Stop thinking Netflix is a movie service
Netflix says it’s giving up its partnership with the cable network Epix. So by the end of this month, if you want to watch “Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” you’ll have to go to Hulu, Epix’s new partner. Netflix is focusing on original content for its 65 million members. Is Hulu’s gain Netflix’s loss?
Netflix calls itself the world’s leading internet television network. Key word: television. Jennifer Holt, associate professor of film and media studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, says people are thinking of Netflix less as a place to catch big movies “and more toward Netflix as a source for original television-like programming.”
Holt says that’s why losing blockbuster movies to Hulu won’t be a big blow. “In the industry, most of the money is made in television anyway,” she says.
Abe Sauer, who covers entertainment marketing for Brandchannel.com, says no one’s going to leave Netflix because it doesn’t have “Thor.”
“But people will come to Netflix because Netflix has “Orange Is the New Black” or some really popular show that it owns,” he says.
There were huge licensing expenses for films that most people had already seen by the time they showed up on Netflix. For Netflix, Sauer says, playing the middleman just wasn’t worth it.
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