Beginning Monday, Netflix will nearly become a television channel, the Washington Post reported. Only three small cable providers -- RCN, Grande Communications, and Atlantic Broadband -- will offer it and it will still require purchase of a separate subscription (along with a special Tivo set-top box); still, the move to a cable company-provided box is the first example in the budding company's history and representative of their larger goal of one day becoming a cable television presence on par with HBO.
Why shouldn't Netflix have their own channel? Though their route to such an existence has been anything but tradition, they provide a very similar service -- albeit more selective -- as television staples like TBS, TNT, and others. Both Netflix and the TNT/TBS group are largely comprised of already released movies and television re-runs, with the occasional original programming. (To the surprise of many, Netflix has several critically-acclaimed shows under their name such as "House of Cards" and "Orange is the New Black.")
"We're making Netflix a channel on our lineup and in our channel guides," said David Isenberg, chief marketing officer for Atlantic Broadband. "If you're an RCN customer, perhaps in the D.C. area, you would pick up your remote control, you would tune to Channel 450, and there you'd find Netflix. You'd select it and that'll launch the Netflix app. Literally, watching Netflix is as easy as changing the channel."
Just because Netflix is moving towards cable doesn't mean they're moving away from the platform that helped make their name. The company will continue to explore both networks.
"The entire cable television market is in the process off reinventing itself," said Jeff Kagan, an independent telecom analyst, the Post reported. "Watching television on TV used to be the entire pie. Now it's just one slice of it."
