Netflix has slowly grown to be one of the most popular sites in the world. Anyone with a simple internet connection and eight dollars a month can sit back and enjoy seemingly endless television. Shows from NBC, CBS, Fox and FX all could be watched on Netflix. Year after year, Netflix grew and grew to eventually gain the title of Fortune 500 company. With a monopoly of internet television and loads of money coming in, how could Netflix want anything more? Spoiler alert: they wanted more. Everything changed when Netflix decided to produce their own programming.

“House of Cards” became the first “Netflix Original” to be produced entirely by Netflix. This show had everything. It had an A-list cast, a huge budget and an interesting plot of a ruthless congressmen fighting for their legacy. People went crazy over this program and before long, demanded a second season. Not long after the outstanding success of Netflix’s first original program, they released a second series titled “Orange is the New Black”. This series had all of the same elements of the first, simply a different plot line that appealed to different viewers. Both “House of Cards” and “Orange is the New Black” were critically acclaimed all year and received numerous Emmy nominations and a total of six combined wins for each of their first seasons. Then, Netflix started to produce more originals like “Marco Polo”, “The Crown” and countless others. This is where things began to go downhill.

Once people began to recognize the brand of “Netflix Original” as very good television, Netflix began producing as many programs as they could and slapped the logo on everything. No doubt Netflix still produces mighty good programs to this day (“13 Reasons Why” has a score of 8.7 on IMDB), but the overall quality is headed in a bad direction. Programs like “Pacific Heat” or “Flaked” put the Netflix Original brand to shame and many more shows like these are sure to come. In addition, Netflix Originals are especially bad when they remake previously made television shows, such as “Arrested Development” or “Fuller House”. These shows were canceled for a reason but Netflix attempts to remake them in order to turn peoples’ eyes. This is just the start of the steep downhill slope that Netflix is headed down.

According to Variety Magazine, Netflix is expected to double the amount of original shows they have from 30 to 60 in 2017. They are doing this because they have a monopoly over the industry and the more programming they put up, the less they have to pay other channels like NBC, CBS, Fox, and FX for their shows. Netflix originals can be harrowing and mesmerizing to their audiences, but don’t fall for their up and coming tricks, for they are headed in an unoriginal direction with only money in mind.