Netflix Is Dead! Long Live Netflix! It’s Our Only Hope for the Future of Quality TV

Netflix has had a terrible year: After changing their price structure, spinning-off their mail only service and then unspinning-back, the stock price dropped over 70 percent and the company became something of a laughing stock. But the reality is this: Almost everyone I know subscribes to Netflix Instant. Shows like “Sons of Anarchy,” like “Breaking Bad,” and like “Party Down” either grew their audiences significantly because of Netflix or found their audience there. Netflix is the world’s champion of quality television. Stock prices be damned: Netflix (and to a lesser extent, Amazon Video and Hulu) are the future of television. Along with iTunes, they will be the next big four. In the year 2020, watching network television will be an archaic notion. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings agrees:

In a few years most of the TVs sold will be smart TVs. … It’s a phenomenal revolution.” The biggest loser will be broadcast TV, he says. “It’ll be declining like land-line telephony. … To some degree we’ll look at broadcast in 20 years as being like (telephone) party lines.” (Source: Deadline)

Elsewhere, Hastings also notes that HBO is now its main rival, thanks to its HBO to Go app (which is spectacular). The catch, however, is that HBO claims that they will never cut the cord: That a subscription will always and forever be connected to cable service, which makes for a lousy deal: Instead of $12 a month for HBO to Go, we necessarily have to pay $100 for cable service. That’s a bummer.

Ultimately, however, as much as we may hate Netflix’s price hike (which is still minimal relative to the price of cable) and as many blunders as Netflix has made this year, it’s still where a large percentage of people discover and watch great television shows. It will be responsible for bringing back “Arrested Development.” Many of you will probably discover the Starz series “Boss” on there. It’s the only place you can rewatch “The Wonder Years.” It’s our safe haven: A place away from the reality of “The Shrieking Harpy Housewives of Atlanta” and of “Italian Stereotypes Yelling at Each Other Shore.” At least until Netflix makes that blunder and begins commissioning its own dimwitted reality series, at which point, Reed Hastings can go to hell.

And why is JWoww in the header? Too remind you that Netflix is going one way and broadcast television is going another, evidenced by the trailer for the FIFTH (5) season of “Jersey Shore,” the HIGHEST RATED television show on cable. God save us all.

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