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Comment by rtpg | Hacker News Reader

Distribution deals happened for House of Cards... For obvious reasons distribution deals are usually exclusive per region (I spend a lot on marketing and then some other guy just starts selling the same content...)

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Interesting -- I didn't realize Netflix distributed their content through third parties. So in a few years they've gone from a licensee dependent on the vagaries of contracts they sign with content owners, to a content producer developing their own original material, to a licensor distributing their properties through others. It's a situation not precisely worthy of the "looked from pig to man, and man to pig" quote, nor "content is king", nor "commodify your complements"; perhaps a blend of all three.

IIRC, Netflix only has first-run rights to House Of Cards. It's not fully owned by Netflix and will appear on Comcast et al. [0]

Although when Netflix's original $100m buy didn't cover production costs, it is what it is?

[0] http://www.wired.com/2014/03/comcast-bites-netflix-snagging-...

They do indeed - here in Germany House Of Cards has an exclusive window on the pay-TV service Sky, which results in Season 4 of House of Cards not being available on Netflix currently.

The order isn't quite as you put it -- it was only the earlier originals that Netflix couldn't afford to buy out. They aren't looking to license their originals back out at this point (exclusive + global is still the strategy going forward). They've even gone back and worked to pick up expanded rights in more countries for the ones they've missed (e.g., HoC).

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