Angelika Netflix (Rundbrief 12/2010) has expanded into the German market recently, and we're curious how well they'll fare over there. Michael has his doubts whether catering to German consumers will be profitable, but we'll see about that. Here in the U.S., watching Netflix is as common as sending email or make a call on a cell phone. If you ask your colleagues about what they did last weekend, there's a good chance they'll say "Watching Netflix".
It might seem like Netflix has been around forever, and the California company has existed since 1997, but its streaming service only came online in 2007. They've radically changed the TV habits in the U.S., and since they often put entire seasons of popular shows online, many people watch them all in one long marathon session (aka "binge watching"), because they're all included in the monthly $7.99 flat fee.
I've even experienced this myself a couple of times. After watching the first episode of a season, sometimes you just want to know what's coming next, and keep watching, simply because it's already available and there's no need to wait till next week for the next episode to air. Rumor has it that Netflix is working on aquiring old and new episodes of the famous German TV show "Tatort", but has not been successful yet at doing so. Should they complete this transaction one day, however, I'd have to take several years off of work, as I'm a big fan of the show and wouldn't stop until I had watched all of them.