“It’s hard to believe this is only the second time I’ve been in front of you at the TCAs,” Netflix’s Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos said to kick off Tuesday at the TCA summer press tour in Los Angeles.
With a year planned of 16 scripted series, nine documentary features, 12 standup specials and 17 original series for kids, that is rather hard to believe that Netflix is considered a new player in the TCA game.
Finishing off its third year Netflix has been in the original content business, the streaming giant is about to roll out 475 hours of originals in the U.S. this year, including Aziz Ansari’s newly titled comedy Master of None set to debut Nov. 6, and a fourth quarter rollout of sketch series With Bob and David, Marvel’s Jessica Jones, Sofia Coppola’s A Very Murray Christmas, and the final season of Hemlock Grove.
“We pick the players and get out of their way,” said Sarandos. “We let them do what they do.”
Standup specials from Demetri Martin, Anthony Jeselnik, John Mulaney and Mike Epps are also coming in the second half of this year.
Netflix has also picked up the recently canceled Longmire, announcing its premiere date of Sept. 10, and renewed BoJack Horseman for a third season.
When asked about acquiring network series like Longmire, Sarandos says there is no policy or series of boxes to check when choosing a show like that.
“Sometimes a show gets canceled not because it lost creative steam but it may not be attracting the audience in the right demographics for networks,” he said. “There just has to be a really intact passionate audience for the show.”
Sarandos also noted the importance of current Netflix originals in the industry. House of Cards has “broken new ground,” he says, nominated this year for 11 Emmy Awards. Orange is the New Black is making history in TV and in the social conversation with creator Jenji Kohan and star Laverne Cox.
“The idea of ‘binge watching’ is now becoming commonplace,” he said, referring to new shows trying to follow Netflix’s example like NBC’s Aquarius.
When it comes to originals on Netflix, Sarandos says they don’t report those numbers partly because Netflix doesn’t want anyone to line up the series next to one another, and that the Netflix model may want to wait until the audience comes after months after the show launches, “as opposed to linear television which is highly dependent on that audience over night,” he said.
On the upcoming Marvel series Jessica Jones, which will join a second season of Marvel’s Daredevil, he says that the Netflix plan for Marvel series will be to launch roughly two shows per year introducing each new character.
On one of Netflix’s most-anticipated new series coming up, Sarandos says Fuller House just began shooting, and was a big get for the company because of its co-viewing possibilities.
“Full House is a really unique show in that it never really went away,” he said. “It’s very successful in syndication and it’s a cross generational show, with parents co-viewing with their kids. That’s very rare in TV today.”
Sarandos also announced that Arrested Development is in deals for a second season now, with talent and Fox negotiating now.
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