Netflix, the key to drama series worldwide: A study into the consumption of drama series on Netflix by Dutch audiences

In today’s digital television era, Netflix can be seen as the world’s leading streaming service. Ever since globalization and digitization, media content can be spread very rapidly from national markets to global markets. As a result of this transnational flow of media, audiences now have access to content from all over the world that they would otherwise never have access to. Especially on Netflix, there seems to be an ever-increasing amount of both international and national content. These developments automatically changed audiences’ consumption behavior. Although there is an increasing diversity of series on Netflix, this still doesn’t tell us anything about how audiences exactly make a choice from these diverse offerings and what series they are actually watching. Some researchers claim that audiences prefer international, and mostly American series, whereas other researchers emphasize the preference for local content. In this context, the genre of drama in particular appears to be in demand worldwide. Therefore, in order to obtain a deeper understanding of audiences’ consumption practices regarding this increasing diversity on Netflix, the research question of this study states: How do young adult Dutch audiences perceive and select drama series on Netflix? For this purpose, a qualitative approach has been chosen, in order to uncover underlying perceptions and experiences of Dutch audiences. The data for this study was collected by means of in-depth and semi-structured interviews that were analyzed by using a thematic analysis. The sample of this research consisted of Dutch young adults, aged between 20 and 30 years old. From the analysis, it became clear that young adult Dutch audiences perceive the drama catalog on Netflix as very diverse, but mostly very American. Therefore, they mainly consume American drama series, but they are also open to drama series from other international countries. Interestingly, young adult Dutch audiences do not appear to have a preference for local drama series. When selecting drama series, the narrative and high quality of a series turned out to be two very important factors. The language spoken in a drama series appears to be of less importance. Additionally, recommendations by the social environment of young adult Dutch audiences can be the deciding factor for watching a drama series. Finally, the findings of this study contribute to the existing relevance of theories about cosmopolitanism and cultural imperialism, whereas this study presents a shift by diminishing the relevance of the cultural proximity theory. As a result, this study provides new valuable insights into flow studies regarding the changing dynamics of transnational television distribution and audience consumption behaviors in this new television era.