Netflix, 1957: Television at Your Command

This campaign is fictional. Its time machine runs on real tensions: by January 1957, 78.6% of U.S. households had a television set. 1 Yet television still arrived on a network schedule. CBS's sponsor-backed The $64,000 Question aired Tuesdays at 10 p.m., with Revlon woven into the show itself. 2

Daytime television sold a picture of domestic life, too. NBC's Home (1954–57) covered food, fashion, gardening, home repair and family affairs for a housewife audience. 3

Netflix introduced streaming in 2007. By 2016, the company described the pitch as watching "whenever, wherever," with play, pause and resume controls and no commercials. 4

The joke sits in the gap between those promises. Television once sold technology that organized the household. Streaming sells freedom from the schedule—and a fresh temptation to keep going.