{"id":13108,"date":"2025-03-23T11:39:14","date_gmt":"2025-03-22T22:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=13108"},"modified":"2025-03-23T11:39:14","modified_gmt":"2025-03-22T22:39:14","slug":"how-a-decade-of-netflix-has-changed-how-we-watch-tv-in-new-zealand-forever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=13108","title":{"rendered":"How a decade of Netflix has changed how we watch TV in New Zealand forever"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ten years ago, streaming video broke like a tidal wave over New Zealand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Global giant Netflix introduced its streaming service to Aotearoa in March 2015, and how we watch what we used to call just plain old “TV” has never quite been the same.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Netflix wasn’t the first streamer to hit NZ – Spark’s long-gone Lightbox launched in 2014, and Sky TV’s Neon in February 2015 – but it proved the tipping point for watching everything from\u00a0Squid Game<\/a><\/cite>\u00a0to\u00a0Country Calendar<\/a>\u00a0<\/cite>on our phones, laptops and smart TVs.<\/p>\n

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Diana Wichtel is the queen of New Zealand television criticism, with a run as the\u00a0Listener\u00a0<\/em>magazine’s television critic from 1989 to 2020. She says claims television is \u201cdying\u201d are nothing new.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In her recent memoir looking back on her career<\/a>,<\/a>\u00a0Unreel: A Life In Review,<\/em><\/cite>she wrote she is still “strangely upbeat about the future of television”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“I hope those who announced television’s imminent death years ago have been eating their words along with their viewing snacks as they watched\u00a0Succession<\/cite><\/a>,\u00a0Fleabag<\/a><\/cite>,\u00a0The Handmaid’s Tale<\/a><\/cite>,\u00a0