Netflix transformed video distribution by gradually disintermediating physical rental

Evidence

Revolutionizing video circulation by bypassing the brick-and-mortar rental store that had itself upended moving-image consumption, Netflix was founded in 1998 as a rent-by-mail DVD store with a catalog of 925 titles—basically all existing DVD films at the time, since the medium was only three years old. … In this fast fourteen-year juvenescence, the company rapidly grew from a pay-by-the-disc model to a subscription model, offering virtually unlimited consumption to its 203 million users—making it the largest digital media company in the world, on a par with traditional firms like AT&T, which is by contrast a senescent 136 years old. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 204

Categorization

• XREF: This history is concrete evidence for the chapter’s thesis that compressed circulation time in the culture industry parallels capital’s compressed circulation (bears directly on Kornbluh’s Jameson inheritance).