So I went to watch “Spartacus: Blood and Sand” (Season 1 with Andy Whitfield, RIP) this morning, since I’ve been slowly getting my girlfriend Chelsea into it, and continue with episode 3. To my shock, it was gone! Then, she had reminded me that the Starz contract with Netflix expired. It expired on February 28th of this year – and coincidentally, the day we watched episode 2 was on the 27th.
I will miss Starz on Netflix. It wasn’t a huge percentage of Netflix streaming content, but it had a lot of the quality movies and TV programming with it, including a lot of Sony and Disney favorites. An estimated “over 1,000 movies” have been removed.
Starz believes that it can make more money (than the $200 million offered by Netflix), by making users subscribe to their cable channels. What do you think about that? I think it’s a bit backward-thinking. Online/cloud streaming is the way of the future – it’s simple, convenient, and relatively inexpensive. A streaming subscription to Hulu Plus in addition to the Netflix one will provide enough entertainment for the common viewer. Devices are also pretty cheap, like the Roku streaming player for around $50. There are no long-term commitments as you have with cable. For the around $15-$20 you’d spend getting just the Starz/Starz-on-demand channels, you can get the two online subscriptions mentioned above!
This is a pretty major loss for Netflix, but I expect them to bounce back soon. Starz will likely be picked up by an eager competitor (Blockbuster or Amazon Instant Video, perhaps?), but I also see Netflix making more similar deals with other content providers.
They will have to be competitive – and even more so, to stay as ahead of the pack as they have been.