[bfred_it]

Yes it is. From what I understand, a network will license a show to another network in another country, probably in an exclusive way. So they can't just "oh yeah you're paying us millions to distribute in your country? Let me just walk over you by streaming directly to your customers."

It doesn't work like that. These contracts are worth more than the few users that are willing to pay to stream across borders. Sad but that's TV life.

[khedoros1]

>> They just need to say "Sorry, this product will not be available outside the U.S. at launch." Is it so hard?

> Yes it is.

No, notifying that the offering won't be available outside of the U.S. wouldn't be difficult. Actually offering it outside would (and I think that's the question you were actually answering, which wasn't the question that was asked).

[mikepurvis]

This kind of thing is part of why Netflix & friends are so keen to create a bunch of original content— it's theirs, exclusively, and they don't need to deal with navigating all these preexisting commitments.