A book excerpt details Netflix's shift from DVDs and tensions with HBO, which took a hard line on streaming rights, leading Netflix to make its own content
Jeffrey Bewkes scanned his mind, searching for the perfect war metaphor. — It was December 2010. Tweets: @lucas_shaw , @jonnyrmcfarlane , @alisterbull1 , @gloriacheunghy , @chris_skinner , and @mymyatwaterloo Tweets: Lucas Shaw / @lucas_shaw : Savor every word of this @felixgillette/@koblin excerpt on the beginnings of the Netflix-HBO rivalry. https://www.bloomberg.com/... Jonny McFarlane / @jonnyrmcfarlane : Pah. There's not a single Netflix show that gets anywhere near the best of HBO. https://twitter.com/... Alister Bull / @alisterbull1 : HBO once had a monopoly on prestige programming—until Netflix launched “House of Cards” and set off a rivalry that would define Hollywood's next decade https://www.bloomberg.com/... via @BW Gloria Cheung / @gloriacheunghy : If you are fed up with $TWTR headlines today...great read about the rivalry of HBO vs Netflix. And top illustrations on @BW! https://www.bloomberg.com/... https://twitter.com/... Chris Skinner / @chris_skinner : “It's a little bit like, is the Albanian Army going to take over the world? I don't think so.” #HBO's CEO re #Netflix, 2010 https://www.bloomberg.com/... @mymyatwaterloo : this artwork did not have to be this good for a bloomberg article like omg https://www.bloomberg.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The excerpt takes readers back to December 2010, when HBO under Jeffrey Bewkes drew a hard line on streaming rights, cutting Netflix off from the prestige programming HBO once had a near-monopoly on. That refusal is the pivot point: Netflix, then still a DVD-rental business transitioning to streaming, responded by making its own content — the House of Cards era — rather than staying a licensee of other studios' shows.
The book's retrospective lands on a company that has since traveled the full arc the coverage documents: by 2019 Netflix was fretted over as a near-monopoly in entertainment and looked, per one analysis, like the very giants it disrupted — subscriber misses, ballooning costs, and a dire need for more in-house hits after losing huge licensed shows.
First-order effects
- HBO's rights hard line directly forced Netflix's original-content strategy: denied access to HBO's catalog, Netflix had to fund its own shows to keep its streaming service stocked.
Second-order effects
- The same rights-withholding logic spread back at Netflix — studios and channels reclaimed their shows, and the pain of losing huge licensed titles showed up in its results as rivals circled, pushing Netflix deeper into original spending and, eventually, toward the ad-supported plans Hastings outlined.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, every distributor that wants streaming scale must also be a studio: rights become weapons, licensing becomes a last resort, and the industry consolidates around vertically integrated content owners — the structure Netflix once disrupted now rebuilt around it.
The trend: Content owners withholding streaming rights from rivals keeps forcing platforms to become studios, turning exclusive originals from a differentiator into a structural requirement of the streaming business.