The U.S. TV show market is quite mature, and publicity is essential for any series to be successful. Even a series like "A Song of Ice and Fire", which has a huge fan base of the original work, still costs 15 million in publicity money every season.

This is especially true for Netflix, "House of Cards" is related to the future development direction of the company, and even the life and death of the company, therefore, Netflix did not dare to be careless and prepared 20 million publicity expenses.

In fact, since the end of 2009, Netflix has been promoting "House of Cards", and the publicity point at that time was mainly on director David Fincher, starring Kevin Spacey and Robin White.

After entering 2010, the main publicity point of "House of Cards" is on "big data", telling everyone that this is a TV series that is determined by the objective preferences of tens of millions of viewers.

By mid-February, Netflix began to burn money like crazy, newspapers, magazines, and even TV stations, all kinds of advertisements were on it, and David Fincher and the two leading actors were also interviewed by many media outlets to build momentum for the launch of "House of Cards".

Netflix also bought the gunman to publish articles bombarding the weekly broadcast mode, the production time is too short to ensure the quality, the actors have to be on standby all the time, it is difficult to attract actors like Kevin Spacey to participate, and Netflix is filmed at one time and broadcast at one time, which is more in line with the needs of the audience in the Internet era and will win the support of more audiences. At the same time, Netflix asked another group of gunmen to refute this view, citing the benefits of weekly broadcasting. The two sides went back and forth, and there was a war of words, which attracted great attention.

After three rounds of publicity and bombardment, "House of Cards" not only attracted the attention of a large number of netizens, but even many viewers who don't usually watch TV series know about this drama, and even every practitioner in the entire pay TV industry is paying close attention to the broadcast of "House of Cards".

Josh Logle, editor of the American science and technology information website SAI, published a long analysis article on March 9, arguing that the entire U.S. pay-TV industry is currently on the sidelines for the upcoming original series "House of Cards" from Netflix, and if Netflix succeeds, the pay-TV industry will take corresponding follow-up measures.

If Netflix's release of House of Cards hadn't been as successful as it had hoped, things would have been a different story. Netflix is likely unwilling and unable to make a similar bet in the near future after its $100 million investment has gone down the drain. On the other hand, the entire pay-TV industry will rejoice at the failure of House of Cards, and then argue that the incident shows that the traditional pay-TV ecosystem has its legitimate. They will talk about how the ecosystem works uniquely, the value of the investment, and more. Perhaps they are not wrong in this statement.

March 13 is Saturday, the day "House of Cards" officially launched. At 8:45 a.m., Netflix executives gathered and sat in the conference room to wait for the audience's reaction after the launch of "House of Cards". Everyone's expressions are more solemn, although everyone is confident in the quality of "House of Cards" and the publicity is very good, but it is really difficult to say whether a drama can be popular or not.

In the past two months, under the manipulation of Goldman Sachs, Wall Street's valuation of Netflix has plummeted, from $30 billion to $8 billion. If it weren't for the top management of Century Summit to decisively attract state-owned assets and sell 45% of Summit Entertainment's film shares to the three major radio and television groups in the next five years, then Century Peak would be in a dangerous situation and there is a risk of bankruptcy.

Although the risk of bankruptcy is now small, the company needs more capital to continue to grow, and the higher the valuation, the more capital it can raise. If the valuation does not come up, it will be difficult to raise funds, and the company's development will inevitably be hindered. In either case, Netflix has to pull up the company's valuation as soon as possible.

All the treasures are pressed on "House of Cards", and the final result depends on today's performance!

On the walls of the conference room, the countdown numbers on the giant display screen are changing rapidly. When the countdown number shows zero, "House of Cards" is officially launched, and at the same time, a new set of numbers appears on the display, and this set of numbers is scrolling at a speed that is difficult to see with the naked eye, which is exactly the number of viewers of "House of Cards".

In an apartment in Los Angeles, Miles sits in front of the computer, leisurely sipping coffee while reading all kinds of interesting news on Fly. He is an ordinary office worker, usually works very hard, and does not like to go out on weekends, basically staying at home to surf the Internet and watch TV.

Miles is a big fan of Fincher and a big user of Netflix, and he has seen the BBC version of "House of Cards", which is indeed a classic TV series, but he is confident that the combination of Finch and Kevin Spacey can create a TV series that surpasses the BBC version.

After shopping on Fly for a while, and looking at the time again, Miles found that the time was already 9:05, so he quickly clicked on Netflix, clicked on "House of Cards", and looked at it intently.

The appearance of Frank, the male protagonist of "House of Cards", is impressive, the neighbor's dog is seriously injured and on the verge of death, at this time Frank did not hesitate at all, and directly killed the dog. This scene fully shows Frank's style of doing things: cruel, decisive, resolute, and has no mercy for useless things.

Miles was taken aback and thought Frank was terrible. Americans have a close relationship with animals, and many treat cats and dogs as family members, and killing cats and dogs is cruel to them.

In many American movies, there is often a plot where a cat or a dog falls from the upper floor, and the male protagonist rushes over to catch it. This plot is called Saving the Cat, and Blake Snyder's famous screenwriting book "Save the Cat" is based on this.

