Netflix's focus is shifting from films to TV shows

After losing several STARZ films this week, Netflix had made plans to concentrate on their TV show streaming service.

Netflix has decided to make the move to being an internet streaming service for television shows and not feature films.

Netflix’s three and half-year-old deal with Starz ends on Wednesday, and viewers will see movies like “Scarface” and “Toy Story 3” disappear from their service.

More than half of the viewing on Netflix involves a television series, according to Yahoo.

Rumors began floating around almost a year ago about the deal not being renewed, but by then, Netflix had began accumulating older television series.

Richard Greenfield, an analyst at BTIG Research says, “Given the significant increase in TV viewing, it’s not the catastrophic event that everyone thought it would be a year ago.”

Some television shows new to Netflix include “Mad Men and Lost,” television shows Netflix executives call “26-hour movies.”

Netflix’s next project is creating original shows to compete with HBO- but further distance themselves from companies like Hulu and Amazon.

Reed Hasting, Netflix’s CEO, told business students in Manhattan last week that the company would attempt to create a couple of dozen original series in the next few years; though, he did not specify dates. The company had previously mentioned five series of that nature would be out by the end of 2013.

‘Lilyhammer,” a show from Norway about a New York gangster attempting to start his life over in Norway premiered on Netflix earlier this month, and a revival of “Arrested Development” will be coming out next year.

While the disappearance of these films has some worried, Greenfield says, “The cocktail party conversation in the media world is, the content’s terrible, and yet the average subscriber is devouring over an hour a day, every single day. Obviously they don’t think it’s horrible.”

Netflix has secured the rights to “The Artist,” the best-picture Oscar winner at this year’s Academy Awards and should be available in less than six months.

Though Netflix would not say just how much of the total viewing was made up of television shows, Greenfield suspects the number is 80 percent.

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