2024-08-11 03:24:00
While love stories usually end badly, some can also start fresh, before (spoiler alert) ending in mutual and lasting bliss. Between Netflix and France – we have somewhat forgotten, ten years later – the beginnings were stormy. The group founded by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph had nevertheless set out to conquer the world in 2010, starting with Canada, then Great Britain and Ireland before Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and finally the Netherlands. But, on the eve of their establishment, France nonetheless represents a particular challenge.
For several reasons. Suspected of wanting to impose a 100% American culture in one of the rare global bastions of “cultural exception”, Netflix is also attacking old-style television, known as “linear”, with its programs imposed at fixed times interspersed with advertisements. An additional difficulty is that the company remains totally unknown to the French general public. According to a Médiamétrie survey, carried out in the summer of 2014, 76% of the population declares “ not to know ” the firm with the bright red N. Quite the height of irony, given its astonishing growth in just seven years. Because it was only in 2007 that the former DVD rental company – sent by post throughout the United States – launched its major innovation, streaming, i.e. the continuous broadcasting of audiovisual content on the Internet.
The hiccups have multiplied between the Netflix teams and the public authorities
The group then claims 53 million subscribers in forty countries, with a content offering directly accessible on its site since 2007. Its motto? “Atawad”. In French, this acronym means “anytime, anywhere, on any device”. Doubled with a tempting slogan: ” All you can watch », or “all you can watch”. Welcome to the era of “binge-watching” and sleepless nights! In 2014, its North American catalog included 6,494 films and 1,609 series. Thanks to a top-secret algorithm, whose recommendations are inspired by consumers’ previous viewings, the SME has transformed itself into a behemoth. Financial as well as creative. Wall Street, seduced by the announcement of a turnover of 4.4 billion dollars in 2013, up nearly 20% in one year, has made the company, which went public on March 24, 2002, its new darling. While the creation of original content impresses even Hollywood. In particular, its first two in-house productions: the now very famous House of Cardsinspired by a British series from the 1990s, with Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright in the roles of the presidential couple from hell. And Orange Is the New Blackabout a group of women incarcerated in the United States.
In France, where traditional television channels still reign, to which TNT was added in 2005, French series still figure in the ranking of the most watched at the time (Alice Nevers, Une famille formidable, Joséphine, ange gardien…). But they lose ground – and audience – every year to their North American competitors (The Mentalist, Blacklist, Grey’s Anatomy…). “The arrival of TNT suddenly made French series obsolete, with monuments like Urgences,” remembers Isabelle Degeorges, president of Gaumont Télévision France and producer, among others, of Lupin, the blockbuster series with Omar Sy broadcast by Netflix from January 2021. ” The shock to our industry was extremely violent, she adds. To react, it was necessary to focus much more on quality, find adequate funding and change the way of writing. “The new arrival injects additional pressure into the cinema and audiovisual sectors.
Before September 15, 2014 at midnight and one minute, when the famous “toudoum” rang out for the first time on French soil, the hiccups had been multiplying for months between the Netflix teams and the public authorities. From the sacrosanct “media chronology” (the calendar that regulates the order in which the same work appears on different media, much more restrictive than elsewhere in Europe) to the obligations of broadcasting, financing and promoting French and European programs, the negotiations turned into a dialogue of the deaf between, on the one hand, Aurélie Filippetti, Minister of Culture, and Olivier Schrameck, head of the CSA, and on the other, the emissaries of the Californian group. Netflix broke off talks and moved to Luxembourg, to an address that was a nod: 13-15, avenue de la Liberté, in the capital of the Grand Duchy. The streaming king is nonetheless offering a subscription between 7.99 and 11.99 euros to its first French customers, with a catalog of 3,598 programs. Ironically, its flagship series, House of Cards, is not part of it, because it is broadcast by… Canal+. On Twitter, Netflix’s first message to its French subscribers is intended to be direct. And intimate: ” So, are we on first-name terms? »
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