Despite the end of the Peak TV era, Jinny Howe, Netflix’s head of U.S. and Canada scripted series, told the Banff World Media Festival on Monday that the video streaming giant is privileged to still maintain a steady spend on new original series.
“Our volume is not slowing down. We are very fortunate to still be in this growth mindset … So it’s a real privilege for us to continue to operate at the volumes we’ve been working under. I believe we’re not slowing down. The volume is appropriate,” Howe said during a keynote address in Banff. Netflix is currently spending around $20 billion on new IP, even if a lot of that goes to sports and event programming.
On the drama front, Howe announced Netflix had commissioned a new college hockey romancer, Ice Breaker, inspired by Hannah Grace’s novel of the same name. Having joined Netflix in 2018, Howe boarded the video streaming giant as the Peak TV era got underway with overall deals with Ryan Murphy and Shondaland amid a gold rush for content creators and streamers.
“It was feeling like you were early days on the frontier. It was a different mindset for the business. There wasn’t this fear of failing, the early days of tech and media intersected,” she recalled. Howe helped develop Shondaland’s Bridgerton and Inventing Anna as well as shows like Beef, The Night Agent, The Diplomat and Untamed.
Howe’s upcoming slate includes a retelling of Little House on the Prairie, the limited series The Altruists starring Julia Garner, and the sports comedy The Hawk, led by Will Ferrell. She talked about upcoming Netflix series having more episodes as a nod to a past when showrunners did 21 or 24 hours per season.
“The idea of this deeper, long running engagement is a signature of great TV, whether it’s more episodes, as long as the creativity supports that,” she told Banff delegates. Netflix is also leaning into the creator economy, where producers are coming from YouTube and other online platforms.
“I think we are right now very creator focused for the most part. And we’re just looking to engage special voices who we think can deliver shows that no one else can,” Howe insisted.
