‘Love Is Blind’ is one of those Netflix shows that doesn’t generate as much hype among the media and whose news isn’t followed minute by minute, but which does generate considerable interest even though it often goes under the radar. For example, the fourth season of the dating reality is currently at number 2 in the world’s most watched, after three weeks in the top and a total of about 120 million hours watched. The series has entered the top of the most viewed in 54 countries where the platform arrives.
Love is blind. The mechanics of the program are extremely simple and have points in common with those of many other programs in which strangers have their first contacts before moving on to serious things. Here, fifteen men and women go on dates where they can’t see each other. The show spends several episodes with the contestants going back and forth on literally longer and longer blind dates. When they find their ideal partner they can propose, the only way to meet face to face.
The second phase of the program kicks off with the handful of engaged couples spending four weeks at a resort and continuing to get to know each other, as well as interact with the rest of the engaged couples. At the wedding the commitment is confirmed or broken. And as is customary in this type of program, special events are held, months after the end of the season, to find out how each of the couples has fared after the dreaded royal cohabitation.
Technical problems. However, that meeting could not be held because Netflix has not lived up to technical expectations. On Sunday night it was scheduled that this reunion several months after the original recording of the program would be broadcast live at five in the afternoon, North American time. However, at that time the Netflix website gave an error message reading: “Sorry for the interruption. We are having trouble playing Netflix. Please check your internet connection and try again.”
It was a special with a real audience in what was going to be an event in which Netflix was going to show some technical muscle. However, after an hour’s delay, a Netflix representative announced to the audience on the set that the event would be recorded and broadcast on the platform delayed. hour and a half later, the platform apologized for not having been able to broadcast it as planned. Finally, has announced the global broadcast at 12 PT on April 17 (that is, at nine o’clock at night of that same day in Spain.
Live nerves. It is not the first time that Netflix has set up an event of these characteristics. He already did it on March 4 with the comedy special ‘Chris Rock: Selective Outrage’, which had no major technical problems. But this is the first time he has done it trying to give wings to his own program whose nature is that of a recorded product, and it has gone wrong.
Netflix will try again, although not with a program of these characteristics, but with the most common face of live broadcasts (along with sports, a quagmire of rights that the platform prefers not to delve into for the moment): the award ceremonies . For this reason, 2024 will broadcast the Screen Actors Guild Award ceremony, which will not only be the first gala of its kind broadcast live on Netflix, but on any streaming platform.
Looking for the distinction. At this time of semi-transition for streaming, in which platforms are looking for new identities to embrace with content reformulations or different kinds of experiments, Netflix has an opportunity to differentiate itself through live broadcasts. But you will have to overcome technical issues.
Without a doubt, sports are the golden fleece of direct broadcasts: Prime Video and Apple TV, for example, are in the United States betting heavily on soccer and baseball broadcasts respectively. Without a doubt, we will see the platform outline its live broadcasts in the near future, since it has the financial muscle and the technical ambition for it. Paradoxically, the standard bearer of “the new television” will return to live shows, characteristic of traditional television, with its big events and its fixed schedules.
Header: Netflix
In Xataka | Netflix prepares the jump from its video games to TV. The command will be just what you imagine
