Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Oh Yeah, Netflix Is Going There

You like cable TV but wish you could subscribe to ONLY HBO or ONLY the Golf Channel? Well you can't. You have to pay for at least 50 other channels and while at least one of them is possibly the Golf Channel, the other 49 are for some niche you have almost no interest in.

That annoying stalemate may be changing.
Netflix has allegedly outbid a number of major cable networks for a new drama series produced by and starring Kevin Spacey called House of Cards, and may be about to close a deal at more than $100 million, according to a report on Deadline.com.

The deal has yet to be finalized, but Deadline's unnamed source claims that Netflix has made a commitment to two seasons of House of Cards, which the media site described as "staggering" and "pretty unheard of these days."
See the point is, streaming Netflix provides on-demand movies and TV shows, it's less than 10 dollars a month and with the amount of TV I watch, I don't even need cable. In fact, I barely need Netflix. But if they get a couple of must-see series the way HBO does, voila! Your entertainment bill is down to a quarter of what it was. Sure you'll miss some programming but wouldn't you rather have the money? Plus Netflix buys up most programming a year later anyway. They're all over Showtime offerings.

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like Netflix has more Silicon Valley investor money than sense these days. 2 seasons of a Kevin Spacey series? I think his last compelling big-screen role was of a HAL 9000 wannabe in "Moon."

    As for boldly heading into uncharted media territory, there are success stories (Netflix streaming Hollywood films) and flops (Howard Stern moving to XM Satellite Radio).

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  2. For that matter another flop was Netflix's attempt to produce films, though that was done in by studios threatening to stop licensing their products.

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