Netflix Should Buy Tik Tok
I figured it out y'all
The U.S. government wants TikTok to be less Chinese, and the easiest way to make something less Chinese is to sell it to Americans. This is a somewhat peculiar theory of corporate nationality1 but it's the one that U.S. regulators have settled on. Trump has decided to take the challenge and seeks to hit an early political layup with a deal structure that would see a US company buy 50% of TikTok's US business. The US company could be a transparency audit mechanism to alleviate data sharing concerns, and TikTok could retain its 'secret sauce' algorithm while continuing to operate in the US.
So, who might be a good suitor? Elon and the rest of the typical tech behemoths have been suggested, but here's an idea that might sound wild at first: Netflix should acquire TikTok.
Netflix is in the business of getting people to stare at screens for long periods of time. That used to mean producing expensive television shows and movies, but they've always been keenly aware that they're really in the overall attention industry. A few years ago Reed Hastings claimed their biggest competitor was Fortnite - today he'd probably say it is User-Generated Social Media, or more aptly, TikTok.
The fundamental challenge Netflix, and legacy entertainment/media companies overall, face is that younger generations are developing radically different entertainment consumption habits. Do today's 13-year-olds even care about watching shows and movies? If they do, their attention threshold for traditional longform entertainment has a drastically lower ceiling than previous generations. Kids tune in for a big event show, leave halfway through an in-theater viewing of the latest superhero/Star Wars movies, go on occasional streaming binges, and check out the source material of the day's hottest meme. But they're not falling into traditional "what am I going to watch during my leisure time" habits everyone else has had since the invention of moving pictures. Specifically and abstractly, traditional entertainment is becoming a second priority for future entertainment consumers. In another 10 years, the financial and cultural-impact upside of a movie or show just won't be what it once was.
Netflix seems to be quietly acknowledging UGC supremacy in the attention economy. There are rumors that Netflix is shifting toward "wallpaper content" – shows designed to be half-watched while scrolling through your phone. More SQUID GAMES and OUTER BANKS, less HOUSE OF CARDS or THE DIPLOMAT. It's really no longer a good use of money and resources to make well-written shows. It's a much more efficient spend to come up with easy formulaic scripts you can shoot with up-and-coming artists on cheap equipment to just keep churning out more bites at the viral apple. 2 A quiet but pervasive 'wallpaper' mandate is an admission that you've lost the battle for undivided attention.
If Netflix is already conceiving that their model will eventually wither away in the face of UGC social media content hordes, why shouldn't they pull together everything they can to buy their greatest threat when it's at its most potentially vulnerable? If you're Netflix, and your business model is "get people to look at screens," and there's another company that's exceptionally good at getting people to look at screens, and that company needs American owners… well? The math isn't complicated. Plus, imagine how much people would forever fervently ADORE Netflix as TikTok's saviors.
Here's a look at how Netflix/TikTok could look as a combined product:
You're streaming something like OUTER BANKS on Netflix. The plot isn't something you need to spend much time on, so you split your attention between it and your phone. Except now that Netflix is in bed with TikTok, your TikTok algorithm provides you with OUTER BANKS-related content: behind-the-scenes clips, cast commentary, user-generated commentary, memes, information about the show itself, maybe Sparknotes for things it thinks you've missed.
I'm not going to be a total doomer and say this synergy is going to be the end of 'premium' content. 3 People who want to watch elevated stuff will choose to do so and carve out time in their attention schedule to watch something they need to focus on. Even here the possibilities are intriguing. Maybe you're in the middle of a deep character-driven drama, and your TikTok algorithm serves you content that helps you stay caught up when you're not watching. Maybe once you've finished that show, your algorithm serves you content that analyzes what you just saw.
This says nothing about the possibilities in the reality/unscripted/talk-show world. Imagine all the ways fans of LOVE ISLAND could further engage with the contestants, 4 you could put together extra pops of murder docu-series bits for people who want the story expanded.
TikTok and Netflix being interwoven could certainly signal the end of entertainment as art, or it could usher us into an age where art has many more dimensions to offer.
By acquiring TikTok, Netflix could solve multiple problems at once. They'd neutralize a major competitor, gain access to arguably the world's most sophisticated recommendation algorithm, and establish a foothold in short-form content. The price tag would be enormous5 6 and I imagine the regulatory hurdles would create more issues in this saga. But this is ultimately a bet on convergence: that all screen time will eventually be optimized by the same systems, regardless of content length or type, so Netflix can choose to spend boatloads of money trying to penetrate into the attention spheres TikTok has laid claim to, or it could spend boatloads just buying TikTok.
Or it could simply do nothing and eventually lose relevance as attention spans continue to fragment.
The idea that a company's national identity is determined by its shareholders rather than, say, its employees or customers or algorithms
Eventually, AI can help churn out enough slop to keep the medium as relevant as it needs to be to meet whatever demand there is and suddenly there's no artistic or financial fulfillment promised in the premise.
Though it's CERTAINLY easy to see how future generations might lack the attention appreciation for stuff like The Wire, Breaking Bad, or heady Oscar contenders
Who are just influencers at this point anyway, let's be honest
But I'd imagine that down the line, the combined data from both platforms could create an unprecedented understanding of entertainment preferences and viewing habits – an AI Oracle that brings us into the next level of humanity that Netflix/TikTok could sell off for all the money it took to make the acquisition in the first place
Though they have been fine going into vast debt to fuel their rise before