “How often do you watch heartfelt movies?” and the three answer choices are “never,” “sometimes,” and “often.” I don’t think I am being particularly controversial when I say there is a time for campy, and there is a time for heartfelt. I guess you could mark “sometimes” for every question, but what would be the point of that?

Netflix algorithms use the results from our “taste preferences” quizzes and track what we add to our queue to provide us with suggestions on what we might like in the future. Though adding movies to your queue might be a sweet escape while you are bored at work, the process of browsing the selection in person is incomparable – in a physical video rental store, we see things we might have missed and we don’t rent one out without honestly thinking we will enjoy it. For me, adding movies to my Netflix queue just makes me think of all the movies I will never see. I have spent countless hours browsing through the selection, adding movies to my queue, but not actually watching a movie.

Research scientists Daniel Read, George Loewenstein and Shobana Kalyanaraman administered a study in 1999 titled “Instant Gratifcation and Movie Demand,” in which they asked participants to choose movies from a selection of both high brow and low brow works and decide when they would watch them. When picking a movie for tonight, 66% of the subjects went for a low brow option. When picking for next Thursday, 37% chose low brow. When picking for the following Thursday, 29% selected a low brow movie. The conclusion they reached was that their subjects wanted something easy to watch immediately and generally put off watching heavier works for later. By exploiting this inclination within us, Netflix’s unprecedented collection of movies and television makes it easy for us to succumb to immediate gratification. We may be stunting our own growth and ability to learn through great cinematic works by limiting our reach to Netflix’s Watch Instantly.

My question to Netflix is, what are we supposed to do with virtually unlimited access to movies? As a kid for most (and as a 21 year old for me), the video store was like a candy store and renting one was a big event. Blockbuster sought to recreate the feeling of theatrical exhibition in their store environments – bright, colorful decor, traditional movie concessions, and knowledgeable staff. DVDs were well-displayed and categorized for efficient browsing. Roger Ebert applauds Amazon and Netflix for linking to reviews, such as his own. At my local Blockbuster store, I would ask fellow human beings for their opinions and recommendations.

Despite its competitors, both past and present, Netflix is an incredible company with far-reaching potential. They are constantly signing new streaming deals with distributors and are now even racing past premium cable channels with “House of Cards,” a series starring Kevin Spacey and directed by David Fincher that will be available for viewing exclusively through Netflix. The company is changing how we view movies and television, for better or for worse.

Though the era of the video store may be dead and gone, the possibilities for a revised business model for video rentals are endless. In an experiment to see how movies and social media interact directly, Facebook has made The Dark Knight available for streaming at the cost of $3.00, or 30 Facebook Credits. Similarly, Samsung’s The Smart Living Room is a noble attempt to bring movie-watching at home back to its social roots by incorporating personal profiles and social networking into the process. Our mainstream cinema does not ask us to think too much - it is now a means for us to escape our day-to-day routines. If all we are doing is sitting back and letting the entertainment come to us, where is the activity?

Journalism at its Worst

On April 5, 2011, British police arrested two journalists, Ian Edmonson and Neville Thurlbeck, on suspicions of phone tapping celebrities, politicians, and royals for News of the World (NotW), one of the United Kingdom’s top-selling tabloid newspapers. Edmonson, former NotW news editor, and Thurlbeck, the paper’s chief reporter, used cell phone numbers and voicemail security codes to hack into their targets’ voicemail boxes and intercept messages for gossip material.
Owned by media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, NotW is known for “reporting” inside information on celebrities and political officials. Almost 3 million people read the paper, making it one of the U.K.’s top-selling newspapers and one of the highest-selling English language papers in the world.

This is not the first time NotW has been accused of acquiring information through unethical means. In January 2007, the royal editor of the tabloid, Clive Goodman, was jailed for four months for plotting to intercept voicemail messages left for royal aides and other prominent figures. Glenn Muclaire, a private investigator hired on contract by the paper, was also imprisoned for six months after pleading guilty to the same charge. In this instance, supermodel Elle Macpherson was a victim, along with Prince William, football agent Skylet Andrew and publicist Max Clifford, to name only a few. Ironically, at the time he was working at NotW, Mulcaire also ran Nine Consultancy, a company that offered a service protecting clients from media disturbance. Evidence recovered from Mulcaire’s home included a list of the cell numbers of political, sports, and entertainment figures – potential hacking targets. The two were convicted under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000), a law that aims to protect private parties from surveillance and investigation in the Internet age.

So far, four arrests have been made in this scandal and NotW has issued a formal apology. But personal privacy has been put into question, publicly. Are the arrests and apology appropriate consequence for the tabloid?



In a word, no. Hugh Grant and Sienna Miller have been two vocal figures in this scandal – both were victims of phone hacking. In an instance of fate, Grant met Paul McMullan, a former NotW journalist, who also exposed the paper’s phone hacking activity. After snapping pictures of him and selling them to another British tabloid, Mail on Sunday, McMullan invited Grant to come to visit his pub in Kent. Seeing an opportunity, Grant accepted. He decided to tape his conversation with McMullan, and published excerpts in a piece titled “The Bugger, Bugged” in the New Statesman. Actress Sienna Miller is suing NotW in a very public case, risking her professional future in the process (News Corporation owns both NotW and 20th Century Fox). When asked about the possibility that she could be blacklisted at 20th Century Fox, Miller responded, “I’m not really too concerned about never working for Fox because it’s about standing up for myself in a way that’s more important than anything. If that’s the case, then that’s the case. It means more to me to make a stand against that than it does anything else in my life.”

The point is that the laws regarding investigative journalism must be strengthened to fit the modern age, so maybe individual “takedowns” are the way to go right now. While the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act is fairly modern, the law, or any law for that matter, is unable to keep up with the Internet. In fact, statutory attempts to protect privacy are ineffectual because of the speed with which the Internet evolves.

Two separate instances of phone hacking have happened at the same tabloid journal. While the arrests and apology are a step in the right direction, NotW itself must face some legal consequences for any substantial change to occur.

The NotW scandal was a highly public instance of privacy invasion. We only see the tip of the iceberg here with high profile celebrities openly broadcasting how their right to privacy has been invaded. Even though Princess Diana died as a result of paparazzi invasion, no formal criminal law protecting privacy for celebrities has been introduced to the U.K. In the U.S., “The Britney Law” has been put into place to protect celebrities from paparazzi harassment by designating a “personal safety bubble” for the victims from aggressive photo-taking.

Though celebrities are the ones primarily affected in the NotW case, privacy in the Internet age is a public concern. Everybody has their privacy invaded every time they turn on a computer. For example, a friend recently showed me how Google’s Gmail is not merely a webmail service – it aggregates your web history whenever you are logged in, and shows what time and for how long you were on each site. It even provides a calendar, indicating the days you were most active on the Internet in different shades of green. Not only that, Apple is tracking your locations - whether the company has an agenda or not is irrelevant. The NotW scandal has made us conscious of the possible extent of privacy invasion. Though we not be celebrities our information is still being collected, shared, and sold. Sienna Miller is taking legal action to fight for what is ethical. Why aren’t we?