President George W. Bush painted. President Jimmy Carter built houses for the homeless. President Barrack Obama will film a documentary series that will be piped into the homes of 125 million viewers globally. Call the show a more modern, ill-gotten fireside chat.
Here’s what’s notable: Obama, as president, defended the bottom line of the streaming service by supporting net neutrality for eight years. Now the streaming service is rewarding Obama with a sweet deal. Call it Netflix kickback.
The exact format of Obama programming remains under wraps. Whatever form it ultimately takes, the presidential show will appear alongside series about a depressed man-horse, female felons in orange jumpsuits, and adolescents fighting demogorgons.
President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama have entered into a multi-year agreement to produce films and series for Netflix, potentially including scripted series, unscripted series, docu-series, documentaries, and features.
— Netflix US (@netflix) May 21, 2018
“One of the simple joys of our time in public service was getting to meet so many fascinating people from all walks of life, and to help them share their experiences with a wider audience,” Obama said in a statement. “That’s why Michelle and I are so excited to partner with Netflix — we hope to cultivate and curate the talented, inspiring, creative voices who are able to promote greater empathy and understanding between peoples, and help them share their stories with the entire world.”
Some of the better perks of being a past president are the cushy retirement gigs. Details of the payoff aren’t public yet, but it’s clear that Obama doesn’t come cheap — his talks on Wall Street have already made him a millionaire. But the payoff sure reeks of being a quid pro quo.
Obama campaigned on net neutrality. Obama fought for net neutrality in the courts. Obama even went around Congress to make net neutrality de facto law. And as I noted last March, that was very good for the Netflix bottom line.
Because net neutrality requires Internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon to treat every bit of information equally, Netflix has been able to take up a disproportionate amount of bandwidth at no extra cost. Lift the net neutrality requirements that Obama’s Federal Communications Commission put in place, like the Trump administration did earlier this year, and those cable companies could theoretically charge Netflix a premium.
It is conceivable, and it is the fear of net neutrality crusaders that cable companies might create the equivalent of fast and slow lanes on the World Wide Web. Watching a movie might go in the so-called fast lane because of its need for more data. Checking email could be in the so-called slow lane for the opposite reason. In other words, cable companies could innovate.
But innovation disrupts monopolies and thwarts business models and could theoretically hurt profits for companies like Netflix. To keep that from happening they’ve lawyered and lobbied and staffed up. Recently, they hired former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice. Now, they have added Obama to the payroll.
