Bela Bajaria, Netflix chief content officer: ‘If you try to make a show for everyone, you make a show for no one’

Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s chief content officer, presides over a US$17 billion budget and is looking for local hits with global potential. Photo / Getty Images

Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s chief hitmaker, rolls her eyes when I suggest that she should have ordered the cheeseburger for the sake of our conversation. A cheeseburger — or at least a gourmet version — was a colleague’s description she once endorsed as the ideal Netflix output: tasty to most, not cheap but not too exclusive. And she sticks to the description, despite a slight grimace.

“That’s a great goal, to make something both premium and very commercial,” she tells the FT over some equally pricey fries in London. “We’ve done it over and over again. They’re not mutually exclusive.”

As chief content officer since 2023 for the streamer, which has almost 270 million subscribers, Bajaria can claim to have more of a say in what people watch every day than most in Hollywood, working with Netflix’s creative teams around the world on commissioning the next blockbuster movies or binge-worthy series.

Bajaria has her own origin story worthy of a Netflix pilot (the sort labelled Heartfelt — Witty — Inspiring). Born in the UK to Indian parents in 1970, and living for a time above a corner shop run by her family in Highgate, north London, she moved to the US as a child. Family TV time watching glossy soaps Dallas and Dynasty helped instil her love of the commercially successful, moreish shows that have become her calling card.

TV also offered a chance to fit in. “I would go home every day and watch films and TV because I wanted to quickly get rid of my accent. I wanted to learn American culture.”

She worked in her parents’ car washes, learning the strong work ethic that helped her push through the ranks as an outsider in Hollywood, where older, whiter and male voices held court. She picked up a Miss India Universe title after college, got her break on the lowest rungs of the TV world as an assistant in the movies and mini-series department at CBS in 1996, but quickly was picked as an executive and became a fixture in Hollywood’s “most influential” lists. Including stints at network broadcasters CBS and NBCUniversal, she has marshalled shows such as Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Master of None. And her LA accent has long lost any vestige of her north London start.

Bajaria’s background has served her well given the globetrotting nature of her role: more than two-thirds of Netflix’s audience is outside the US, meaning local-language content is more important now than a “one size fits all” approach. Bajaria points to recent successes such as Heeramandi from India, programmes made with a domestic audience in mind that became worldwide hits.

But there is “no rule book” about what works globally and she believes that shows first need to work well locally: “Television, film starts with being very culturally specific and very authentic. If you try to make a show for everyone, you make a show for no one.” The semi-autobiographical dark UK production Baby Reindeer was an especially unexpected success, for example. Low-budget and with an unusual tone and topic, the controversial TV show about a man and his stalker briefly made it into Netflix’s top 10 most watched shows in English ever.

Bajaria joined Netflix to oversee unscripted programming (such as makeover show Queer Eye) in 2016 and took over as global head of television in 2020. Netflix quickly faced one of its largest crises after an unexpected drop in subscribers in 2022 blamed on password-sharing, sparking an almost US$60 billion ($98.3b) plunge in its stock market value and analyst talk about the end of streaming. Suddenly, executives had a new mantra of profitability and a focus on programmes that could attract advertisers to new, lower-priced tiers.

Richard Gadd as Donny and Jessica Gunning as Martha in Baby Reindeer. Photo / Netflix

Netflix has a content budget of US$17b this year (the same as 2023), making it one of the largest producers of TV and film in the world. This budget has never shrunk, although even the lack of growth is a marked contrast to the years of expansion. She says expensive does not necessarily mean good, though, with smaller or cheaper shows able to resonate with audiences.

Bajaria says “people have different tastes” and Netflix needs to meet them all — from unscripted dating and reality TV shows to big-budget films and more esoteric series. Repetitive content would mean a lack of authenticity and ultimately fewer viewers, she says: “We’re not going to get scared and not do something because it didn’t work before.”

She points to one recent live-action anime adaptation — Cowboy Bebop — that did not prove a success. But this did not stop her commissioning the similar One Piece, which went on to find greater audiences.

“We have to make film and TV that members love, and if they love it, the more they watch, the more they stick with Netflix, the more they recommend to their friends. I don’t want to be reactive ... ’If this thing works let’s do that again’ ... you can’t do that.”

Even so, she admits that one of the metrics on which she will be judged — and in turn will be judging shows — is the cost of production against size of audience. “Ultimately, streaming is about engagement.”

Part of her budget is now being spent on streaming live sports and events. Netflix has struck a deal to broadcast two NFL American football games at Christmas, has shown boxing matches and will show WWE wrestling next year. Bajaria is also excited about “bringing these to life”: Drive to Survive, a programme that follows the Formula One teams, played a major part in boosting the races’ popularity in the US.

Netflix has struck a deal to broadcast two NFL American football games at Christmas. Photo / Getty Images

Despite these “appointment to view” live events on Netflix and shows with weekly episodes on rival streamers such as Disney, Bajaria says Netflix will continue to be an on-demand service that allows people to watch as much as they want when they want. “We don’t have only five shows that we need to spread out throughout the year.”

The next year has a number of binge-worthy series, she says. Netflix has a deal with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex that has scripted and nonfiction programmes in development. The Leopard, a series based on the novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, is being produced in Italy. Another literary adaptation, One Hundred Years of Solitude from Colombia based on Gabriel Garciá Márquez’s novel, she describes as “stunning”. Senna — a drama based on the racing driver’s life — is coming from Brazil, while Frankenstein is being produced by Guillermo del Toro and a TV version of Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club feels like a guaranteed hit.

She is excited about shows being developed by directors Kathryn Bigelow, Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach. But Bajaria says that Netflix should be equally proud of its unscripted output such as reality TV and dating shows. “We want to super-serve all of that. It’s a creative industry. It takes 150 people and some alchemy and a little fairy dust and lots of things to make something great.”

Written by: Daniel Thomas

© Financial Times