Video-On-Demand platforms: Editorial strategies and logics of production. Netflix: a case study

Since 2012, while purchasing the rights of traditional televisual content to establish their catalogue, Netflix attempted to respond to the intensification of competition provoked by the multiplication of players on the pitch of VOD engaging in the field of original contents. This article focusses this aspect of Netflix development policy, targeting especially the France case – which inhabitants are considered as the most cinephile of the world. The paper seeks to interrogate the strategic axes specifically developed in this country by Netflix, in the frame of the French legislation, and the attempt of the American platform to lobby in order to reduce its obligations. The reflection, mainly socioeconomic, is built on a theoretical framework shaped by several research works concerning cultural companies in the digital field and their business models, and on the words of Netflix’s supervisors and associates, adapted over time by French and Anglo-Saxon media.