Netflix Takes First Steps Towards Global Cable

There was a piece in the Financial Times recently decrying the lack of a monocultural connection as one of the things currently dividing populations; the implication being that siloing oneself entertainment-wise leads to siloing oneself politically. The writer was talking about the U.K., of course, but the same could be argued for the U.S., where Netflix shattered what was a system wherein everyone benefited, from series creators to small-time actors to audiences. However, once the great unbundling occurred, viewers quickly realized that subscribing to each app individually was way worse than having excess cable channels, and since then, the race to be the first to provide the best rebundling has been on.

But today's news upends the board. Across the pond, down on the continent, France's TF1 network (one of the few successful commercial networks in the country) has signed an agreement to be streamed via Netflix.

Thus far, the great rebundling has not been all that exciting, but rather a sense of reassembling pieces of a well-worn puzzle. The Disney/Hulu/Max package, for example, is essentially the House of Mouse giving us an app version of what is now known as a "skinny cable bundle," while the Peacock/Netflix/Apple TV+ bundle is Comcast offering an alternative version of the same concept. Note that the second group offers Netflix as part of the Comcast channel lineup; that's because, until December 2024, Netflix had never successfully pulled off live streaming.