Netflix News: Networks Pull Content From Streaming Platform
The television industry has seen the success that Netflix has achieved by offering their original content, and now some are second guessing the decision to sell those shows to the streaming platform.
According to a report by Re/Code, the networks have been vocal about the content that they have sold to Netflix and expressed their regret that the decision ultimately led viewers away.
In September, 21st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch said his company was revisiting the rules by which they sell content to Netflix, citing viewer loss as a key reason.
Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes used the same logic when said he didn't want to undercut the company "by having somebody else pay a fraction of the cost and create a better inventory on the various shows you yourself invented."
Discovery CEO David Zaslav also weighed in on the matter.
"It's just not rational that all of us in the content business sold our content to a distributor and have allowed that distributor to gain so much share and offer it without our brands," Zaslav said.
These companies are voicing these opinions publicly because, if they actually work together on setting a new anti-Netlifx standard, it could raise issues in regards to antitrust laws. They have to get these opinions out there as a matter of record so that other companies can respond to the issue appropriately.
According to another report on Re/Code, Time Warner is about to cast the first stone in the revolution.
"We are evaluating whether to retain our rights for a longer period of time and forgo or delay certain content licensing," Bewkes told Time Warner investors on an earnings call. "This would effectively push the [subscription video] window for content on our networks to a multiyear period more consistent with traditional syndication."
Through syndication, a television series completes its first run on a network, before being sold off to local TV stations for reruns. Bewkes essentially suggested the company may make it harder for viewers to find Time Warner content on streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, as an effort to drive viewers back to their own brand.
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