It can be tricky writing about an interview conducted by another journalist. Especially when it's an interview with someone whom you would clearly LIKE to talk to yourself. So I debated a bit about how much I wanted to dissect this Variety interview with Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, which is their current cover story.
But I found this interview frustrating in both structural and substantive ways, so I feel as if I need to push back on it at least a bit. You can decided whether or not I'm being unfair.
First, I'll just make the observation that if you are touting the interview lasted 90 minutes, perhaps you should include most of the interview. Especially online, when you have a near unlimited editorial window you can fill.
Second, if you are going to mention that no "question was off-limits" in the interview, then maybe these shouldn't be your first questions:
How has it felt to be at Netflix for 25 years?
Was there ever a time you thought you might leave Netflix?
What are you excited about this year?
How would you describe the “Stranger Things” final season?
I don't think I'm being unfair to suggest that if you have the opportunity to speak with an executive who rarely grants interviews, that it might be a good idea to really dig in and ask some substantive questions.
Now to be fair, Sarandos is a media savvy guy and I don't think you can go into an interview with him trying to play "gotcha." But there were a lot of missed opportunities and because of that, Variety frames the interview in strange ways. In the intro, the wraparound highlights that Sarandos is going to comment on the content philosophy of Apple TV+. And this is literally the only exchange that is included in the print interview:
What about Apple?
I don’t understand it beyond a marketing play, but they’re really smart people. Maybe they see something we don’t.
However, there are a couple of interesting sections in the interview. Such as these comments about the Imax release of Narnia:
So this wasn’t something she demanded?
It wasn’t some giant deal we had to salvage. We wanted to support it and figure out something new. The one thing we haven’t really tried is a big Imax release. Imax is hugely differentiated from at-home watching. When I go to the theater, it’s getting closer and closer to at home. But Imax is super differentiated. The two-week run for “Narnia” will check all the boxes for awards qualifications and create a bit of an event. We’re happy to do it.
The most insightful part of the discussion was this discussion about the Netflix it had with Marvel:
That deal included “Daredevil,” “Jessica Jones” and “Luke Cage.” Do you think the TV shows that Marvel is producing for Disney+ are successful?
I think they are. I mean, I don’t know because they don’t release any numbers.
On our shows, we were dealing with the old Marvel television regime, which operated independently at Disney. And they were thrifty. And every time we wanted to make the shows bigger or better, we had to bang on them. Our incentives were not well aligned. We wanted to make great television; they wanted to make money. I thought we could make money with great television.
What did you learn from that experience?
You want to work with people whose incentives are aligned with yours. When people are producing for you, they’re trying to produce as cheaply as possible. My incentive is to make it as great as possible. That’s a lesson that I take forever. As producers, whatever [Marvel] didn’t spend, they kept. So every time we wanted to add something to the show to make it better, it was a fistfight.
This was an interesting insight, because it pushes back against the conventional wisdom about the deal. That Netflix didn't understand what it had or was unwilling to spend the money required for the shows.
And I wish there would have been more more of those types of questions. Given that you know Sarandos is going to be circumspect about a lot of things, I think it would have been more productive to ask more questions about Netflix's content valuation and business model (which almost no one in Hollywood understands) and fewer open-ended questions that are going to elicit a careful PR-friendly answer:
Do you think you can get Taylor Swift on a Christmas Day football game before she does the Super Bowl?
That’s a good challenge! We did get her in the stadium this year.
All of the complaints aside, I'm happy to see Sarandos sit down for an extended interview. I only wish he would do them more often.
