Has Netflix changed the way we watch movies and television forever?

Netflix and Disney have both announced their programming for 2021, underscoring increased home consumption, partly as a result of a year of lockdowns, but also as part of a long-term trend.

Almost the entire industry is trying to ensure that these changing trends don’t catch them out of step: Warner has said all of its 2021 releases will be simultaneously available on HBO Max, Disney has more than one hundred projects for Disney+, while Netflix, the solid leader in the streaming industry, will release at least one new film every week throughout the year, in addition to its usual series.

There’s clearly a transition underway here, as more and more movies are premiered on television, leaving behind the big screen releases that differentiated ‘the movies’ from TV movies or telefilms, which until recently were considered the poor relative. But 2021 will see top actors and directors on the small screen, in many cases with contracts that commit them to a number of projects, while the subject of those movies and series is increasingly decided on the basis of algorithms that take into account viewers’ consumption preferences. If we add the increasing availability of broadband connections, large-screen TVs and quality home sound systems, it’s easy to see how an an entire industry is being transformed. Sony has…