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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday July 13 2019, @10:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the pray-I-do-not-alter-it-any-further dept.

It's difficult to imagine that Friends, a show that ended 15 years ago, could be of any real importance to a modern streaming giant like Netflix.

In fact the sitcom, which features a bunch of 20-somethings living together in a time before streaming was even invented, is US Netflix's second-most watched show.

Today, Netflix announced that it's poised to lose its rights to broadcast the series to its original parent company, Warner, which plans to launch its own streaming service, HBO Max in the first quarter of 2020.

The blow follows another announcement in June that Netflix's number one series, the US version of The Office, is also being snatched back by its creators, NBCUniversal, to be broadcast exclusively in the US on its own yet-to-be-launched streaming service.

Old media, analysts are noting with no small amount of surprise, is suddenly bringing the fight to Netflix, and it looks like Netflix could be the one that gets knocked out, or at least very knocked around.

https://www.news.com.au/technology/home-entertainment/tv/huge-threat-to-netflix-revealed/news-story/e86f7778556735d22e4cd9f054fb51af


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by acid andy on Saturday July 13 2019, @02:22PM (3 children)

    by acid andy (1683) on Saturday July 13 2019, @02:22PM (#866620) Homepage Journal

    What's so great about it? I know how popular it is but the appeal totally seems to bypass me. Do you need to be a people person? Someone please explain it.

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 13 2019, @03:57PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 13 2019, @03:57PM (#866650)

    Jennifer Aniston. And, yeah, that's about it.
    I mean, there's some plot here and there, watching Gunther fail repeatedly was fun, and the one on crack .. Pheobe? was a riot.
    Smelly cat, smelly cat, something something something.

    I learned a lot from Friends. Mostly what I learned is that in my life I never really quite lived. Oh well. I am old. Too late. I stopped watching at season 7 ish but saw the last season except the last episode. They never aired it here, or at least not that I saw. I saw the last ep online years later. They still do reruns here. Like some old shows we can expect reruns for decades.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Saturday July 13 2019, @05:22PM (1 child)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 13 2019, @05:22PM (#866670)

      It was originally aired long enough ago that I did not own a HDTV and as such Jennifer Anniston's braless aerobics on the show were borderline not visible, so the NTSC to ATSC conversion for high res digital had people (well, guys, mostly) rewatching Friends now that technology revealed a bit more.

      This is also an effect with "Threes Company" and Baywatch and oddly enough "The price is right". I don't remember seeing pokies on "the price is right" in the 80s because TV resolution didn't permit; but holy cow there's a lot to see at HDTV resolution.

      There was a major flip in womens fashion around the turn of the century from revealing and showing off the top half to showing off the bottom half and I read a crappy online "journalism" clickbait article trying to claim that womens fashion was downstream of TV back when young people used to still watch TV, and the actresses didn't like how the SD to HD conversion turned their relatively tame shows into jiggle-TV, so the female actors successfully pushed from showing off top half cleavage to showing off whale tails and yoga pants. Its... believable as a theory. Possibly the reason you see basic college girls at the grocery store today in skin tight see thru yoga pants with baggy sweaters on top is literally because of HDTV, whereas in their mom's NTSC TV era it was skin tight blouses and tee shirts often braless with super baggy skirts and pants because that didn't show off too much on 480i resolution. Weird but likely true.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 14 2019, @10:29AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 14 2019, @10:29AM (#866841)

        I'm not desperate enough to be giddified by breasts bouncing on mainstream TV shows. We have pornhub and redtube and motherless now you know.