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...Netflix has confirmed that they intend to pay for House of Cards a new show being produced by David Fincher (yes, he of Fight Club, The Social Network, etc) and starring Kevin Spacey (yes, he of The Usual Suspects, American Beauty, etc). Netflix is not paying for the full production of it, but instead they’re paying for the first-rights access to air it. In other words, they get the first “window” to show it to viewers.

And while the company is saying that this isn’t a shift in strategy, it could end up being potentially much more than that.

Up until now, Netflix has not had content in this first window. Instead, they’ve focused on the second or third or even fourth window. That is, they’ve shown content after it’s in theaters or on television for its initial run. And sometimes they don’t get content until after it’s been in theaters and then on television for quite some time. This catalog of content has been the service’s bread and butter.

But with House of Cards, the game changes. For the first time, they’re going to get people signing up to Netflix to get first access to content. And if it’s as good as the talent behind it suggests, they might get a lot of people signing up for that very reason.

And if that’s the case, they’ll be doing a lot more of these deals. And that would effectively make them a premium cable television channel — like HBO or Showtime. But they’ll be one with thousands more pieces of content for a lower monthly price. And they’ll be one not burdened by any artificial show times. Most importantly, they’ll be one not burdened by the cable television model — at all.

If Netflix’s new gamble here works, this is the absolutely the future. In three years, we won’t be paying $75 a month to a giant cable conglomerate. We’ll be paying $8 to Netflix and other players that pop up — like HBO (by themselves), perhaps. Sure, there will still be the monthly fee for Internet. But most of us are already paying that. We’d just be removing the ridiculous $75 cable television fee that gives us thousands of channels with content only on at a certain time — and most of which we don’t want.

Of course, the cable companies will push back against this. Maybe they’ll jack up the price of Internet even higher if you don’t also subscribe to cable television. You’d think the courts would stop something like that from happening, but they haven’t stopped these companies from basically having monopolies over entire cities and regions in the U.S....

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
"The television will not be revolutionized."

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....The perfect example of how this could work is probably the old Joss Whedon cult hit, Firefly.

Firefly lasted only 11 episodes — not even one full season — in 2002 on Fox. The network cancelled it before all 14 produced episodes were even shown. Why? Low ratings. But in the years following the cancellation, the show has seen new life on SciFi, DVD, and especially the Internet (including Hulu and yes, Netflix).

The cult status got so big, so quickly that Universal decided to make a feature film, Serenity, in an attempt to cash in where Fox could not. Of course, that didn’t work out as well as hoped either. But again, it was the wrong idea.

A Netflix distribution model would be the right idea.

There has been talk for years now of a show revival given the cult status and the fact that Whedon had originally intended the series to run for seven years. But that would still mean dealing with one of the networks once again. Until now. A production company would still need to back and ultimately pay for new episodes, but Netflix could now step in and produce millions of dollars for the first window distribution rights.

It would be pretty attractive to all sides — though it may also involve buying rights back from Fox....

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