“For kids growing up, there’s no difference among watching Avatar on an iPad or watching YouTube on a TV or watching Game of Thrones on their smartphone. It’s all content. It’s all story.” — Kevin Spacey, star of Netflix’s hit Washington political thriller, House of Cards.

Behold the liberation of TV viewers. Netflix, dominant player in online media streaming, is delivering what people want to watch, and when, and on the device of their choosing.

And that’s a revolution.

A stunning 17 per cent of Canadian homes, or 2.5 million households, have Netflix subscriptions. And that’s from a standing start just three years ago, when the word “Netflix” was commonly mistaken here for a bug spray.

Co-founded by erstwhile math teacher Reed Hastings, 52, in California with a mere $2.5-million grubstake, Netflix Inc. now has a stock-market value of almost $20 billion.

Worldwide, Netflix subscriptions have soared to more than 40 million, this year surpassing the U.S. subscriber base of Home Box Office (HBO) for the first time. At peak evening viewing hours, Netflix accounts for a staggering two-thirds of North American Internet traffic.

And that’s just the opening act for Netflix, whose subscribers are concentrated in the Western Hemisphere, with only a few outposts in Europe and none at all in the booming Pacific Rim and South Asian markets.

Further global growth will be accompanied by a Netflix bid to collapse the TV season, making the next season of its hit TV series Orange is the New Black available early next year to keep viewers from having to wait the usual full year between seasons.

And in delicate negotiations with Hollywood, on which it relies for its catalogue, Netflix is exploring the chance to commission exclusive Hollywood movies and documentaries. It’s also trying to reduce the year it must wait to make mainstream Hollywood releases available to its subscribers.

The Netflix phenomenon is not a content revolution, as many industry experts imagine. Neither is it a game-changer in which a content distributor starts making exclusive content of its own, such as hot Netflix shows like Orange and House of Cards.

At least as far back as 1977 with the mini-series Roots, conventional television proved that it was capable of producing high quality programming. In more recent times, though, it has fallen into a rut of producing predicable and unchallenging programming, not least Duck Dynasty and other reality-show dreck. And the “media convergence” of distributor-producers has long been the mainstay of conglomerates such as Time Warner Inc., Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and Montreal-based Quebecor Inc.

The Netflix revolution is the emancipation of viewers to watch only what they want to see and pay for; when they want to see it, free of the rigid schedules of network TV; and on any device from smartphones to tablets to conventional TV sets.

Netflix and the rivals it will inspire are poised to dismantle the cabal of regulators, broadcasters and cable firms that have acted with not a little arrogance as gatekeepers in shaping popular culture.

Consumers have long expressed their dissatisfaction with that status quo. Its retailing equivalent would be a Canadian Tire insistence that a socket wrench can be bought only at 2 p.m. Tuesdays, and that you must purchase a pup tent and a bicycle along with it.

Viewers now pass up programs whose broadcast times conflict with their kids’ soccer games. The popularity of HBO hits like The Sopranos mocked the industry’s contemptuous regard for audiences’ presumed lack of sophistication. And many viewers opt for box sets of complete seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm to indulge in “binge” viewing of multiple episodes.

Media fragmentation means networks will no longer be able to guarantee advertisers a mass audience for their shows. And cable cutting will accelerate as viewers weary of that industry’s bundling of desirable channels with marginal ones. Bundling is so acute a consumer irritant that the federal Tories included a vow to end it in the recent Throne Speech.

To be sure, the traditional industry is responding, albeit haltingly, to the new reality. Shaw Media, for instance, makes some of its Global Network offerings available on smartphones. And traditional networks are making certain programs available online, but often only in clips rather than full episodes, and only after their first run on the main network.

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Binge viewing is a particular bane for traditional broadcasters. TV networks pocket a wad of ad revenue from each installment of a popular show. Netflix is destroying that age-old model by making entire seasons of House of Cards and its other original shows available at once.

But then, Netflix, which loses money on most of its original shows, has torrents of subscription revenue to fall back on. It’s a virtuous circle. The “halo effect” of House of Cards builds subscriber revenue — a record $1.1 billion in the third quarter. That in turn funds original Netflix programming that boasts production values matching those of Hollywood.

Netflix may not turn out to be another Apple Inc., rewarding shareholders with returns measured in four-digit percentage gains. Netflix still trails the worldwide subscriber base of HBO, a branch of Time Warner, with its 114 million members.

But that’s beside the point. Netflix has exposed — and exploited — viewer discontent as never before. Today’s unprecedented abundance of viewer choice has already put network viewership into permanent decline. The Netflix effect makes more urgent the networks’ need for a new business model.

The Netflix virtuous circle also attracts the best talent, including Ricky Gervais, acclaimed film director David Fincher (The Social Network), and two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey.

In the keynote address last month at the annual Edinburgh confab of global TV executives, Spacey heralded a “third golden age of television” in a stirring talk that went viral.

“The era of appointment television is dead,” Spacey declared, heralding the arrival of personalized viewing schedules — or every viewer his or her own programmer.

Spacey also explained that making an entire TV series at once — like a movie, instead of conventional TV installments — allows characters and story lines to develop more logically. That practice would also put an end to the roughly $400 million Hollywood mostly wastes each year on pilots of TV shows that seldom go into production — enough money to make The Social Network 10 times over.

“We can now anticipate,” Spacey said, “more shows that appeal to the heart more than the pulse. Shows that put storytelling first, ahead of the money people who don’t know what audiences are hungry for.”

The money people will come around, rather than suffer the continued erosion of audiences for traditional programming, traditionally presented. One can’t yet take this conviction to the bank. But I’d be the last person to bet against it.

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