Netflix Streams Old MTVN Content to TV

Written by Steve Donohue

Monday, April 6. 2009 at 11:00 AM EDT Post a comment

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Netflix Inc. subscribers will soon be able to stream previous seasons of Comedy Central's South Park, Nickelodeon's iCarly, and other programs from MTV Networks directly to their televisions, after the programmer expanded an agreement with the TV and movie rental service.

But while Netflix rivals Amazon.com and iTunes allow consumers to download current episodes of South Park and other MTV Networks programs to their computers, Netflix customers will only be able to stream previous seasons of the MTVN programs to their TVs.

By limiting selections to previous seasons, MTVN appears to be protecting the value of the monthly subscription it charges cable and satellite TV customers for access to MTV, Comedy Central, VH1, and other pay TV channels that it owns. Its concern may be that if it made too many episodes available online, there wouldn't enough incentive to subscribe to its linear TV networks.

Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey declined to comment when asked if Netflix also wanted to distribute the current seasons of MTVN programs, but he noted that Netflix subscribers are happy to have access to previous seasons, calling it "a great audience pleaser." Reps at MTVN couldn't be reached for comment Monday morning.

Netflix isn't charging any fees to access the content from MTVN, but it is only available to consumers that buy one of its subscription packages, which range in price from $4.99 to $47.99 monthly. Its rivals, Amazon Video On Demand and Apple's iTunes Store, charge subscribers $1.99 per episode for programs from Comedy Central and Nickelodeon.

In addition to South Park and iCarly, MTVN is distributing Nickelodeon's Blues Clues, Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob SquarePants, and True Jackson, VP to Netflix customers.

There are a few different ways for Netflix customers to stream content directly to a television. Through an agreement Netflix struck with TiVo Inc. last October, owners of the TiVo Series3, TiVo HD, and TiVo HDXL DVRs can stream Netflix content directly to the TV.

Viewers can also access streaming content from Netflix through Roku Inc.'s $99 set-top box or Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)'s Xbox 360. In February, Netflix said more than 1 million Xbox Live users had accessed Netflix content through the gaming console, streaming more than a total of more than 1.5 billion minutes of TV series and movies.