Name: MPW Summit 2023: The Future Of Streaming
Uploaded: 2023-10-10
Duration: 14 min 34 s
Description: Bela Bajaria, Chief Content Officer, Netflix Interviewer: Michal Lev-Ram, FORTUNE

Bela Bajaria, Chief Content Officer, Netflix Interviewer: Michal Lev-Ram, FORTUNE

MPW Summit 2023: The Future Of Streaming

Conferences

Hollywood is in the middle of a roller coaster moment. One that may even be considered an inflection point. The business is changing for a variety of reasons from shifting consumer habits to technological advances to the way shows and movies are made. This is a time of challenge for the creatives who bring content to life, for actors, for content distribution companies. And those challenges include the recently resolved Writers Guild strike and the actors strike that's still underway. So today we are joined by an executive who is seeing it all up close and in real time, she's a woman who is responsible for bringing some of the most beloved and binged content to traditional television and now to streaming Bela Bia is chief content officer at Netflix. She's got a long history with the company having joined in 2016 and a long career in the industry overall. Bella once again ranks on fortune's most powerful women in business list making it her fourth time on the list. She joins us now to talk about the current state of the business where streaming is headed and her rise to become one of the most powerful women in Hollywood. So please thank her and welcome her, excuse me to the stage. Bella. Hi, thanks. Thanks for being with us. I know you are literally all over the world, so we appreciate you making a stop here. Um I just real quick, I want to ask you, your role has changed over the year. Obviously, the company has evolved significantly as well as the industry like we mentioned. But tell us just what does it mean to be Chief Content Officer at Netflix today? Um Good morning, everybody. It's, you know what it means, it means. It's a really fun job. I, you know, I get to work with the best creators and filmmakers around the world, many different languages, many different countries and bring these stories to a global audience. So it's, you know, incredibly rewarding, especially for somebody like me who is an Indian immigrant to the country, never saw myself on screen. And it's a very powerful thing to see yourself. Um And so to be part of a company that doesn't just export Hollywood content, but really tells these stories from around the world and have discovery around the world. And the way we do is, you know, it's such a fun job. I mean, I get to work with Chloe Dumont and David Fincher and David Beckham recently and lots of amazing, you know, filmmakers around the world. So it's, you know, it's a great job. Can't forget posh, posh, posh. Yeah. So, so we're going to talk a little bit more about the global scale Netflix streams in more than 190 countries. About two thirds of your, more than 230 million subscriptions are now coming from outside of the US and Canada. So I'm curious to hear over the last few years in particular and your career, what have you learned about how to approach the strategy for approaching content on such a global scale? So I'd say like looking at, you know, it's always about like, what do audiences love? What do they want to watch? Right? What we do is we are an entertainment company, right? We only make movies and series and it's really understanding that people have lots of different tastes and lots of different moods even in your own family. And, you know, depending on what you're in the mood for, right? That there's a wide breadth of choices if you know, earlier in the year, if I look at something like, you know, in the US, there was Night age in an action show, beef, a beautiful award winning thing really about human connection in so many ways. And love is Blind, a very popular dating reality show. All of those things were number 12 and three in the US and they kept flip flopping, which really shows you kind of the breath of, you know, different tastes. And when we look at, you know, what are those great titles? And how do we really do that? It always starts with a creator, it always starts with a filmmaker and it starts with being very specific and authentic to that voice and what language that is and that thing is universal, whether it's in Mumbai or Madrid or Los Angeles, right? There's a very cultural specific thing of voices and it's authentic and we really support that vision. We do that on this scale by doing it. You know, we have 27 local country offices with local people in those offices who are from the creative ecosystem, who speak the language, who are from the culture, who work in that community. And that's really kind of we do it, you know, in that way. And it's always like in the end of the day, audiences do have different tastes. We know that our members watch on average six different genres a month. And so people do have a wide range of tastes. And so it's really been about creator first. And I say the other thing is I think people look at us and think we make global shows, we don't make global shows, we make local specific authentic shows and films and then we launch it to a global audience because I also think if you try to make a show for everyone, you make a show for no one. And that's really kind of how we have been, you know, successful at storytelling first and really being very authentic to what that voice is in whatever country that comes from. So, since you're brought up, love is blind, I'm going to stick to it for a minute here. But you, you have love is Blind Brazil and you've got Love is Blind Japan. How do you decide this is what we're going to, you know, these are the countries we're taking it to. This is, this is going to work here. So what's interesting about that is so, you know, the love is blind. The US version was first and you know, it really resonated and that version in English resonated around the world and it really becomes like the country teams or a local producer who's like, oh, here's our take on it or here's why this would work. So we don't start with saying, OK, we're going to just push this out to these countries. It's not really again when I talk about starting with the idea first. It was those country teams, right, Qatar who runs Japan, you know, or Elizabeth who runs Brazil. It really was a very specific like, OK, we love this here. Here's what our version locally would look like. Here's how we're going to make it locally and make it sort of more relevant to our country and that's really how that comes about. OK. Um I, I wanna ask you about the Hollywood strikes uh that these have taken center stage, of course, over the last few months um We just saw WG A members um approve a contract agreement after nearly five months. Um This is really being touted by union leaders and members uh in large part as, as a success. Um And uh both when it comes to gains in payment, giving writers more control and transparency over the use of generative A I in scripts. Do you see this as a win for the studios and for Netflix? Look, I, so first I'm going to say congratulations to the WG A which who did ratify the agreement yesterday. And in that agreement, there was, you