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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 hwertz on Saturday July 13 2019, @04:21PM (1 child)

    by hwertz (8141) on Saturday July 13 2019, @04:21PM (#866658)

    This seems like the demise of streaming services to me... when at a friend's with Netflix, I already found too much if I wanted to watch something specific, they didn't have this series, didn't have this series, they have this series but only season 5-6... it was hard to want to watch something and actually be able to watch it. But, this'd just make that even worse.

    Apparently, this kind of thing played out in Japan, long ago... each network decided they had to have THEIR OWN pay streaming service, and all thought "We must knock out the competition! We have good shows! They'll be exclusive!" Only to find out after not too long, people were not interested in signing up for 8 or 9 $9/month streaming services, OR signing up for 1 service that only has like 1/8th the content.

    They apparently quickly came to the arrangement where the originating network puts stuff up as an exclusive for like a month, then it's available on all services. This still lets the channel with a smash hit gain customers, at least for that season, but stops the "screw it, why bother with streaming?" effect.

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  • (Score: 2) by Chocolate on Sunday July 14 2019, @10:40AM

    by Chocolate (8044) on Sunday July 14 2019, @10:40AM (#866845) Journal

    Same thing with game consoles, right? Exclusive game X for console Y, limit this to that, and you end up with some people buying both consoles, but a lot of people just getting one. I have a Wii :)

    --
    Bit-choco-coin anyone?