How Netflix Beat Hollywood to a Generation of Black Content

The Black executives who were buying content during Netflix’s first wave of original programming are all gone now. Some didn’t get promotions. Some were hired away by competitors, and some were burned out by an internal culture officially focused on encouraging freedom and responsibility but whose unsentimental firings and blunt feedback carried their own forms of bias and subjectivity. (The company added the principle of “inclusion” to its legendary culture manifesto in 2017.) Among the departures: Ms. Duncan was recently named president of Disney’s Freeform, Devin Griffin is running Viacom’s BET+ and Layne Eskridge is a creative executive at Apple.

Still, the service continued to carve out a lane: The 2015 documentary “What Happened, Miss Simone?” was nominated for an Oscar, and a Black superhero show, “Luke Cage,” ran for two seasons and developed a cult following. Dee Rees’s 2017 film, “Mudbound,” was nominated for four Oscars. Some of its biggest deals went to Black comics, including Kevin Hart and Chris Rock, as well as Dave Chappelle, who became a pillar of the platform. The company began emphasizing the idea that everyone should be able to see themselves on the screen.

By 2018, with Black showrunners and directors occupying an expanding slice of the cultural conversation and Netflix bracing for streaming wars, the company knew it had an opportunity. It started a dedicated marketing channel called Strong Black Lead to connect with Black audiences.

But — in a preview of many of today’s media conflicts — the moves also fed a sense that its marketing as a natural home for Black content was out of sync with its internal culture. The crisis came to a head in June 2018, when two Black executives announced their departures. Days later, simmering complaints led to the ouster of an executive who had offended colleagues by using the N-word in the context of talking about offensive content. The firing, three insiders say, was less a routine human resources decision than an emphatic move by the company’s chief executive, Reed Hastings, to make the company’s internal culture match its content.

Since 2018, Mr. Sarandos has hired a more diverse group of executives at high levels, including the former ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey and the former Disney production leader Tendo Nagenda. The company also has giant deals with Shonda Rhimes and Kenya Barris, the best known Black showrunners in the country, and a production deal with the Obamas. One of this summer’s biggest releases, with a budget around $40 million, was Spike Lee’s tale of Black veterans returning to Vietnam, “Da 5 Bloods.” Directors who come for meetings have been impressed by the diversity through the ranks.

“When I walked into that meeting for the first time, and I saw that team sitting around the table — I have never seen that much diversity,” said Mr. Perry, the director, writer and comic who created the “Madea” franchise. His film “Fall From Grace” was watched 39 million times in its first month, the company said. “I sat at the table being more impressed than I have ever been in any meeting in Hollywood.”

The number of Black subscribers, a person at Netflix said, has caught up with American demographics since that 2015 analysis.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/business/media/netflix-hollywood-black-culture.html