NewTV Is Hollywood’s (Bad?) Idea to Compete with Netflix

One by one, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and others tried to engage Netflix in a fight for millennial attention and arguably all lost. Now, Hollywood is getting once again ready to take on the 21st century and try to pry viewers away from streaming-behemoth Netflix. And they’re getting creative, to say so nicely.

Raising $1 billion in seed funding, NewTV is backed by execs from major Hollywood studios and TV networks like Disney, Sony, and ITV. The plan?

Instead of trying to add enough long-form content and special like Netflix does, NewTV wants to lower millenial attention span even further, bringing a carefully curated selection of 10-minutes long episodes. With two plans possible, one with light advertising like Hulu and one with no advertising like HBO Go or Netflix itself, NewTV wants to position itself as the go-to platform for mobile-first streaming.

It’s a bold move Cotton, now let’s see if not catering to all-weekend binge-watchers will pay off. As Wired also pointed out, just how many 10-minute videos does the average millennial watch on their phone?

“Really, this allows us to launch our vision of bringing together the best of Hollywood and Silicon Valley,” said NewTV CEO Meg Whitman. Hopefully, the Silicon Valley mentioned is the actual location, not HBO’s award-winning sitcom that’s relentless in its mocking of tech startups.

We’ll find out the answer next year, as NewTV is scheduled to show up somewhere in 2019.