Good morning from Los Angeles, wherever you may be. One downside of moving to Hong Kong for a few months last year was that I missed the holidays with my family. Some people don't like their family. I get that. But I love mine. So it was sweet when my mom took a break from dinner with all my relatives in New York to call.
She passed along the phone from my uncle to my aunt before it landed in the hands of my teenage cousin. He had a question, one he has since asked me multiple times: "Lucas, Is Netflix going to lose all of its shows?"
I can understand why he would worry about that. There have been many stories stating Hollywood studios are pulling their shows from Netflix en masse, depriving the streaming service of the deep library that made it popular in the first place. In just the past few weeks, national outlets have wondered about the fate of "The Office" and "Friends," two of the most popular programs on the service.
Media companies are mad because Netflix built a $150 billion business that upended the golden goose of pay-TV using shows it doesn't make or own. Now those companies, namely Comcast, Disney and AT&T, are all dreaming up their own streaming services to compete with Netflix, and want to reserve their biggest hits to boost their own products.
There's just one problem: Breaking up with Netflix is hard to do. Inspired both by Sam's curiosity and my own contrarian instinct, I did some digging on the state of contracts between Netflix and its biggest suppliers.
Of the 10 most popular licensed programs on Netflix, at least eight will be on Netflix for years to come. "Grey's Anatomy," "The Walking Dead" and a slate of shows from the CW network, including "Riverdale" and "Supernatural," will stay on Netflix for as long as they remain on the air — and then for three to six years after that. That means they will be on Netflix until at least 2023, and likely well past that.
The two exceptions are "Friends" and "The Office," but neither company that owns those shows has said they are leaving Netflix. In fact, both companies have made clear they still plan to license to other people.
These companies aren't just hamstrung by deals they agreed to years ago. They are also unwilling to forfeit all that money they get from selling shows. TV studios like Warner Bros. and Universal TV have always sold shows to other TV networks and streaming services — not just to their own networks.
"There has been no universal pullback," said Michael Nathanson, an analyst at MoffettNathanson LLC. "People are missing it," he added. "The loss of back titles will not kill Netflix or slow subscriber growth. It just forces them to make more original content."
To Nathanson's point, Netflix has been producing more on its own. The company will release 1,000-plus pieces of original programming this year. By the time "The Office" deal ends, Netflix will have at least 3,000 new programs in its library and likely surpass 200 million subscribers worldwide.
Netflix is worried about losing all those shows. That's why it is spending so much money on originals — to replace product from other people. But this is not some sudden catastrophe it faces. The question for Netflix is this:
Can it create a hit as popular and enduring as "The Office" or "Friends"? Netflix has made a lot of shows people like. But it releases so many shows, at such a volume and in such a way that few are lasting cultural touchstones. — Lucas Shaw
there are so many funny videos on the internet to watch, i can laugh all day watching funny videos’ visit the site
ReplyDelete