Are we entering the era of the ‘great rebundling’? It is a question we have seen play out in several forms over the 2023 year, and it is clearly one weighing on the mind of AMC Networks’ CFO, Patrick O’Connell, too. Brandon Blake, our entertainment lawyer Los Angeles in the know from Blake & Wang P.A., looks deeper into this rising question.
Disney-Charter Deal: The Way of the Streaming Future?
2023 was certainly a year in which streaming bundling rose to prominence. Especially with the concurrent rise in ad-supported tiers across both streaming and linear paid TV ecosystems. It’s easy to see the appeal- better value for customers, and less incentive for them to ‘streamer hop’ in search of the programs they want to watch. Plus less content spending for the streamers themselves. Over the next 24 months, we will see several notable affiliate cycle renewals that will test the feasibility of that prediction.
AMC Looks to Licensing to Offset Linear Declines
AMC Networks, home of popular properties like the Anne Rice universe and Walking Dead franchise, has been struggling to gain ground with the overall decline in its linear network services. It seems they are eager to put those titles to work for them, shifting to a model where they take the first-window domestic rights and keep only some of their content exclusive to the AMC Network and AMC+, their often-overlooked streaming service. Other properties will be farmed out where they promise the most return for that investment.
As we see older linear and paid TV models enter their sunset period, licensing and smart distribution of IP titles appear to be the model of the future. This will, of course, also offset concerns around the impact streamer ‘exclusivity’ has had on the archiving and availability of older IPs for fans. As Suits proved aptly last year, there is still a major appetite for older series among the public, too. Is this the streaming model of the future shaping itself? For now, we can just wait and see what develops.
