Once Film-Focused, Netflix Transitions to TV Shows

Belying the “flix” in its name, Netflix is now primarily an Internet streaming service for television shows, not feature films.       
TV series now account for more than half of all Netflix viewing. That helps to explain why this Wednesday — the long-awaited moment when motion picture classics like “Scarface” and newer hits like “Toy Story 3” will vanish from the streaming service — is not the doomsday that it was once expected to be.

The vanishing films are from Starz. Its three-and-a-half-year-old deal helped Netflix persuade millions of people to sign up for Internet streaming, hastening the company’s leap to digital distribution from physical DVDs.

It became clear about a year ago that the deal would not be renewed. By then, though, Netflix was bulking up on old TV episodes and, in a direct challenge to HBO, beginning to distribute its own original shows for the streaming service.

Analysts say the prioritizing of television partly explains why the company has been able to retain about 21.7 million streaming subscribers in the United States — totaling one in four households that have broadband — despite complaints about an inadequate feature film selection. It’s a transition that Netflix has made rather successfully in the last six to 12 months, in stark contrast to its botched plan to spin off DVD-by-mail into a separate company called Qwikster last fall.

While the end of the Starz deal is bad news for Netflix, said Richard Greenfield, an analyst at BTIG Research, “given the significant increase in TV viewing, it’s not the catastrophic event that everyone thought it would be a year ago.”

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The new-release movies provided by Starz account for just 2 percent of all viewing, Netflix says, down from 8 percent a year ago — illuminating the fact that the company has spent lavishly on new streaming titles that subscribers want to watch instead. (“I would contend Netflix spends wisely rather than lavishly,” a Netflix spokesman, Steve Swasey, said in response.)

Many of the new titles are full seasons of TV series like “Mad Men,” “Breaking Bad” and “Lost” that Netflix executives call “26-hour movies.”

The pivot to TV reruns was necessitated in part by the tightening of the movie spigot by major movie studios. Fearing that Netflix might grow too popular or powerful, the studios “have decided to dramatically raise prices” for films and shows, said Youssef H. Squali, a managing director for Jefferies & Company.

Iraq’s Prime Minister Gains More Power After Political Crisis

BAGHDAD — When Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki rounded up hundreds of former Baathists, accused the vice president of running a hit squad and threatened to use the apparatus of state to target other top Sunni leaders, some rivals and critics said that Mr. Maliki’s authoritarian streak had finally antagonized enough of Iraq’s political class to jeopardize his hold on power.       

Instead, Mr. Maliki appears to have emerged from a potentially destabilizing political crisis with even more power over the Iraqi state and more popularity among his Shiite constituents, many people here said.

“People trust him more and more after this,” said Rahman Tal Jukon, a retired businessman in Hilla, a town in the Shiite-dominated south where expressions of support for Mr. Maliki, once tepid, are now more common and enthusiastic. “He is a brave man. He has guts.”

Mr. Maliki’s political calculus, pushing to the edge of a full-blown crisis, appears to have paid off, though worries remain that Iraq is sliding toward one-man, one-party rule under Mr. Maliki. His rivals among the Sunnis are busy retrenching as their political leadership fractures, causing a pervasive feeling that Sunnis have lost any meaningful stake in Iraqi public life.      

In a recent report, Ramzy Mardini, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, wrote: “It is clear that Maliki has come out as the winner in the political crisis he provoked. He has made it more difficult for his Shia rivals to dissent while simultaneously confining his Sunni opponents in a position suitable for exerting pressure and exploiting divisions within their ranks.”

Iraqiya, the largely Sunni bloc of lawmakers that is led by a secular Shiite, Ayad Allawi, was forced to end boycotts of Parliament and the cabinet that were staged to protest Mr. Maliki’s actions, without winning any rewards. Members of the bloc have split, and some ministers refused to participate in the boycott, adding to a sense that Sunni optimism after the 2010 parliamentary elections, when Iraqiya won the most seats, has dissipated completely.       

Zuhair Araji, a former Iraqiya member who withdrew from the party, called the boycott “unwise” and said the alliance had embarrassed itself.       

Similar sentiments are heard in the capital’s Sunni neighborhoods. “Iraqiya came back to the Parliament and the government because they failed and they have lost all their popularity in Iraq,” said Aymen Fakhry, who lives in Adhamiya.

Obaida al-Jobori, a Sunni and a restaurant owner in the Karada neighborhood of Baghdad, said: “Sunnis made a big mistake when they decided not to participate in the political process with the Shias and Kurds. They proved Sunni leaders are not experienced enough to help their people in the right manner.”       

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