Netflix looks more like traditional TV nowadays than the disruptor of television

Rolling Stone

As the One Day at a Time cancelation revealed, Netflix, "for all its noise about a new way of making television, is really just whistling a minor variation of a very old Hollywood tune," says Alan Sepinwall. He adds: "As it transitioned from a mail-order DVD rental service to producer of its own streaming content, it kept preaching the Silicon Valley motto of disruption. Netflix, said Netflix, wouldn’t be beholden to the old Hollywood way of doing things: Seasons would be released all at once, rather than forcing viewers to wait a week at a time for each episode! Creative people would be given creative freedom to make the kinds of shows they couldn’t anywhere else! Series that couldn’t survive in the traditional TV space could find a home on Netflix! Viewers could invest in new favorites without fear of abrupt cancellation! But you can only be an unconventional outsider for so long. Netflix’s journey from plucky underdog to the dominant force in the medium has forced disruption to take a back seat to business realities the service once positioned itself against. And lately, Netflix has been making decisions that are indistinguishable from the networks to which it was supposed to present a glorious alternative."