Netflix's Brandless Stand-up Comedy Specials

Curator's Note

After Netflix produced its first stand-up special in 2012, the streaming service dramatically increased its spending on original content in order to acquire talent and price out its industrial rivals. While Netflix’s scripted series have received extensive attention because of their record-breaking production costs and salaries, stand-up comedy specials have become one of Netflix’s largest (and costliest) creative outputs. In 2018, Netflix produced roughly four times as much stand-up comedy as Showtime, HBO, and Comedy Central combined. These cable channels, which dominated stand-up production from the 1980s to the early 2010s, have seen their loyal talent depart as Netflix pays premium prices to attract stand-up stars such as Chris Rock, Amy Schumer, and Jerry Seinfeld to lucrative multi-special contracts.

Whereas those aforementioned cable channels generally branded their content based on specific aesthetics and/or representational politics, Netflix’s stand-up comedy is driven by sheer quantity as opposed to a discernible brand. Unlike its cable predecessors, the streaming service has an economic imperative to appeal to as many audiences, in as many languages and regions, as possible. Subscriber retention and growth are both essential to Netflix’s long-term success, which means that every stand-up special does not have to appeal to the exact same stand-up audience. 

Netflix’s conscious strategy, couched in “Netflix Is a Joke” promotional materials, groups feminist, broad, and/or vulgar comedy together, including: Maria Bamford's aesthetically experimental Old Baby, Kevin James' family-friendly Never Don't Give Up, and Jeff Foxworthy & Larry the Cable Guy’s white working-class-oriented We’ve Been Thinking, amongst many others. A variety of French, Spanish, Italian, Korean, Arabic, and Portuguese specials exist alongside the more prominent English language offerings.

This “brandlessness” that extends across Netflix’s comedy offerings and all of its original programming is a strategy more akin to early U.S. broadcast networks in their desire for a mass audience. This “mass audience,” though, is now explicitly global rather than just national. Particularly in an era where branding and content production are often vital for evolving cable channels and upstart streaming services to survive, Netflix’s strategy appears counterintuitive and unsustainable when placed within larger industrial strategies and shifts.  
 

Comments

Your piece dovetails nicely with my post from today! Great companion pieces.  I think we both seem to be also interested in exploring more fundamentally what stand-up IS. How has it been classfied in the past? How do audiences form their own tastes and what potential role does Netflix have in that taste formation? Unlike TV and FIlm, Netflix just seems to be making up arbitrary comedic categories because stand-up doesn't really have set genre classifications. 

Hey Eric!

Great work here. I really appreciate the work that you're doing here. Especially taking an important stance when you say, "Subscriber retention and growth are both essential to Netflix’s long-term success, which means that every stand-up special does not have to appeal to the exact same stand-up audience."

There is an impetus for the, "relatable" comic who can do a little bit of everything to cater toward different audiences. There is a move toward streaming services to have a distinctive "personality" or brand that exists. I think of, "#HuluHasLiveSports" as a way to make Hulu as a brand exist in a specific space. 

I'm curious to track down Netflix's approach toward snagging the market share of comedy. From your project, it feels as though these attempts are more, "throw a bunch of specials on the platform" vs, "make this specific to audiences."

-mb

Add new comment

Log in or register to add a comment.