No more Starz Play (whatever that is) on Netflix
No more Starz Play (whatever that is) on Netflix
This always seemed like a weird contractual hack to begin with: a small badge on the thumbnail, and a few-seconds clip of the Starz logo whenever one of these movies started playing. It’s very out of place in the Netflix experience.
It always seemed obvious to me that Netflix was doing the bare minimum to hold up its end of whatever cross-promotion deal it had with Starz. It wouldn’t surprise me if Starz had expected an entirely different implementation–or, perhaps, the executives at Starz, in classically clueless media executive form, simply thought something like ‘this Silly Internet Thing won’t go anywhere anyway’.
Now Starz is jealous of the (relatively) sudden surge in Netflix’s popularity, which must make the deal seem in retrospect like Netflix got a bargain. But what is Starz going to do now? Launch Starz Play as a separate, for-pay, web-based service, most likely limited to an extent so as to lure people back to the ‘real’, original service? Good luck with that. How many, like me, had never heard of Starz before signing up for Netflix, and would never consider subscribing to cable TV ever again? And let’s not forget that you can’t just appear on Apple TVs and Rokus and PS3s and Blu-ray players and John Siracusa’s toaster overnight.
As is becoming customary, I’ll pick on Gruber a little:
This is the problem with being a middleman.
It’s not exactly clear which of the two parties he means, but the implication seems to be one of:
- Netflix is behaving like a middleman, and made a poor decision in doing so.
- Starz is behaving like a middleman, and made a poor decision in doing so.
Given the context, the first seems more likely to be Gruber’s intent, but it makes the least sense. Netflix is delivering the service directly to the end user–interacting directly with the end user. That’s not at all like being a middleman.
Starz is, pretty much by definition, a middleman. They’re in the middle between the customers and the thing that the customers want, but they don’t directly provide anything to customers (in this context), and they don’t actually own anything of value. They’re only there to sign paperwork and move money around. But it’s not clear at all that this worked out poorly for them. If anything, the Netflix deal probably made very little difference to Starz, and the missed opportunity Starz bitterly hints at probably only exists in their imaginations. At the very least, they got some cash and some brand name recognition out of the deal. What would they have gotten if they had tried to make it on their own instead? Anything’s possible, but all you really need to answer that is to look at how many other old, bumbling media companies have tried and failed at that Silly Internet Thing in the past few years.
However, I agree with Gruber that middlemen are, in general, a problem. Technical people, as are his audience, abhor inefficiencies; and now that video is nothing more than bits on a wire, such entities need no longer exist, and only persist in putting their sticky hands all over everything because of their stubborn, selfish ways.
And yet, I’m not convinced that the original Starz deal was a mistake for Netflix. It served its purpose: it seems likely that, when it was originally signed, it might not have been merely expensive, but impossible for Netflix to obtain those titles by other means. In other words, the movie studios have been so afraid and so hesitant of this Scary Internet Thing that so-called (I apologise in advance) ‘high-value’ titles may have been unavailable at any price. This deal at least gave Netflix some, if not many, big-name titles that people could recognise and might draw them into the service. Of these, Netflix may have few today, but had many fewer a few years ago. But Netflix has persisted in pursuing deals directly with the studios since then, and the Starz deal may not be as necessary to their survival any more. Certainly, that’s the picture Netflix paints about the situation. Time will tell.
Oh, and one last thing:
When the agreement expires on February 28, 2012, Starz will cease to distribute its content on the Netflix streaming platform.
As a general rule of thumb, don’t trust anyone who describes what they’re selling as ‘content’.