Ted Sarandos Keynote: Royal Television Society London Convention 2024

Good morning, everybody. Thank you for inviting me. It's a privilege to be here with you.

The Royal Television Society always holds a special place in my heart because it was here, back in 2016, that I showed you the first trailer for the first season of The Crown.

Over the next seven years, The Crownwent on to become the most nominated British TV series in Emmy history - and only one of three to win best drama.

But I'll always remember it as a show that stood conventional wisdom on its head.

Peter Morgan's pitch was for a six-season show with a rotating cast. A show that would take ten years to produce. It was something that no one had ever tried before - and something that most people thought would never work. But it did, introducing a new generation of stars to the world.

Besides being one of the best shows of the last decade, The Crownis also a perfect example of why Britain remains one of the best places for TV and film.

You have some of the very best writers, directors, producers, actors, crew, crafts and locations anywhere in the world. I have always thought of the UK as the birthplace of prestige television - a creative culture unlike any other.

It's why Netflix invests more here than any other country outside the U.S. Since 2020, we've invested $6B in the UK creative community - and worked with over 30,000 cast and crew.

Today we have over 100 productions active in the UK.

And I've recently had the pleasure of visiting some of those sets - like Thursday Murder Club, My Oxford Yearand Wake Up Dead Man, our new Knives Outmovie.

So I've seen the scope and ambition of these British-made shows and films first-hand.

This wealth of talent is a Great British success story. Because it didn't happen by accident.

It happened because you have great public service broadcasters and institutions that nurture British talent and creativity. Institutions like the RTS, the oldest television society in the world.

It happened because you've consistently supported regulations that encourage creativity, innovation and long term thinking.

And it happened because you invested in education and training in the creative arts at every level, as well as investing in your amazing facilities. All of which have been supported by highly competitive tax incentives which make the UK an even more attractive place for anyone looking to make a film or show.

Filming here in Britain is always a privilege, and never a sacrifice.

In other words, Britain became one of the best countries in the world for TV and film because you made it happen.

And now, with competition for people's time and attention so high - and barriers to entry in entertainment so low - it's time to make it happen again.

The question is how?

I'll start with a disclaimer: I am obviously not British, and Netflix is not a British company. But we operate in over 190 countries around the world - including this one - and that's taught us a lot over the years.

Today I want to share a few of those lessons with you.

First, to succeed we need to put the audience first - and that means embracing change.

The entertainment industry has always been defined by change. New technology comes along, new companies pop up, and patterns of consumer behavior shift.

We saw it with cable, then home video, then streaming.

And now we're seeing it happen again.

Today, choice and control are the price of admission in modern entertainment. It's streaming that consumers want. And it's how our industry stays relevant - and grows - in the face of intense competition from all directions.

Like cable TV and home video before it, streaming also opens up new opportunities for creators to make their voices heard. For distributors to reach bigger audiences. And for those audiences to have more choices of what to watch.

Just look at this summer. It's been a blockbuster few months for streaming, with Bridgerton, The Bear,and House of the Dragon- three wonderful but very different shows. And all attracting enormous audiences.

Now, at this point you may be thinking, "It's easy for Netflix to talk about change. You're the one driving it." But we have struggled to adapt, too.

Back when we first started streaming, the technology wasn't great, and we had two big competitors: piracy and our own DVD business.

To succeed at streaming, we knew we had to create something better than free. And we knew we had to let our DVD business go. Because as Steve Jobs said, if you don't cannibalize your business, someone else will.

And it was painful to split the company in half. We told our DVD employees that they could not even attend company meetings any more, in essence saying: "you're the past, not the future".

But it's the reason that we adapted and grew.

Today, our members can watch a world of entertainment for a fraction of the price of a box set of The Sopranosin 2007.

And they don't have to wait two months for all the episodes of a show to come out, or for a film to finish its theatrical run.

I know the TV business was built on windows, but audiences don't care about them at all.

When you work in our business long enough, it can be easy to get distracted by all of the complexities. Rights. Distribution. Technology. It goes on and on.

These are all important things. But what really matters is how well we serve our audiences. What are we willing to do to serve them better.

Which brings me to the next lesson: audiences care a lot about variety and quality.

People often ask me if we really needso many movies and TV shows on Netflix. It's a debate you've been having here in the UK, too. And my answer is an emphatic YES.

People have such different and eclectic tastes that you can't afford to program for just one sensibility.

