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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Thursday, October 13th, 2011 - Comments Off on How Netflix Kept Hulu From Being Sold
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How Netflix Kept Hulu From Being Sold

Same coin, opposite side.

When the prices Netflix started playing for content went nuclear, suddenly Hulu seemed to have a lot of value, in spite of being a minor success financially. If Netflix as spending all that green on content, the thinking went, there must be a lot of money in streaming. The owners, no dummies, figured they could make a killing selling off Hulu and still, in the next few years, go into the then-matured business of self-owned streaming distribution under another name.

When Netflix stock took a dive, so did the opportunity to sell Hulu for a monster profit to a sucker who’d only have a couple of years of content before having to wildly overpay like Netflix… and really, they’d need to fight for content sooner, as programming the right shows/networks is ready to define the battleground.

You can be sure that Fox/Disney/ComcUniversal would have preferred to sell and to enjoy a nice profit in these wild west years of streaming. But they aren’t going to just sell off an asset (or another asset, if you count Miramax) for the sake of getting it off their books. Hulu has a HUGE audience… and only a small fraction – about 1 million – paying customers. Why? Because the initial value proposition of Hulu-Plus has turned to mush. The Criterion Collection of films has become, with the Comedy Central political comedies, the only consistent “new” content on the system.

So now, instead of being lavishly overpaid for having built something early, 3 of the 4 major networks are going to have to make it work. And there is no reason why it should not. The biggest challenge is the content that each net airs, but on which they do not control streaming rights. But aside from that, they should lay down the law. Exclusive access to reruns from ABC, NBC, and FOX, aside from on-air, 24 hours after network air, for 4 – 6 months on Hulu-Plus. Plus the libraries. Plus Criterion and other films libraries. Try to bring WB in, if only for a short time. Bring in Viacom if you can. Play the content to all platforms for the same $7 a month.

I say they hit $150m a month in revenue sometime in the first six months. No outsider buying Hulu could make that happen.

And we’re about to find out if these three mega-companies can make it happen without trying to cut the pie into a million slices before they bake the damned thing.

But back to the headline… if Netflix’s stock price was where it was 8 months ago, Hulu would have been sold for an insane price. But it seems like everyone’s time to get sane.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon