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Starz To Pull Content From Netflix
tekgoblin writes "Starz plans to remove all of its movies and TV shows from the Netflix streaming library after negotiations failed. Starz, which is owned by John Malone's Liberty Media, said they have ended talks with Netflix to renew a deal that ends February 28th. Netflix stands to lose a large amount of content, as Starz has licenses for first run Sony and Walt Disney movies."
Well, it's more likely that Starz wants more money for its content than Netflix gets out of its subscribers. According to the article, Starz wanted $300 million a year for the rights to show the same content that four years ago it was passing along for $30 million a year. Netflix has 22 million subscribers. Stars wanted more than $10 per subscriber per year, which would probably be fine if Netflix _only_ had Starz content and no other significant expenses.
But for my $8/month streaming account, I can say without a doubt that I do not watch more than 10% of Starz content.
Netflix just signed a streaming deal with Paramount, Lionsgate and MGM for about $200 million a year — and those three have more and better content than Starz, which suddenly thinks its worth 1/3 more than those others. Not likely.
Netflix basically just said, "Meh, we'll take the money we were going to give to you and give it to someone else for their content." Starz is not the only game in town. It's not even the best game in town. And now everybody knows how much is too much. It's just hardball.
How can you have this story without Netflix's response? Google it for a good read.
Spoiler: Basically Netflix said thanks for what they had, but with all their other studio agreements, Starz only accounts for 8% of what people watch now. Not much of a loss, and they'll spend that on deals with other studios.
Last quarter, they had revenue of $788 million with income of $110 million. I'm more of a letter guy, but I do believe that's less than $2 billion.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
$2B in revenue but $160M in profit. So with no other changes, Netflix stands to lose money next year if they accepted the deal. Unless they get a lot of subscribers, or they figure how to significantly cut costs, or they raise prices again.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Log into your Netflix account, at the top click on "Watch Instantly", then below that click on "Starz Play".
It's about 39 pages of stuff, mostly old movies.