Why Arrested Development on Netflix could change everything

I am still 'negotiating' with my wife to drop Directv and just use Netflix streaming, Hulu+, and the occasional Redbox DVD for entertainment.<p>This is all just my opinion, but in a digital world where there is way too much entertaining stuff to view, be it TV, movies, videos on Youtube, Reddit, online newspapers like the NYT, that something big has happened for me: there are no more "must have" TV shows, movies, or books. For example, if HBO won't let me watch a special on the web for a fair price I don't care if I miss it.<p>Seriously, I will probably take 5 Coursera online classes this year, read 15 non-technical fiction books, 15 technical books, write several hundred pages in my own book projects, etc. Plenty of fun stuff to do.<p>This is similar to travel: when we go to a foreign country I don't worry about "seeing everything", rather, I just want to enjoy myself and get a feel for the people and place.<p>Same with digital entertainment: just graze a little.<p>Netflix is the absolute best value for me in entertainment.

I've been thinking a bit lately about how web video content is beginning to become "legitimate." With series like Geek &#38; Sundry's Tabletop [1], Penny Arcade's "reality show" [2], and hidden gems like YouTube's The Vault [3], I'm starting to reach a point where I could even cancel Netflix and just watch online web videos.<p>My guess is, that five years from now, both Netflix and YouTube will look like networks or producers than just distributors.<p>[1] <a href="http://tabletop.geekandsundry.com/episodes/" rel="nofollow">http://tabletop.geekandsundry.com/episodes/</a> [2] <a href="http://penny-arcade.com/patv/show/pa-the-series" rel="nofollow">http://penny-arcade.com/patv/show/pa-the-series</a> [3] <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/VaultShow" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/user/VaultShow</a>

Television has already changed. If you look toward the UK, already there's low budget comedy shows like Mid-Morning Matters with Alan Partridge, which is a continuation of a rather famous comedy character spanning radio, multiple television series and soon to be film -- which was recently produced for peanuts with modest corporate sponsorship from Fosters, dumped online as web episodes -- and now is being picked up for broadcast television after the fact.<p>Arrested Development may be news to some folks here, but the age of producing shows for internet distribution has been our path for quite some time. Not only are shows being produced in this fashion for the internet now, but we're increasingly recruiting new talent via the internet. Just look at the star of Community, Donald Glover. This is a brilliant comedic actor who first got his major break by producing a set of YouTube videos that went viral with the other comedians in the Derrick comedy group, a group which was later picked up by College Humor and several of which, including Donald, have been tapped by mainstream American television now.<p>I could only see Arrested Development 'changing everything' if you weren't already aware that things have already changed.

It is certainly going to be interesting to see when the DRM is cracked and the shows are up on the various file sharing systems.<p>My bet is that it won't take that long, a few weeks or a month at most.

Cable channels seem to be so short-sighted here that I think they're going to be blindsided by this model.<p>Using the TV model, the maximum amount of shows I can provide are limited by the amount of prime-time hours in a week. I think this creates a very long tail of shows that many people would be interested in watching, but not enough that these shows compete for prime time space. These shows are usually cancelled, and nobody makes money.<p>But with streaming video, Netflix is not limited at all by a viewing schedule, and they can sell as many shows as they want. Even if a show is only popular among a small audience it can still be profitable.<p>Pay-per-on-demand-show is coming, and that will be the upset. The only demographic beholden to the TV station model are the baby-boomers who think this streaming stuff is weird.

<i>The other element is the fact that like Lilyhammer, all 10-13 episodes of the series will be released at once, setting fans up for epic marathon sessions.</i><p>I think this is the beginning of an entirely new format. So far we've been restricted to the video equivalent of serials and short stories with TV shows and movies respectively. Its time for the rise of the video long-form novel.<p>There are certain stories (like Firefly IMHO) that really need this format to work. They make terrible serials from a network execs POV (because if you miss an ep or two, it becomes really hard to get into it later) and movies that only a fan could love by jamming too much story into 2 hours.

Oh wow. This is amazing news. When we got Netflix in the uk we randomly put on Arrested Development without knowing what it was. We watched it back to back and were a little depressed to get to the end of it.<p>I'm so happy to hear that Netflix are bringing it back. It ushers in an interesting new era in tv.

Note that it'll only be on Netflix US. Netflix Canada, UK, etc, subscribers will have to wait in hope:<p><a href="http://o.canada.com/2012/04/24/the-good-news-about-arrested-development-netflix-and-canada/" rel="nofollow">http://o.canada.com/2012/04/24/the-good-news-about-arrested-...</a>

We use a Roku with Netflix and currently have over 200 items in the queue, and some of the items are series with 100 episodes. Netflix doesn't have access to new Hollywood releases, but the Roku, through its Amazon link, does. Cable? We said goodbye to that years ago.

If you are an Arrested Fan (although not highly rated on Netflix for some reason) the first season of "Children's Hospital" is hilarious.