Ted Sarandos is Chief Content Officer at Netflix, with a budget of $15 billion to spend on new shows in 2019. Since he joined the company in 2000, he’s played a key role in turning Netflix into one of the world’s most valuable companies.
In an excellent interview recently, Amol Rajan suggested to Sarandos that there wasn’t much in his background that screamed, “media mogul” or qualified him to move into the industry he had done. It seemed Mr Sarandos agreed.
But his story was interesting. I enjoyed listening to him. Growing up in Arizona in a large family, he admitted to watching “a reckless amount of TV.” Later, when the State’s 2nd only ever video store opened in his town, he got himself a job there.
The opening of the video shop right there in his own town might just have been fate.
Watching “a reckless amount of TV?”
I think that might make Mr Sarandos qualified. More than a little bit.