Today, February 1^st, 2013 is the day when Netflix released the entire first season of House of Cards for subscribers to watch online. In the future we might look back at this day as the day when television’s next transformation began writes The Economist:

• Netflix as well as other online video providers such as Hulu and Amazon are increasingly producing their own professional television content to air on their streaming services rather than on traditional cable channels.
• They are doing this because it’s exceedingly expensive for them to acquire the rights to stream movies owned by other companies. By producing and streaming their own content they have a handle on costs.
• The video streaming sites also need a way to differentiate themselves from one another and having their own proprietary content is the best way to do this.
• Netflix is getting creative. Rather than follow the weekly episodic release cycle, it has instead released the entire first season because telemetric data suggests that people prefer ‘binging’ on TV shows.

Read more about what House of Cards means for television over here. As a PSA The Verge is reporting that owners of an Xbox will not be required to have signed up for Xbox gold to watch the series this weekend.

Source: The Economist