[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

> Amazon.com Inc. is nearing a deal to buy the Hollywood studio MGM Holdings for almost $9 billion including debt, said people familiar with the matter, a pact that would turn a film operation founded in the silent era into a streaming asset for the e-commerce giant.

What surprises me is that at $9 Billion, why hasn’t it been acquired by now?

Right now, video streaming is pretty much a solved problem, and it is content that differentiates one service from another.

If you are an Internet giant, $9 Billion seems like a pocket change to get access to a huge catalog.

[dageshi]

The biggest IP is Bond and the Broccoli family own 50% of it and have creative control over the movies (and whether or not it can be a tv series).

I imagine that's the complication, you buy MGM but don't really have full control over the crown jewel so to speak.

[andrewstuart]

Good point - you'd think Netflix would have been buying this stuff up.

[agustif]

how many originals can they pump out at 9B though?

[Kye]

Owning proven stuff is probably a more reliable investment than hoping one of your darts in the wall develops the cultural cachet of any of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer_f...

How many Netflix productions come even close for all the tens of billions they've poured into it? Reliable names mean customer retention.

[jonny_eh]

As attractive as catalog content can seem, it's not the reason why new customers join, and stay with, a streaming service. New content is King.

[echelon]

Tell that to the owners of The Office.

Peacock making anything new and relevant?

[jonny_eh]

> Tell that to the owners of The Office.

Tell that to Netflix, which hardly lost any subscribers when they lost their most popular catalog show.

[sushid]

Is Peacock the embodiment of streaming success? For every Office and Friends there are 100s of duds that people just don't care much about after the final season.