Netflix Purposely Designed ‘House of Cards’ to Be a Major Hit—Here’s How They Did It (Observer)

There’s no doubt creative geniuses are behind our favorite TV shows, but can we attribute some of their popularity to data analysis as well? More specifically, can we use big data to produce a show sure to be a hit? A Munich-based data scientist named Sebastian Wernicke dove into this question. In a TED Talk filmed at TEDxCambridge this past summer, he explains the intricacies of this concept, which is becoming of greater interest as technology-driven, tech-savvy companies begin turning to data as a part of their attempts to dominate television. Netflix and Amazon serve as examples here: while the former took data apart to come up with a show concept, the latter used data to put an entire show together. When Amazon set out to make a data-driven show, the company held a competition. They evaluated a bunch of show ideas, selected eight of them and then created a pilot episode for each and made them available online for free. Instead of using a competition, Netflix looked at the data they already had about viewing on their platform (ratings, viewing history, etc). They used that data to discover small bits and pieces about what viewers like and took a leap of faith to create a drama about a single U.S. senator…