Netflix is now “the one to watch” … if you're a fan of Insecure, producer-star Issa Rae’s acclaimed HBO comedy series examining the inner life of a modern African-American woman.
The show, which wrapped up its five-season run on the erstwhile HBO Max in December 2021, started streaming on Netflix Monday.
It will soon be joined on the No. 1 streaming platform by other retired HBO series including Ballers, Band of Brothers, The Pacific and Six Feet Under. Last month, HBO’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, announced a surprising and wide-reaching content=licensing deal to stream repeats of older shows on a platform once considered in direct competition with its goals.
Those objectives once centered around building user scale for WBD's core subscription streaming platform, now called Max — aka “The One to Watch,” per a new marketing campaign. But these days, the conglomerate is focused on revenue generation and debt reduction, and it has assumed a decided ”arms dealer” posture.
It'll put its shows anywhere now to make a buck.
Positioned with a market capitalization of around $31.7 billion vs. debt of about $50 billion, WBD management, under the direction of CEO David Zaslav, has made a number of bold and seemingly counterintuitive moves.
Earlier this year, for example, WBD removed a number of HBO series from Max, including 55-time Emmy nominee Westworld, and licensed them to FASTs including the Roku Channel.
Insecure itself was licensed to a WBD linear cable channel, OWN, earlier this year.
“You should be measuring us in free cash flow and EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization),” Zaslav said at a recent investor conference, touting the company’s newly opened distribution strategy.
Using this aggressive model, Zaslav and his team were able to trim EBITDA losses on streaming by $500 million in the fourth quarter alone.
However, licensing shows to Roku Channel is one thing. But it's another to put them on Netflix, which was co-founded by an executive, Reed Hastings, who once identified HBO as his streaming company's biggest competitor.
There is some precedent, however.
As Deadline noted today, erstwhile HBO parent company Time Warner carved a pocket-to-pocket cable network licensing deal when it ran HBO’s Sex and the City on TBS in 2003, then licensed The Sopranos to A&E in a $200 million deal.
In 2014, Time Warner — years before it was gobbled by AT&T and the subsequent launch of HBO Max — signed an agreement with Amazon Prime Video to license shows including The Sopranos, Deadwood, Six Feet Under and The Wire.
