The relief for all of you is that I am not someone with an important job in broadcasting
using this speech to audition for an even more important job in broadcasting.
"House of Cards", creatively, actually, follows the model more often employed here in Great Britain.
The television industry has never embraced the pilot season
looked to by the networks in the United States, as a worthwhile effort.
And now look, of course, we went to all the major networks with "House of Cards"
and every single one was interested in the idea but every single one wanted us to do a pilot first.
It wasn't out of arrogance to David Fincher and Beau Willimon and I
were not interested in having to audicion the idea.
It was that we wanted to start to tell a story that will take a long time to tell.
We were creating a sophisticated multilayered story with complex characters
who would reveal themselves overtime.
And relationships that would need space to play out.
And the obligation of course of doing a pilot, from the writing perspective,
is that you have to spend about 45 minuts stablishing all the characters
and create obligatory cliffhangers and basically generally prove
that what you're setting up to do is gonna work.
Netflix was the only network that said "we believe in you."
"We ran our data and it tells us that our audience will watch the series. "
"We don't need you to do a pilot."
By comparison, last year, 113 pilots were made.
35 of those were chosen to go to air,
13 of those were renewed, but most of those are gone, now.
And this year, 146 pilots were shot,
56 have gone to series, but we don't know the outcome of those yet.
But the cost of these pilots were somewhere between 300 and 400 million dollars a year.
That makes our "House of Cards" deal for 2 seasons look really cost effective.
Clearly the success of the Netflix model, releasing the entire
season of "House of Cards" at once proved one thing:
The audience wants the control. They want the freedom.
If they want to be in, just like they've been doing with "House of Cards" and lots of other shows, then we should let them be in.
I can't tell you how many people have stopped me on the street and said "Thanks you shot 3 days out of my life"
And through this new form of distribution we have demonstrated that we have learned the lesson that the music industry didn't learn:
1) give people what they want, 2) when they want it,
3) in the form they want it and 4) at a reasonable price.
And they'll more likely pay for it rather than steal it.
Well, some will still steal it but... I think we can take a bite out of piracy.
So I predict that in the next decade or two,
any differenciation between these platforms will fall away.
Is 13 hours watch as one cinematic whole really any different than a film?
Do we define film as being something 2 hours or less?
Surely it goes deeper than that.
If you're watching a film on your television is it no longer a film because you're not watching it in the theatre?
If you watch TV show in your iPad is no longer a TV show?
The device and the length are irrelevant.
The labels are useless. Except perhaps to agents and managers
and lawyers who use these labels to conduct business deals.
But for kids growing up now there's no difference
Watching Avatar on the iPad, or watching YouTube on a TV
or watching Game of Thrones on their computer.
It's all content. It's just story.
And the audience has spoken. They want stories. They're dying for them.
They are rooting for us to giving the right thing.
And they'll talk about it, be enjoying it, carried with them on the bus,
and to the hairdresser, force it on their friends, tweet, blog, facebook,
make fan pages, silly gifts, and God knows what else about it.
Engage with a passion and intimacy that a blockbuster movie can only dream of.
All we have to do is give it to them.
The prized fruit is right there, shinnier and juicier than it's ever been before.
So it will be all the more shame on each and every one of us
if we don't reach out and seize it.
And I wanna leave you with the words of a man as good as any
to address the nexus of commerce and art, Mr. Orson Wells,
who once said: "I hate Television"
I hate it as much as peanuts
but I just can't stop eating peanuts!
Thank you.
