Pay TV networks are beginning to realise selling content to Netflix might be a bad idea.
Re/code reports 21st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes and Discovery CEO David Zaslav have all recently questioned the decision to sell some of their shows to Netflix, helping their digital competitor build a larger library of content.
The comments likely signal an intention to stop providing Netflix with that content.
Speaking at the New York Time’s DealBook Conference this week, Netflix chief executive officer Reed Hastings gave his thoughts on what he would do if he were CEO of a pay TV giant and confronted with competition from Netflix.
“I would invest more in TV everywhere, and Jeff Bewkes pioneered that idea seven maybe eight years ago, and has been trying to drive it,” he says.
“The challenge in the industry is it’s very fragmented between the cable networks and the distributors, and so it’s really tough to work together to extend the ecosystem.
“So we’ve always been most scared of TV everywhere as the fundamental threat that is you get all this incredible content that the ecosystem presents, now on demand for your same $80 a month.
“Yet the inability of that ecosystem to execute on that, for a variety of reasons, has been troubling.”
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Kye began his career at a Fairfax daily on the North-West Coast of Tasmania. He has since taken his belongings, and keen interest in technology, to Melbourne. He has a bachelor of Arts majoring in Political Science from the University of Tasmania and a Graduate Diploma in Journalism from RMIT University.
