Some estimate Hulu IPO could bring in $2 billion. What will the content providers get? Zero. What is Hulu without content? An empty jukebox.
I believe that those of us who are the producers and purveyors of television, I believe that we are the servants of this nation.
For most of the '90s and the first part of this decade, content providers who wanted to publish online only needed to worry about the graphical web browser.
'On demand' is more than just a series of clicks on your still-too-complicated remote control. In fact, it is now the best way to describe what the cable industry - from programmers to content makers to distributors - imagine their world is. Services and content available to very demanding consumers, wherever, whenever, however.
There are literally tens of thousands of very good content providers in the world that don't distribute their content through TV channels.
But I say to Apple with all due respect, we don’t ask you for free iPhones. Please don’t ask us to provide you with our music for no compensation.
I think the relationship between cable and satellite and telco pay TV service providers and the content industry is a very, very solid one.
If YouTube has plenty of premium content, people will watch that in the same way they watch 'Game of Thrones' or 'Breaking Bad.'
We in the independent sector more than anybody need Netflix, because they care about what we do.
I don't even think in the future, pay-per-view is going to exist. You see Netflix and Amazon and what they're doing, and that's a model I think is going to grow and grow.
You have Showtime, you have AMC, you have all of these, you know, incredible networks that are now bringing forth their product without the handcuffs, if you will, of trying to sell soap to the entire country.
When people have options for what they want to see, it forces the quality of programming and content to be higher.
We need Netflix. We in the independent sector more than anybody need Netflix, because they care about what we do.
Netflix sees people as users or subscribers or customers. Historically, networks have seen people as viewers.
I certainly don't only watch Netflix. I enjoy the fact there is multiple companies producing content. I think it's great for consumers.
The Amazon lot are perfectly reasonable, level-headed people who just want to make TV programmes. I don't think they are the enemy of the BBC or the other way round. It's not a war; these things can coexist. We can have Amazon and Netflix and the BBC and BT Sport, and people can make choices. That's what modern life is all about.
