What Netflix Wants to Buy Now in TV
Part IV of our Fall Market Guide
Elaine covers the TV market from L.A. Today is part of her exclusive tour of what every studio and streamer wants right now and how to pitch them (for paid subscribers only). Previously, she covered Amazon Prime Video, Disney’s brands, ABC, Disney+, Hulu and FX, and Apple TV+. As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive richly reported dispatches from both Elaine and Manori Ravindran for a global perspective on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including Sean McNulty's The Wakeup and columns from Richard Rushfield, you can subscribe here.
Happy Tuesday, Series Business readers! Today is Election Day in the U.S., so make sure you Rock the Vote (thanks, '90s MTV, for emblazoning that on my brain) and fill out those ballots.
In the meantime, let’s dive back into the Series Business Fall Market Guide, which should interest anyone looking to develop and sell a TV show. This week’s focus is the biggest player of them all: Netflix, the so-called Walmart of TV.
That’s not meant as a pejorative, as many industry whisperers are quick to qualify: It’s a reflection of the volume player that the streaming service has evolved into over the years as it aims to acquire as many viewers as possible. Like Amazon, Netflix is also said to be one of the few companies that has had its door wide open to pitches this year.
Unlike Amazon, though, people say Netflix has been making purchases at a robust clip.
Netflix “is still buying. I’m looking at my inbox right now and, oh . . . This sold. This sold. Things are still selling,” one high-level agent rattles off as we chat on the phone. It’s not all doom and gloom out there.
That’s cause for optimism! Though perhaps less so once you consider what he says next: “But you just notice that the creators or the packages that are put together are just, you know, the highest level, as you’re seeing more and more.” A second rep from a different agency says almost the exact same thing when asked about Netflix’s appetites: They buy “a lot,” but in terms of who’s selling, “everything feels very showrunner-focused” across the industry. (More on that later.)
In this edition of Series Business, you’ll learn:
Who has greenlight power and how agents navigate Netflix’s development team to sell shows
What Netflix wants in a showrunner if it’s going to buy their show
The major drama categories on its wish list
What makes it hard to sell a comedy there
The type of program Netflix “desperately wants” but hasn’t been able to crack
The comedy subgenre it does like, including the show it thinks is its next hit
The 20-year-old YA soap opera Netflix would very much like to duplicate
The drive for “faith-based” programming and what that really means
