Presto chango? Could free-to-air tie up help Foxtel counter Netflix?
Celebrities and VIPs turned up in force for Foxtel’s upfronts last night, but while Chris Hemsworth and The Real Housewives of Melbourne were the star turns, it was a few of the other attendees who turned heads, writes Alex Hayes.
Lachlan Murdoch, Tim Worner and Hamish McLennan walked into a room. That’s not the start of a joke, it happened last night at the Foxtel upfronts, which has triggered speculation the Presto streaming service could be about to get seriously beefed up.
While there wasn’t much surprising in Foxtel’s announcements last night, it was more a case of what you could read between the lines and what was not talked about, Presto.
While the messaging from the execs was around the cut-priced deals coming to market next week, and a fairly decent looking slate of new programming, it was CEO Richard Freudenstein’s almost throwaway line about putting TV content onto Presto, before adding there will be more announcements next week, that grabbed my attention.
Ten and Foxtel… they could also be announcing the long time rumoured MCN taking over ad sales of TEN
If you rolled all those into one service that would, actually, be better than Netflix.
And god knows, I’m the most pro-Netflix person out there but that sounds pretty tidy.
Whether it will pull the 200,000 homes away from Netflix who already use it? Well….
Presto + Foxtel drama package + Boxsets for $15 in HD and it may be starting to get a bit closer to Netflix
Ozzies already know how to access torrents of content.
Because they are not “content” with FTA or foxtol.
Speculation is fun.
What if Nine Entertainment (and Fairfax) teamed up with Netflix? Why stop there…
Nine, Netflix and a Warner Bros tie-in, with SBS as a partner as well.
This is why pirate bay is the most popular streaming service in Australia – exclusive content deals. I’m not saying its right, but if people have a choice between having to sign up to 2 or more services, or just pirating….you do the math. Still Foxtel will be laughing all the way to the bank, until they realise the golden goose is already dead.