Netflix’s $1B Live Bet Worked — Producers Want In
Plimsoll, Done+Dusted and Balich Wonder Studio execs on the race to win streaming’s next AI-proof gold rush
‘Mass Attention in One Moment’
Why live, and why now? The pragmatic answer is advertisers who want a large audience aggregated at once in a fragmented viewing economy, but there’s another one that goes deeper.
“We don’t know what’s real anymore,” says Melanie Fletcher, North America CEO of live specialists Done+Dusted, reflecting on AI’s creeping influence in entertainment. “Yet we know that if it’s live in the moment and there’s a big crowd, there’s a sense of community and that, ‘This is real, this is happening right now and I’m a part of it.’”
Fletcher has practically written the playbook on live programming. She’s made everything from the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show to Little Mermaid Live! to the 2020 YouTube special Ascension, in which magician David Blaine sailed over the Arizona desert attached to 52 helium balloons. Streaming is a growing part of the portfolio at Done+Dusted, which produced BTS: The Comeback Live | Arirang for Netflix in March.
There’s always been a good business for live, but executives “are now understanding its value beyond it being just a format,” says Fletcher. “It’s the foundation for a much bigger ecosystem around IP or a brand or a fandom.”
Live events, she adds, can get “the rarest of mass attention in one moment, which is measurable, and there’s great data collection around that.” Then there’s value for sponsors to be part of that conversation, plus a long tail in clipping and “mass distribution of that clipping, which is a whole engine unto itself now.”