HBO has announced to bring in 600 hours of original video programming this year to compete against Netflix in the market.
Netflix Inc. came into the streaming industry as an online video content service provider. The streaming giant is significantly growing in the TV market. In the beginning of this year, it made itself a global TV network.
Netflix is available in more than 190 countries now with having almost 75 million subscribers. With the increase in number of the countries in its portfolio, the company decided to expand and diversify its content as well. Late last year, with the news of global expansion plan, it said that they would double the original programming slate in 2016.
Whatever Netflix has done in the past year or so, it has earned the right to be called as the uncrowned king of the TV industry; but this is not all. The streaming giant faces tough competition from its market rivals, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu. The recent news suggests that the company should fear its long time market rival.
Major pay TV cable networks such as HBO, Fox, and Starz etc. were already sidelined by the streaming services when they started providing services in 2007. TV networks tried chasing them for long but failed. HBO is bringing the biggest change of all that TV networks usually do not go for, i.e. investing billions of dollars on content.
According to sources, HBO is all set to offer nearly 600 hours of original content this year. The CEO of Time Warner, Jeff Bewkes, said in a conference that HBO will add 50% more original content this year, which would be approximately 600 hours of video programming. The CEO did not mention the amount of investment to bring in the new original content but it was previously known that $2 billion budget was allocated for the content last year. This suggests that the investment would be near to the previous year’s budgeting.
On the other hand, Netflix allocates a $6 billion budget for its content. However, the budget it spends on original programming is still unclear. It has almost 31 in-house shows planned for 2016.
Netflix and HBO are in a collision course where a network, which previously focused on driving viewership, is now expanding its standalone streaming app ‘HBO Now’, whereas Netflix is deeply exploring its opportunities to produce more original content.
As far as the business of HBO is concerned, a former host of The Daily Show has signed a deal with the TV network for making a short digital content for HBO GO and HBO Now. There will be an option to further expand the digital content in a series or a movie. HBO is well known for the biggest hit show in TV industry, Game of Thrones, and irrespective of how big Netflix or any other business has become, no one so far has managed to come up with such a show in all these year.
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