You have to love it all - prestige dramas, indie films, true crime, romantic comedies, stand-up, documentaries and reality TV.

It's no surprise, for example, that people who loved Beckhamalso loved Drive to Survive.

But what might surprise you is that fans of The Crownalso liked Dolly Parton's Heartstrings? Although I guess Dolly is royalty in her own way.

As a teenager, my first job was in the local video store - watching movies by day, and serving customers at night. My memory is pretty lousy now, but back then I could remember every scene and actor in pretty much every film or TV show. I loved recommending something new or unexpected to our customers.

That experience taught me to think about putting the audience first. And that's how I believe we need to approach programming today. Not as critics, not as media executives, but as fans.

This third lesson wasn't intuitive at all when Netflix launched internationally. But over the years, we've learned that everything starts local.

At a time when anyone can watch anything, anytime, anywhere in the world, it's tempting to try and program for a "global" audience. But that's a mistake.

Because when you try and make something for everyone, you typically end up making something that appeals to no one. There is rarely a global audience for anything.

It's why when we greenlight a series or movie in the UK, or Mexico or Korea, we do it because we think our British, our Mexican and our Korean audiences will love it.

And you know what? When you make something authentic that appeals to certain people in a certain place, it tends to appeal to a lot of other people in a lot of other places, too.

Take Supacell, a story about five superpowered South Londoners that became a huge hit in America. Or Baby Reindeer, which hit #1 on Netflix's Top 10 in 79 countries, and took home 6 Emmys, including Best Limited Series. Or Heartstopper, which has spoken to a whole new generation of viewers from Brazil to Japan. Or The Gentlemen, which was loved in countries from Norway to Nigeria.

All of them became global sensations because they were all, in their own way, authentically British. Made in the UK for UK audiences by UK creators with UK casts and crews.

The other things those shows all have in common is that they were commissioned by a UK team, based here in London and led by a remarkable Brit: Anne Mensah.

When Anne's team says yes to a project, it's because they SEE something in a pitch or an idea that's surprising or bold. They FEEL the writer or producers' vision.

Data can help them a little, but programming is far more art than science. It's why our algorithms can't reverse engineer successful storytelling.

If it were as simple as gathering more data or building the best algorithms, we'd have no flops. And yet we do - because TV and film are subject to hot hands and cold streaks like every other human endeavor. That's what makes it so exciting. You never quite know what's going to take off.

That's also why we feel a responsibility to support and nurture the people and communities that make it all possible.

It's why we're helping to develop the next generation of creative talent - in partnership with BAFTA, Screenskills and the National Youth Theatre, and through our own productions.

It's why we've supported productions all across the UK - from Sex Educationin Wales, to Bridgertonin the South West and One Dayin Scotland.

And it's why we're investing in every level of the creative community - not just through the shows and films we make, but also through our licensing.

Most people don't know this, but we own less than 25% of the IP in our UK catalog. We partner with many of you in this room on co-productions like Lockerbiewith the BBC. And we've invested in production hubs like Shepperton and Longcross, as well as long term studio leases in Northern Ireland, Wales and Manchester.

So we couldn't be more excited to be here. And we're not going anywhere.

That leads me to my final point: there's so much potential in TV today.

So much of the fandom right now is driven by younger audiences. We see it in the videos they create on TikTok. The trailers and clips they watch on YouTube and Instagram. The way they obsess over storylines on subReddits.

This generation loves stories as much as we ever have - maybe more. We just have to find the right ways to connect with them.

When the first TV broadcast went out in the UK in 1936, the announcer described "the magic of television". And while a lot has happened since then - social change and cultural upheaval, wars and pandemics - that magic is just as inspiring today as it was a century ago.

That's because stories have always mattered. Stories endure - whether it's from film to TV, TV to video, video to DVD or DVD to the Internet.

And what makes them so powerful is not the technology - important as that is. It's the depth of the writing. The power of the plot. The chemistry between the actors. The heart that no model or machine can replicate or replace.

I know there's a lot of anxiety in our industry right now - there's concern about falling investment, there's the threat of AI and there's competition from platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.

And I get it. I think about that stuff, too. But everyday… people come up to me to talk about a show or movie they loved. And they have the exact same look on their face that I saw in that video store way back when - the same look I saw on the faces in this room when we watched that first trailer for The Crown.

That's what makes me optimistic about the future. Because if we can focus on the audience, embrace change and remain fearless in the stories that we're telling, I know we'll look back 20 years from now and say we really were only just getting started.

Thank you.

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