HBO Discussed Buying Netflix in 2006

An anonymous reader shares a report: "The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us." That's Netflix executive Ted Sarandos in 2013, shortly before his company made its jump into original content with House of Cards. And not just original content -- glossy big-budget content made by a famous director, featuring (at the time) a famous actor. HBO-style content. Even if you don't follow the media business closely, you probably know what happened after that: With House of Cards, Netflix proved, quite quickly, that it could make shows as good as the stuff the fabled pay TV network makes. And then Netflix started making a lot more stuff, and consumers liked that, too. And now Netflix is the company that every other media company wants to emulate -- and it's the chief reason every big media company is trying to decide whether it needs to buy or sell to every other big media company.

But it didn't have to go that way. In 2005, two years before Netflix got into the streaming business, some HBO executives were pushing the company to do the same thing. They wanted HBO to use the internet to sell subscriptions directly to consumers instead of wholesaling their product to the big cable TV distributors. A year later, after passing on that idea, HBO considered another move that would have rewritten media history: Some of its executives wanted HBO to buy Netflix, which at the time was a DVD rent-by-mail business worth around $1 billion. Netflix is now worth some $300 billion.

Masters of Business Administration

[Valgrus Thunderaxe]

n/t

Timely news

[PPH]

Thank you Slashdot.

Don't forget Blockbuster

[Guspaz]

Netflix offered Blockbuster to buy them for $50 million in 2000. Of course, at this point they were a young startup and nobody was thinking of online streaming yet, they were just proposing to become Blockbuster's online rental arm.

Glad they didn't.

[Eunomion]

Both of them did superb work in the years since then, and there's no telling which or whether any of it would have happened if they'd merged.

Re:

[Dracos]

Warner executives would have stifled it with micromanagement.

Future /. news ...

[fahrbot-bot]

HBO Discussed Buying Netflix in 2006

So timely here in 2021.

Can't wait for 2036 to read about how the U.S. discussed buying Greenland [wikipedia.org] in 1867, 1910, 1946 and 2019 ...

Re:

[MightyMartian]

Well to be fair, Trump discussed buying Greenland, and the State Department subsequently tried to prevent an international incident.

So?

[WankerWeasel]

I discussed being Tesla, Apple and part of Europe. I didn't but I talked about it. Is that news?

Re:

[WoodstockJeff]

Don't worry, it's supposed to be ok now to self-identify as anything you wish.

Re:So?

[nightflameauto]

Best take I heard about on this type of thing recently. A dude protesting meat processing in our local area all by his lonesome with one of the usual vegetarian slants of creating super gross looking "meat\' sculptures and parading around screaming about killing and such. So some dude sits down to watch him in a lawn chair eating a big ol burger. Of course the dude is screaming at him, right in his face. And when he finally stops to take a breath the dude eating the burger goes, "It's OK, bud. The cow that went into this burger self-identified as a plant, so I'm technically a vegetarian too!"

Would have been nice

[Rally-555]

ATT is going to destroy HBO's brand. A Netflix HBO merger would have been culturally compatible. The HBO and ATT merger still feels like AOL and TWarner merger to me. Specifically the Plepler resignation is bad long term, the reasons for his departure were that ATT wanted to more content rather than great content.... https://www.vulture.com/2019/0... [vulture.com] Either HBO or Netflix executives could have navigated a winning solution for content production. HBO buys Netflix or vice versa - the institutional know

dumb

[halofan_sd]

the problem with stories like this is if HBO did buy netflix in 2006, it wouldn't be what it is today, it would be more like... HBO

Re: dumb

[reanjr]

Yeah, somehow I don't think Scandinavian crime dramas would be a thing if HBO bought Netflix.

But what would have become of Netflix?

[nealric]

The article makes it sound like HBO lost out on an incredible opportunity. Perhaps they did, but it seems far from a foregone conclusion that Netflix would have performed similarly under HBO ownership. Many of their successes probably wouldn't have happened because they likely would have been beholden to executives that did not share the company's vision.

Red Notice was good

[Maxo-Texas]

We were sitting down to watch Kim's Convenience (so heart warming) and it prompted us with Red Notice.

Basically the star "brands" sold us (Reynolds, Johnson, Gadot) (it also stars Ritu Arya who I was unfamiliar with).

It was really solid for the first 80%. I felt like they gave 100%. Then the last part, felt more generic (gave their 90%).

And the movie was very on brand for the three actors tho more dislikable for Gadot compared to the other things I've seen her in.

There were some fun easter eggs that sail

Conflict of interests

[BlueCoder]

You have the people at the top needing to play it conservative because all it's big paychecks come from companies that are comfortable with the status quo and rightfully see new innovations as their competition, or competition to others that pay them money as part of their business circle of life. If they invest in innovations then they anger the people that are part of their current revenue stream. Businesses/people can't significantly/publicly dip their toes in multiple competing business models. You hav

HBO discussed buying Netflix in 2006

[mrvinni]

In 2005, two years before Netflix got into the streaming business, some HBO executives were pushing the company to do the same thing. They wanted HBO to use the internet to sell subscriptions directly to consumers instead of wholesaling their product to the big cable TV distributors. YacineTV [yacinetv.fun]