The TV series continues to air, and Frank is in a good mood that night, because Garrett has won the presidential election, and as the main hero, Frank is about to be promoted. At the celebration banquet, Frank's on-camera narrator introduced three of the country's most important figures, the president, the vice president, and the president's female chief of staff, and of course, implicitly introduced his own party whip function, and the last sentence low-key stated that he was "retiring" and going to be secretary of state.

However, Frank was wrong, and Garrett did not keep his original promise, hoping that Frank would continue to serve in Congress. Frank, who was depressed, came home late at night, and Carlisle, who had been worried, saw her husband's depressed expression. Carlisle was very dissatisfied with her husband's performance, and after a few sarcastic remarks, she went upstairs to her bedroom. Hearing the sound of kicking over the coffee table behind her, Carlisle knew her husband had pulled himself together. Early in the morning, Frank, who hadn't slept all night, finally figured out what to do. Take a step back, not only to see the sky, but also to see the big picture, start with the new Secretary of State Michael Cohen, who is about to be appointed, and find someone who can be controlled. Katherine Durant, who once opposed Garrett, became the best candidate in Frank's heart......

Fifty minutes went by in a flash, and as the credits rolled over the monitor, Miles exhaled softly, worthy of Fincher's work, it was so wonderful. He leaned back, leaned back in his chair, and said unsatisfactorily, "It's over so soon! It's too fast! I won't be able to watch it until next week!"

Miles leaned back in his chair and thought about the plot of "House of Cards", David Fincher's plays have always been known for their high intelligence, and often have foreshadowing in many subtle places, so he had to think carefully so as not to miss some of these important clues.

Just thinking about it, Miles suddenly realized that something was wrong, his face was stunned at first, and then turned into ecstasy, and muttered: "No, Netflix said that they won't broadcast one episode a week, but put all thirteen episodes on the Internet at once, which means that I don't have to wait until next week to watch the second episode, I can watch it now!"

Miles was suddenly excited, bounced up from the chair, grabbed the mouse and clicked it twice, and looked at it, and sure enough, thirteen episodes were transmitted to the Internet. He clicked with the mouse again, and the second episode of "House of Cards" began to play. Miles was extremely excited, first whistled at the monitor, then clapped hard at the monitor, and shouted loudly: "I really don't have to wait until next week! I can watch it all at once! Cool! It's so cool! Long live Netflix! HBO, Fox is all dead!"

In the Netflix conference room, the number on the display has reached 297, which means that in this nearly an hour, 2.97 million viewers watched the first episode of "House of Cards".

That's a lot better than estimated, and Netflix is aiming for 2 million viewers to watch the first episode of "House of Cards" within an hour. Now seeing this number, several Netflix executives have smiles on their faces.

Antioco's face was even more smiling, and his hanging heart finally fell firmly to the ground. Less than an hour after "House of Cards" went live, it reached 2.97 million viewers, a figure that was nearly 50% higher than the projected 2 million. Of course, this result is nothing compared to the popular dramas of the TV station, but Netflix is different from the TV station, the audience of the TV station's dramas can only watch it regularly, and Netflix users do not need to watch it regularly, they can watch it at any time, anywhere, as long as they have a computer and mobile phone, 2.94 million users, it will definitely not be the final number, it is just a beginning.

As it is, the numbers on the display are still changing, and the number of users watching House of Cards is increasing.

Antioco believes that in a day that number will exceed 5 million, or even 6 million, which can be considered a hit TV series even on various TV stations. There is no doubt that "House of Cards" has succeeded, and it is time for Bo to dominate the world for so many years, and it is time to give way. Now is the Internet era, just as HBO led the cable station to defeat the public station, and now Netflix should also lead the streaming media to replace the cable station!

After a few more minutes, the staff of the Netflix data analysis center ran in with a copy of the data: "Sir, the detailed data is out!"

Antioco took the data and looked at it carefully, then let out a long sigh of relief and announced with a smile: "Gentlemen, as of ten o'clock, within an hour of the launch of House of Cards, 3.03 million viewers watched the first episode. Among them, 1.87 million viewers have already watched the first episode, and 1.43 million viewers have chosen to continue watching the second episode within five minutes of watching the first episode, a whopping 76%. This shows that the audience is receptive to our one-time watch model, and they like to watch the next episode immediately after watching one episode!"

Netflix executives were overjoyed, stood up, and applauded with a smile: "It's right for us to release all the episodes at once, which will change people's habits of watching dramas." Instead of waiting for updates and watching one episode a week, viewers have become watching many episodes in one go!"

"Audiences want to see more content at once, and it's hard for them to do that, so we have the possibility to beat them!"

"The future belongs to the Internet, we have won the future, and I believe that 'big data' will soon become a hot word in the Internet industry!"

Antioco's gaze slowly swept over everyone's faces, and proudly announced: "From today on, Netflix will no longer be at the bottom of the film and television industry chain, we are standing at the top of the industry chain, and the era of TV stations monopolizing everything has passed!"

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