Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos has finally admitted what overwhelmed viewers realised a while ago, that there's just too much television - but he said it with a caveat: a lot of it is trash.
Ted Sarandos who spoke yesterday at America's Television Critics Association's press tour said "there are too many mediocre, safe shows on linear television."
Ted Sarandos said that the global streaming service - that's also available in South Africa since the beginning of 2016 along with rivals like Naspers' ShowMax and PCCW Global's ONTAPtv.com - isn't going to stop rolling out a growing number of original series and films.
Netflix will in fact start new series and new seasons even quicker to shrink the waiting time in-between.
"If you keep the shows great and people are loving them, why make less? It seems like a real arbitrary thing that there should only be X number of shows on TV. When people talk about Peak TV, they talk about it in an old media lens."
"That's not true any more. The viewer has total control as to when they want to watch shows and what they want to watch. It's almost infinite in terms of the possibilities to have somebody really passionately connect with a show."
"We're not just competing with Fresh Off the Boat, we're competing with Pokemon GO and Star Wars and Jurassic World. We're competing for a lot of attention in a really noisy world."
"At a time when the industry has a glut of series that fail to have an impact, we've been able to give fans what they want: adventurous storytelling with original voices," said Ted Sarandos.
While Netflix is struggling worldwide since its global roll-out in 130 countries at the beginning of the year and missed its latest global subscriber growth target, its total content budget will rise from $6 billion this year.
Netflix says quality and availability of broadband hampers uptake of the service in territories like South America and that every country is different and requires a specific strategy.
"We found out that everything we learned about Latin America wasn't helpful at all in Italy and nothing we learned in Mexico really helped us in Taiwan."