Between May 2018 and May 2019 Netflix’s US catalogue grew by
10%, 621 titles, a mix of movies and TV seasons. Much of that grown was driven
by the addition of older titles. In the space of 12 months the proportion of
titles accounted for by titles over 3 years old has risen from 48% to 52%. This
equates to 544 titles, almost the entirety of the catalogue increase.
This strategy differs from that employed from 2016 through
2018 where Netflix curated the service’s US catalogue to increase the
proportion of newer content available to subscribers. This strategy to improve
the catalogue recency resulted in the reduction of the overall size of the
available catalogue in the USA, albeit marginally, from 6,730 titles in May
2016 to 6,515, by May 2018. However, the proportion of titles that were older
than 5 years available through the service fell from 40% in May 2016, to 32% by
May 2018. This was accompanied by an increase in titles less than 3 years old
from 31% to 35% over the same time period.
The increase in title availability has been entirely driven
by the addition of titles from smaller and independent producers and
distributors. Such companies provided an additional 643 titles in May 2019 over
the 3,972 they accounted for in May 2018. The volume of titles for the major US
studios has remained stable over that period. Notably the volume of titles stemming
from Disney and Fox, reportedly removing titles from services competing with their
direct to consumer service, has also remained broadly stable. Disney Fox
accounted for 326 tiles available through Netflix in the USA in May 2018 and this
has fallen by only 9% to 296 titles in May 2019.
Public broadcasters are the main drivers of content investment in Germany with ARD and ZDF's accounting for the lion's share of spend on original content. Germany contrasts to other big European TV markets where commercial and pay TV groups dominate the market for content investment.
Thanks to Amazon, Hulu and Netflix's expansive catalogues, the average US SVoD household has access to more than nine years of on-demand content through their SVoD subscriptions.
Netflix is adding over 1,000 hours of acquired TV content a month on average. While its appetite is high, its hunger varies by genre, showing it is using some content types as 'standards' within the catalogue and adding others in bursts through specific targeted content deals.
Netflix has almost as many shows in production as it's made in its entire history, and has more shows in production or development than the rest of the FAANG's combined.
Amazon's kids' TV catalogue is almost twice the size of Netflix's, with 547 distinct titles compared to Netflix's 283 titles.
Discovery and ProSiebenSat.1 German joint-venture streamer Joyn is developing an aggregation strategy to attract a wide range of viewers with very different content interests.
One in three dramas is now based on existing material, with almost half of drama adaptations inspired by books and novels.