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?