Netflix didn't kill off TV, but copied its practices to succeed, say Salford researchers

From live transmissions to linear scheduling to episode release cadences, the world’s biggest streamers are increasingly embedding deep continuities of television practice in their digital packages.

That’s the view of Dr Anthony Smith and Dr Laura Minor, lecturers in television theory and television studies respectively, who outline their key observations in the book Television Goes Back to the Future, that was published late last year.

The book argues:
•    Streaming giants Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video are persistently adopting conventional television practices as part of their streaming packages, countering the popular narrative that streaming would render the old television broadcast model as obsolete.
•    These practices include an increase in live, mainly sport, transmissions to lure in subscribers such as WWE (Netflix), NFL (Prime Video & Netflix), boxing (Netflix), the NBA (Prime Video), the UEFA Champions League (Prime Video), LaLiga football (Disney+) and the UEFA Women’s Champions League (Disney+). The researchers argue that live event broadcasting is a core convention of traditional television as the ‘liveness’ of the event is something that is uniquely shared be the gathered audience at that time, which can’t be measured by streaming practice.
•    Episodic scheduling storytelling, a cornerstone of traditional television practice, is increasingly being adopted by the streaming industry instead of the previous ‘full boxset release’ pioneered by Netflix during its formative streaming years. The researchers dub the new release model as ‘bait and switch’ with streamers initially releasing a handful of episodes in one batch, followed by weekly releases for further episodes. It is argued that Netflix is the outlier in this model but that that the streaming sector is moving towards weekly engagement with its audiences over the previous boxset model. 
•    There is an increasing emergence of linear online ad-supported television channels that repeatedly show re-runs of former terrestrial television content. The likes of Roku TV, Sony TV, Pluto TV and Tubi are all increasing their audience year-on-year and the researchers argue that their growth could be tied to an influx of paid on-demand streaming platforms and increases in their subscription prices. 
•    Whilst streamers like Netflix have no legal responsibility to produce television that is representative of the UK’s national identity, it continues to do so and productions are often hyper-localised in the way they are cast and produced, with programmes such as Adolescence, Toxic Town, Bridgerton and Black Doves representative of programmes that British audiences would previously have expected from the likes of the BBC and ITV. However, the researchers argue that this type of content will only be made by streamers if it remains popular with a global audience and that there should be regulatory requirements in place to ensure that streamers produce localised content with localised production teams.
•    How traditional terrestrial television is still seen as a core platform for British comedy to break through to a larger audience, citing the examples of People Just No Nothing and the career of Guz Khan who started posting short videos on social media before he was given the opportunity by the BBC to develop programmes such as Man Like Mobeen.

Dr Smith said: “Since the emergence of the streaming giants, there has been a consistent narrative that it would turn the industry on its head and lead to the end of traditional terrestrial television. That narrative is false and always has been.

“There has always been continuity from the streamers with established television practices and as the industry matures and encounters growth issues, it is turning time and time again to the existing practices that have long been the norm with regular television programming.

“As we look to the future of television, it is clear that it is evolving within the streaming space and it’s time for audiences to view it through that lens and move on from dated suggestions that the streamers killed of traditional television practices.”

Dr Minor added: “We believe that a lot of our research in the book is going to be relevant for quite a while.

“As we’ve seen with Netflix looking to purchase Warner Bros Discovery, we are constantly going to have these questions and debates about streaming, it’s place within the wider television and film industry and which practices it continues to adopt.”

Dr Minor is the co-investigator on the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project ‘What’s on? Rethinking Class in the TV Industry (2023-26) and author of Reclaiming Female Authorship in UK Television Comedy (Edinburgh University Press, 2024).

Dr Smith is the author of Storytelling Industries (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), co-author of Transmedia/Genre (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) and co-editor of Storytelling in the Media Convergence Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

Television Goes Back to the Future: Rethinking TV’s Streaming Revolution is available now via Palgrave Macmillan.