Netflix’s House of Cards has been a hit. This wasn’t a surprise to Netflix executives writes David Carr:

• Netflix has access to a lot of data. It monitors when people play, pause, rewind, and forward media. They also track the time of day that people do this and the device they do it on.
• The online streaming company noted that films directed by Mr. Fincher were popular; that Kevin Spacey’s films did well, and that people were fond of a British 90s TV show called House of Cards. These elements then went on to make Netflix’s own hit series.
• But the use of data didn’t stop there. Netflix altered its advertising strategy based on the audience. Kevin Spacey fans saw Kevin Spacey centric ads. Those fond of female characters saw trailers focused on them.

Read more about the ethics of Netflix’s practice, why this might be a threat to creative freedom, and other bits of analytics about House of Cards over here.

Source: The New York Times

If you’re anything like us you spent a good part of the week making your way through Netflix’s latest House of Cards. Rebecca Greenfield looked at the economics of the show:

• The show costs Netflix about $50 million a season to produce.
• Netflix intends to have five new shows of a similar scale every year.
• Yet most of its revenue comes from people paying $7.99 a month for a streaming subscription. It doesn’t use ads to top up that revenue.
• If Netflix wants to recoup the costs of producing the shows then the shows need to attract 2.6 million new individuals who subscribe for two years.
• Yet for Netflix this would be an increase of less than 10%. Last year Netflix increased its US membership by about 13%.

Read more about the dynamics of Netflix’s big bet over here.

Source: The Atlantic

Veep. Silicon Valley. Archer. Prison Break. The Americans. And, at least in past years, Game of Thrones. Some of the best television starts airing in April. Todd VanDerWerff explained why:

• To qualify for the Emmy awards, half a show’s season must have aired before May 31^st, and the entire season must be complete by the time of nominations in June.
• By airing in April shows ensure that they just about make the requirements – while remaining fresh in the minds of award voters.
• Channels like Netflix – which release all their episodes in one batch – normally have their prestige shows come out in May for the same reason.
• This explains why House of Cards will see its entire season become available on May 30^th – a day before the deadline for Emmy contention.
• For the first time since its debut Game of Thrones won’t air until the summer, and so won’t be eligible for the 2017 Emmys. This has left the field for some awards wide open.

Read more on Vox.

How many people have actually watched Netflix’s House of Cards or Orange is the New Black? It turns out, Jason Lynch writes, that we don’t know:

• Netflix is in a better position than most other content creators to track exactly how many individuals watch each show.
• Yet it doesn’t ever release the numbers. We know, for example, that House of Cards is popular but we don’t know how its viewership compares to other TV shows.
• This is in part because Netflix doesn’t want its show producers or stars to know how popular they are. If they did then they could demand substantial pay hikes in the future.
• Netflix also points out that given that they don’t have advertizers they don’t need to release such metrics to try to lure commercial partners.
• Yet other networks such as HBO have kept a running tally of their show viewership, even though they don’t have adverts either.
• What we do know is that Netflix has about 47 million subscribers. How many of them watch Netflix’s shows is anyone’s guess.

Read more about this over here.

Source: Quartz

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

Over at Vox Brad Plumer wrote an exceptionally good article about how casinos get players to play for extended periods:

• Casinos are designed so that guests don’t have to turn at 90 degree angles – doing so activates decision making sections of the brain, and they don’t want that.
• Slots are now responsible for up to 85% of a casino’s profits. Regulators have encouraged them as a cheap source of tax revenue in challenging economic times, without the negative stigmas associated with other types of gambling such as poker.
• Technological advances have let casinos better manipulate human emotions through slots. They used to be all or nothing machines, but these days the machine can give you 30 cents back if you play for a dollar – the brain registers such “partial wins” as real wins.
• Gambling houses these days come with ergonomic seats that don’t cut off circulation and allow players to stay seated for hours.
• They also design seats so that buttons are as close to the player as possible, requiring very little movement of them.
• Casinos have learnt that having players feed coins into machines gives them time to think. Instead they encourage the use of cards with magnetic stripes, so the money being lost seems less real.
• The stereotypical gambler in Las Vegas is now a 35 year old mother of two.

Read how casinos use food to retain your attention, why some players are irritated when they win the jackpot, how machines skirt the edge of the law by making adjustments to the volatility of machines based on your mood and much more over here.

Source: Vox

Tim Fernholz hates cash – though our requests for him to send us his have gone unanswered. Here’s his rationale:

• Cash encourages robbery – since stealing that is more or less untraceable while stolen credit cards will eventually be tracked. About $500 million in cash is robbed each year.
• Cash also spreads disease through all the different people that handle it.
• People lose 5.6 hours a year trying to withdraw cash – and spend $8 billion in ATM fees in the process.
• Cash hurts poor people the most since they use it the most and have to pay the most to withdraw and manage it.
• Businesses have to sort cash and securely transport it to banks. This costs $40 billion a year – or 1% of total revenues.
• Since cash is difficult to trace the government loses up to $500 billion in tax revenue each year. It also spends $1.5 billion printing and distributing currency.
• Ultimately the use of cash costs each household, on average, $1,739 in the United States.

Check out the effects that cash has on monetary policy, how European governments are cracking down on cash and more over here.

Source: Quartz