The series that became the weapon of the streaming war
'Friends' was the object of desire of various platforms
Barcelona[Each summer, ARA dedicates a series of Sunday Media articles to reviewing television history. This year we are rescuing some of the most notable channel changes experienced by historical fiction].
No matter how many years pass, Friends maintains the viewers' affection intact. The love for this comedy is so great that three decades after its original premiere, it is the series that the main streaming platforms have fought over, many of which dedicate enormous budgets to the production of new fiction. Although new content is important, having a catalog of classics that attract users and, above all, guarantee hours and hours of playback is key to the survival of platforms. Having all seasons of Jennifer Aniston's sitcom means having 120 hours of content.
The peak of the streaming war was experienced between 2019 and 2020. Netflix's hegemony in the streaming world was indisputable: it was the platform with the most subscribers – and it still is – and one of the most consumed and binge-watched content in its offering was, precisely, Friends, which it added in 2015.The rights to the sitcom belonged to Warner, a communication group that had been bought by AT&T in 2018, and Netflix paid it 30 million euros a year to have it in its catalog. However, in December 2018, the bill rose astronomically: Warner was preparing to launch its own platform, HBO Max, and decided to squeeze Netflix and demand more money. The result was that Netflix ended up paying three times more to keep the series in its offering, 100 million dollars, with an agreement that did not guarantee exclusivity.
In July 2019, a few months before the launch of HBO Max, it became known that the platform had an agreement to exploit Friends for five years. In the United States, this deal meant that when the platform began operating in May 2020, the series disappeared from Netflix. In Spain, after days of uncertainty, Netflix confirmed that it would share the comedy about the friends from New York. The joy didn't last long: on December 31st, it ceased to be available.
HBO Max not only kept the series, but also managed to catch everyone off guard when it announced that it would exclusively have the reunion of Jennifer Aniston and company. The special, which premiered in May 2021, was a success: the media talked about it extensively and the most special moments went viral. The program, moreover, is already part of television history, because it is the last audiovisual record of the six protagonist actors together: in 2023 Matthew Perry died due to an overdose and the group of friends who made so many viewers happy was broken forever.
Last chapter
The move of Friends from one platform to another has had a new chapter this month. Without much fanfare, the comedy has rejoined Netflix's catalog, at least in Spain. Thus, viewers can now watch it on both platforms. This situation, which might seem unusual considering that just six years ago the two services were fighting over the golden goose, makes sense in the current audiovisual industry landscape. In the summer of 2023, in the midst of the streaming model crisis, Warner – which two years earlier merged with Discovery to create Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) – signed an agreement with Netflix that allowed it to license some of its most famous titles. This way, overnight many HBO-branded series, which until then could only be watched on that platform, gained more than one window.
The decision to license content to third parties, even if they are rivals, responds to the objective of David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros Discovery, to balance the group's books and generate economic returns from its content library.
Along with Friends, the other series that was a protagonist of the streaming battle was The office. In 2021, in the United States, the sitcom starring Steve Carell was available on Netflix, but NBC Universal snatched it away to add it to its platform, Peacock, a service that had only been launched a few months prior and had little penetration. Such a popular comedy with so many seasons was a real treat. While in the United States it can still only be watched on that platform, in Spain The office has become the omnipresent series: it is available on Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, and SkyShowtime.