Foxtel, who has struggled to attract viewers to their 15 movie channels, is now looking to cut new deals with movie studios in an effort to compete with a new generation of smart TVs, as well as Apple and Google.According to the Australian newspaper which is owned by News Ltd (a major shareholder in Foxtel), the pay TV service could dump one major partnership as it plans to renegotiate its supply deals in an effort to stimulate interest in their movie offerings.
In June Samsung will launch Foxtel on their new smart TV. The icon will sit alongside movie services from Quickflix and Telstra BigPond Movies.
The move to renegotiate movie deals comes as free to air TV networks revaluate their Hollywood relationships after several big Hollywood movies have failed to attract consumers to networks.
Analysts claim that consumers don’t want to watch a movie that is “riddled” with commercials on a free to air network.
“They will rent or record the movie and then remove commercials” said a Deloitte analyst recently.
The Australian said Foxtel could abandon its non-exclusive deal with the Movie Network, which supplies it with films from Warner Bros, Disney, MGM and Village Roadshow studios, and attempt to deal directly with the studios. PMP is owned by Universal, Sony Columbia and Twentieth Century Fox.
The newspaper said that Hollywood sources have been bewildered at Foxtel’s intransigence, particularly as rival IPTV companies, which allow the watching of films online, have been keenly pitching.