They're gonna need a lot more than one show if they're going to try to use original programming as a reason to buy Netflix - 13 episodes a year means weekly for 3 months. They're going to need at least 3 shows to do yearly coverage (they can have breaks in between). If the original programming is the reason you buy Netflix, you won't pay year-round if they don't have year-round programming, you'll just binge on TV six months of the year and cancel for the other six months (and if it's not the reason you're paying for Netflix (and/or upgrading to the next tier or whatever), then it's a waste of their money).
I think two things will help them. The first is that they have no competition in their timeslot, because they'll have no timeslot. The second thing which will help them is that they can break a lot of TV rules in ways even HBO can't - they're less restricted in episode structure or length, for instance.
First of all, people don't often cancel once they are getting something. That's why those CD-of-the-month club things worked in the 90s, and book-of-the-month before them.
But I'm not even sure that's important. I don't think the goal here is to directly make money on new subscriptions. This is a massive strategic move.
It sends a signal to content providers that Netflix, if need be, can cut them out of the picture, or at least can make things very expensive for them by bidding up the price of content.
I think it's more of a message to Amazon that just streaming a few thousand movies won't be enough to steal the market from them. Amazon is great at breaking into new areas, but I think they would have to think twice about moving into television production, given that it's so far outside their sphere.
I think "so far outside their sphere" was poor word choice on my part. What I was trying to say was that, for Netflix whose sole business is delivering movies and tv shows to consumers, moving into TV production is not a stretch. For a company like amazon, who already does so many disparate things, to now add something so monolithic as TV production might stretch them in uncomfortable ways. I'm an enormous Amazon fan so I don't put anything past them, but this is kind of a double-dog dare on Netflix's part, in my opinion.
I think two things will help them. The first is that they have no competition in their timeslot, because they'll have no timeslot. The second thing which will help them is that they can break a lot of TV rules in ways even HBO can't - they're less restricted in episode structure or length, for instance.