Netflix Admits Some Shows Won’t Make It To Ad Tier, In Talks With Studios Over Licensing Deals ↗
By Peter White for Deadline:
Netflix plans to launch its advertising tier in early 2023, but not all of the shows that are currently streaming on the service will make the cut.
Obviously, they’ll still be offering all of their original content, as confirmed by the article, but this is a peculiar licensing issue. Either these studios don’t want their shows played with ads or there needs to be a new deal struck anytime the status quo changes. I’m betting on the second one. Rarely are things simple when media companies are involved.
Or there’s some mystery third reason. Your guess is as good as mine there; I’m no industry insider.
I’m certain this ad-supported tier will actually be a boon for Netflix—their pricing is exceptionally high and this new tier should be far more affordable. It’ll be great for people who can stand ads playing during their shows and movies.
I’m not one of those people.
Limiting the number of available shows probably isn’t going to make someone interested in this new tier think twice about signing up. It’s not going to convince me to downgrade, though. Fewer content options and unskippable ads? That sounds like a nightmare. No thank you, sir!
On top of all this, Netflix has been losing subscribers (albeit at a slower rate than predicted), so I’ll be curious to see how this new shake-up shakes out.