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Comment by steauengeglase | Hacker News Reader

"Pressing still further, AMC is giving new Breaking Bad episodes to Netflix viewers in the United Kingdom right after they air in the US, instead of the weeks-to-months delay that is typical for exporting top-flight US shows."

This. It blows my mind that in this era if your content doesn't require localization efforts why it isn't made universally available ASAP. Cult followers run off to news site and message boards and twitter and where ever else to talk about their favorite show and that gets more people interested. Not making it available spoils all of that momentum and waiting months is just shooting yourself in the foot.

I'm looking at you BBC/PBS-Masterpiece joints.

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Really? AMC makes 33 cents per month per cable subscriber. As of December 2012 AMC was making $30 million dollars a month off of an 80 million subscriber base [1]. They get that money because their product is in such high demand the relatively small number of viewers demands their cable providers include AMC. If they suddenly start giving away their content for next to free those demands go away and so does the revenue stream.

It rarely makes sense to give away new content on Netflix for next to free. You see it happen, but only rarely and in very select circumstances.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/magazine/the-mad-men-econo...

You can have different holdback times for different territories. Don't put it on Netflix for a month in the US but put it on right away in the UK where AMC is not available and Breaking Bad does not appear to have a pay network distributor.

The bigger issue is the fact that most shows DO have foreign distribution. At the point it's not AMC that's holding it back from Netflix, it's the company that's paid a bunch of money to air it over there. The rights windows in each country can have huge variations just depending on how the contracts are negotiated. It's never as simple as "the US airing network isn't allowing me to see this in the UK because they hate me."

Interesting, Australia gets breaking bad on cable the same time as US. Although there is always going to be a lot of piracy because you are looking at $100+ a month to get cable and the showtime/movies group of channels which show it.

UK viewers would easily pay 50¢ to stream an episode though, that's only ~30p. For a series they'd be paying that once a fortnight it seems (USA sourced shows appear to be doing fortnightly showing now?), so > $1 a month.

How can taking 3 times the monthly subscriber profit for a single show harm them? Are they really making more selling that one show to other networks than they take selling their whole network to customers?

Instead it looks like it's $2 per episode on Amazon Instant, which is USA only or at least not in the UK. Instead UK has LoveFilm which doesn't have individual episodes and apparently requires mailing a DVD for you to watch Breaking Bad.

I've seen adverts for this show in the UK and find it weird that you can't just buy it and watch it.

Are you saying that netflix doesn't pay AMC per stream?

I'm saying that the number Netflix pays per stream is so small it might as well round down to zero. If just getting users to watch your show on Netflix was a great way to make money then everyone would be putting their new shows on Netflix. Almost no one does that. Instead everyone puts old seasons of their shows on Netflix in hopes that consumers will then watch the new season on subscription cable or buy the show direct off iTunes.

Content holders effectively give away old content so they can sell new content. If they give away new content there is nothing left to sell.

They're not avoiding Netflix only because it doesn't pay enough, they're avoiding it because the medium threatens pretty much everything about their current way of doing business. It's deeper than just money.

Netflix doesn't pay per stream. Netflix pays for content in "windows". e.g. Netflix pays $20M to show Seasons 1-5 of Breaking Bad for 1 year. That's why content appears and disappears all the time.

It's the same how movie companies sell broadcast rights to HBO or other similar channels.

AMC has to be getting at least 33 cents for EACH episode sold on Amazon Prime. I would hardly call that "giving away their content for next to free."

It's not just available for viewers in the, it's available for viewers in US too: http://www.amctv.com/breaking-bad/videos/full-episode-509-bl...

All, full episodes are there.

The reason it's being given to Netflix in the UK is because no networks here have paid for it. It was either that of let people download it illegally (as it's the last 8 episodes I'm sure most people would have done this).

> It blows my mind that in this era if your content doesn't require localization efforts why it isn't made universally available ASAP

Because shows are distributed by different companies in different territories.

In many cases the company that airs the show doesn't produce it. You even have cases where a show airs on one network but another network has digital distribution rights and a third has physical distribution rights, and that's only in the US.

International media rights are an extremely complicated thing and usually each show is negotiated individually.

I work in this space and it's crazy how complicated it can get.

And this is why the Internet is continuing to eat this industries lunch and why people will continue to simply pirate the content. The old distribution mess is a dying model, distribution is too easy with the Internet today, consumers aren't going to wait for content they want and can easily find online. Consumers don't care about media rights, they care about seeing their show as soon as it comes out.

>I'm looking at you BBC/PBS-Masterpiece joints.

What shows are you referring to? (Downton Abbey is not BBC, its aried on ITV in the UK.)

Well, new episodes of Top Gear are still on a multi-month delay, aren't they?

We used to have that problem with Dr. Who, but I think that's now a day-after thing.

This season of Top Gear was airing on BBC America about a week after the UK.

That's good to know, I wasn't sure.

I know the Christmas special was aired quite late, and I remember a few years ago when they made a Vuvuzela joke and instantly made it clear that they were on a 6-12 month delay.

The 2012 Christmas special only aired in the UK this May if I remember rightly - they joked about it being ridiculously late.

that would have been on on Xmas day, surely. May could have been a repeat.

The day after thing with Dr. Who is because it's airing at the same local time in the US as it does in the UK I believe, which is perfectly reasonable to me, i'd rather not have to watch it at something like 5am :)

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