Netflix made a splash when it said in March that, with House of Cards, it will get into the premium original content business where cable channels like HBO dominate. On Monday, it said it is looking to add a few similar deals.
In a note to shareholders Monday that accompanied its first-quarter earnings report, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and CFO David Wells wrote that the House of Cards decision “was driven by a desire to test a new licensing model using a small portion of our content budget.”
“We want to confirm our theory that because we are click-and-watch rather than appointment viewing, we can efficiently build a big audience for a well-produced serialized show,” they say in the letter. “We’ll license two or three similar, but smaller, deals so we can gain confidence that whatever results we achieve are repeatable.”
