<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Netflix launched in the UK and Ireland yesterday, offering a massive library of TV shows and films on a range of connected devices, including the iPad, Xbox 360 and connected TV. The arrival of the US streaming giant on these shores was expected to trigger a &amp;#039;landgrab&amp;#039; for exclusive content, as Netflix clashes with Amazon&amp;#039;s LoveFIlm and Sky Movies over the rights to the latest movies and TV shows. But Ted Sarandos, Netflix&amp;#039;s chief content officer, told Digital Spy that the firm is not about making a headline splash like its rivals, and instead is gunning for the long game. People now have more connected devices, meaning access to video on-demand is becoming the norm. So, surely exclusive content is going to be essential to tempt customers to join Netflix? &amp;quot;The service is successful in the US without exclusive content, but I realise that it is different here. But it&amp;#039;s the general quality of the content and the breadth of the content. There is a staggering amount of content available here for a very low price. It is available on every device that you own that has a connection to the internet and a screen. For me it&amp;#039;s not going to be a title, or a series, or a studio that makes that difference; it&amp;#039;s just going to be the breathtaking volume of great content.&amp;quot; But is that really true? Is it not that special something that people can&amp;#039;t get anywhere else? &amp;quot;We have been at this a long time, and what I know is that even the best, high-quality great show occupies a very small percentage of total viewing on the service. What people really express value in is consumption, and behaviour around what they are watching. What I think is exciting here on the US side is that there have been a lot of TV shows that have been very poorly distributed but have found a home here, such as Dexter and Breaking Bad.  &amp;quot;We just know that they are going to do really well in other parts of the world. On the British side, there is just such a rich history of high-quality production and there is just no way that most of the population has got to see most of it. So to be able to go back and revisit these things will be really valuable.&amp;quot; Amazon&amp;#039;s LoveFilm has been making strides in picking up new movies for streaming as soon as is possible; do you not think that is equally important for your subscribers? &amp;quot;Movies are important. We have more pay-TV movies available than anyone in the US, apart from HBO. But 60% of the time people just want to watch TV shows. When you think about it, movies are widely available. When it gets to the pay-TV window, you would have had to gone out of your way not to see it. Right between the theater, the DVD, the VOD, and then the pay-TV - by the time a movie comes to Sky Movies, it&amp;#039;s been exploited to death. &amp;quot;So I don&amp;#039;t think that is really that big of a drama. LoveFilm&amp;#039;s subscription video on-demand service is largely in its infancy. They have 2m subscribers but they also still have a postal DVD business and sometimes have to offer content via transactional video on-demand (pay-per-view). We have a radically different culture, as we try to make things less complicated by offering all content for the same price.&amp;quot; &amp;amp;gt; LoveFilm undercuts rival Netflix by \u00A31  At the moment, the Competition Commission is investigating Sky&amp;#039;s hold over pay-TV movie rights, after saying last year that the firm was hindering fair competition with its stranglehold over subscription video on-demand deals with the Hollywood Studios. What is the situation in the US? &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s even worse in the US. HBO&amp;#039;s deals with Warner Bros and Fox are for 10 years. That means you cannot get access to those movies in a subscription model for 10 years after their theatrical release in the US. So, here at least the windows are short. Yes they are very exclusive and they have a lot of rights, but when we first got into the streaming business five years ago in 2007, we couldn&amp;#039;t have afforded to buy movie outputs, but now we are in for all of them.  &amp;quot;So really the best thing to improve competition is to actually have competition. That would mean Sky would have to pay an enormous amount of money to sit on those rights, and it may not make sense to them. Part of their strategy may have been to pick up all those rights, and then make their subscriptions more attractive, but the spoiler to that plan was over-the-top subscription services who are now bidding for those film rights.&amp;quot; In the US, you have challenged the cable networks by securing exclusive TV rights, such as Mad Men and most recently the new series of Arrested Development. We haven&amp;#039;t really had that over here yet, but are you planning to rival the likes of Sky, Channel 4 and the BBC to hit new programmes? &amp;quot;Of course, yeah. The idea is you grow the service and the content, and then you keep reinvesting in the platform as the subscriber base gets bigger. One thing we have done really well so far is finding an audience that has not had one so far. The thing is that you choose the thing that you are most going to love, and it does not have to be the newest or the most exciting thing; it&amp;#039;s just something that you didn&amp;#039;t see before. This week, the most watched episode of Mad Men in the US was episode one, season one. It&amp;#039;s brand new people who have never come to that show before.&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s interesting, because if you pick up exclusive content like Mad Men, then presumably you are going to get people mining back into your library to access previous episodes of the show\u2026 &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s partly the reason why we picked up Arrested Development, because it was about people going back to season one or season two to see previous episodes.&amp;quot;  So is the new Arrested Development coming to the UK as well? &amp;quot;At the moment it&amp;#039;s just the US, because when we agreed the deals we did not factor in the UK. But that will certainly be incorporated into future deals. We are about to launch Lillyhammer in the US, Latin America and Canada, which is a co-production with a Norwegian broadcaster. It&amp;#039;s about working out what content works for the right audience. British content works really well for US audiences. For example, House of Cards was a real success for us, and gave us confidence to invest heavily in the US remake.&amp;quot; Is that the next step for Netflix? Becoming a content creator? &amp;quot;We are insulating ourselves to a lot of the risk of becoming a content creator by licensing third-parties on the proviso that the content is being created for us, and uniquely tailored to us. House of Cards was a great example of something that was going to do really well on Netflix as it had already rated really well among users.&amp;quot; So what if you spent lots of money on a big new series and then it rated badly? &amp;quot;That wouldn&amp;#039;t happen as we do models where we project hours of usage. So, a show that is usually very poorly rated, we wouldn&amp;#039;t give that much prominence and we wouldn&amp;#039;t pay that much for. We are just trying to get the maximum amount of high-engagement content, and I will pay lots of money for high-engagement content. But also, it&amp;#039;s unlikely that content that is advertised heavily and very popular would be poorly rated.&amp;quot; &amp;amp;gt; Netflix unlikely to bid for Premier League TV rights  Coming back to new movies - we have the &amp;#039;window&amp;#039; system in place here giving exclusive and highly-coveted access to the latest films after they come out at the cinema. So, are you really saying that it is not important for you guys to get a movie at the same time as it is on Sky Movies, or the same time as it is on DVD? &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not very important to us. There are plenty of options to watch a movie, with a great deal of distribution methods. So the content that is at the very highest price point, is not necessarily the best to go for. It&amp;#039;s not that we don&amp;#039;t want those movies, we have deals with MGM and Lionsgate, We will have The Hobbit movie, and Shame though our deal with Momentum. &amp;quot;We do want those movies, it&amp;#039;s just not the end-all-be-all for us. It&amp;#039;s more about the rich breadth of content; a lot of TV shows, a lot of comedies, feature documentaries, stand-up comedy. For us it&amp;#039;s like a Moneyball strategy, you know, like the book and movie; it&amp;#039;s not about spending a lot of money on one guy who can hit a lot of home runs, it&amp;#039;s about getting 100 guys that can get on base, and at the end of the day you end up winning the title.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tech/interviews/a359299/netflix-exclusive-movies-are-not-our-priority-interview/>