know, really meaningful gains and protections for writers. And I'd say for, you know, all of us to get writers back to work and you know, that really is the goal of, you know, all of the members of the A MP TP and really as a community, right? It was like to get everybody back to work. And so now, you know, obviously with S A which is still in the middle of a negotiation. So I can't really, really talk about that a lot, but the focus now is to really reach agreement with Zag. And now we have two agreements out of the three with the guild and to really get, you know, everybody back to work, making amazing series and films that all of you should watch and will love. And by the way, be, be thinking of a question for Bella will go to you. Um but uh you, you've said just sticking with technology here for, for a bit because you brought up gen A I, you've said in the past that algorithms don't dictate your content decisions. And I know you've already talked about it a little bit, but Netflix has always um you know, you originated in Silicon Valley and, and there was this tech platform even in the DVD days, right? And you've always had such amazing technology at your fingertips. So how do you balance that, the tech and the science piece and the art and the intuition you yourself and as a company. So first, I'd say it's really important to remember we're in an entertainment company. We don't do anything else except make movies and series, right? That's what we do and it's the core of what we do. And so for me and I've been in an entertainment executive for 27 years, something like that a long time. And it's always about the creativity, right? It's always about working with writers and directors, having that relationship, having that trust, building a relationship and really supporting that vision. And whether that's when I was at CBS or ran Universal Television or Netflix, the core of it is always judgment, gut intuition, creativity. There is not an algorithm in the world to tell you the next thing that's going to actually connect and resonate with people. That's not what we do. It really is a, always a creative business and we are an entertainment company and I think it's amazing that we with great storytelling coupled with, you know, really amazing quality subtitles and dubbing and with easy access and discovery, that sort of a combination of those things is really an amazing thing. But we are an entertainment company. And for me, if you talk about discovery and access, what's been incredible is, you know, the experience when you come on Netflix is that you can discover Lupin from France or La Casa de Papel from Spain. And right, you can watch, you know, the David Beckham, you know, doc series and there's just such a wide breadth of things and that sort of the experience in Netflix of coupling like great storytelling with amazing discovery is, you know, what has been really successful and why our members love that they get to discover, you know, dear child, you know, a month ago from Germany that people have, you know, loved all over the world. I seem to get stuck with a lot of dino trucks and Pokemon recommendations because my five year old boy uses my Netflix profile. But I was, I was going to say would just use your own profile, then you would not have that. Yes. Questions for Bella, please raise your hand. We'll bring a microphone over to you. If anybody would like to ask a question. No, I've got plenty of my own. I want to ask you going back to David Beckham, I want to ask you about sports programming just kind of more more broadly and you haven't really leaned into live sports TV, deals, right? Streaming deals. And some of your competitors definitely have. Can you explain a little bit about the strategy and this kind of sports adjacent genre? So I think, you know, for us, it's always been that our power and our strength is storytelling. Character. You love stories, you love a world, you can discover, right and really experience. And that was always the focus. And so early days, you know, we did right to survive, which is following, you know, doc series in formula one. And that was amazing because people who had never watched the sport or like the or knew anything about it fell in love with the characters and the story, some of them, now a lot of them watch the sport that they never did. And Formula One has really been public about talking about the growth in the US because of the show, the power of storytelling and falling in love with characters. Kind of is the key to that. And you've seen recently, we had a show called Full Swing, which was golf. And the PGA has also talked about the growth of the sport because people discovered the sport through great characters and storytelling. And so our focus has been that whether it's, you know, quarterback with the NFL or a lot of these like doc, you know, like, like, and David Beck and like the doc sports, you know, shows that we do. So the focus has always been that for us and we love that we have really become the premier home for sports programming and it's a really important part of what we do. But again, it goes to the core of storytelling and characters, like that's what we do. And I say on the live sports, it's just, we have never, we haven't really ever figured out how that as a business of licensing live rights from the sports. Like, you know, how that actually makes sense for us as a business. But what does make sense is always focusing on great partnership with these leagues, which we do have and really expanding that programming because our members love that sports programming. Great. Very, very quick question over here. Hi, I'm Fatima Goss Graves with the National Women's Law Center. And I'm just curious with the strikes and the conversations we're having around the A I how you're planning for what feels like more fundamental shifts to the business model. Look, I think, um, you know, we have really always what's been like amazing, I think in Hollywood and even through the strikes, right, it's been like the companies and the community, really wanting to get everybody like back to work and really focusing on great storytelling and, and how to do that. So that was at least the core on both sides, you know, this kind of thing of one community getting back together. A I has always been a thing that we've talked about with, with all of the guild and there's, and that's, and we have, you know, two agreements that obviously have been resolved and people are very happy, right on both sides about that agreement is that, you know, A I is a really great tool in the hands of creators. And so directors can, you know, use A I in visual effects and you can use them in sort of background for anime. I mean, there's lots of different ways to use it and it's a really great tool for us in the hands of creators and when they want to use that for efficiencies. So that's sort of always been kind of a conversation, you know, even throughout the negotiation. Thank you, Bella. Um Bella, we do need to wrap, but thank you so much for joining us again. Um And congrats on being on the list and we always appreciate your uh recommendations for new shows as well. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.