|
 Ranked as the No. 1 comedy on U.S. television for the past seven
years, the show has garnered an audience of some 20 million
people.
The rights for the show cost HBO Max between $500 million and
$600 million, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
All 279 episodes will be available on HBO Max when it launches
in the spring of 2020, WarnerMedia said in a statement.
Winning rights to hit shows has become expensive in a crowded
streaming industry dominated by Netflix Inc, Hulu and
Amazon.com's Prime Video. Walt Disney Co and Apple Inc have also
announced their own streaming services.
Comcast Corp's NBCUniversal said on Tuesday it would name its
upcoming streaming service "Peacock" and offer a broad slate of
original content, including "Dr Death" starring Emmy and Golden
Globe winner Alec Baldwin.
Peacock will also offer classic sitcoms "The Office" and "Parks
and Recreation" and is scheduled to be launched in 2020,
NBCUniversal said. The company owns traditional television
network NBC, which features a peacock in its logo.
Netflix Inc, poised to lose "The Office" to Peacock in 2021,
said on Monday it had landed the global streaming rights for
classic TV sitcom "Seinfeld."
"The Office" was the most-watched show on Netflix in the United
States, followed by "Friends", when measured by minutes
streamed, according to Nielsen data for 2018.
[to top of second column] |
HBO Max, which is expecting a slate of 10,000 hours of premium
content at launch, got https://in.reuters.com/article/television-hbomax-streaming/friends-to-leave-netflix-in-2020-for-new-hbo-max-streaming-service-idINKCN1U426Y
the rights to stream U.S. reruns of "Friends" from 2020 in July.
Television rights for "The Big Bang Theory" will remain with cable
television channel TBS till 2028, WarnerMedia said on Tuesday.
The show about four brilliant but socially inept scientists that
made geeks and comic book nerds pop culture cool, began in 2007 and
went on to win 10 Emmy awards, four of them for Jim Parsons as
quirky theoretical physicist Sheldon Cooper.
Over the years, the series featured cameos by celebrities including
British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, Tesla Chief Executive
Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, astronaut Buzz Aldrin,
"Star Trek" actors William Shatner and George Takei, and Marvel
comics legend Stan Lee.
(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee and Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru,
Ken Li in New York; Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Shinjini Ganguli)
[© 2019 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2019 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
 |
