A new player has entered the game in the fight against Internet piracy – part of the larger war for your love and money – with Nine Entertainment and Fairfax today launching a video on demand platform through their joint StreamCo venture in Stan, a fixed fee streaming service that promises to offer a range of local and international programming that looks likely to launch in February 2015.
Leading the charge in Stan’s entry into the anaemic Australian SVOD market is an exclusive deal that has seen the service nab the local broadcast rights to AMC’s Breaking Bad spin-off, Better Call Saul in parallel with its premiere in the States. It’ll also house the Breaking Bad archive.
Gizmodo, who are published by a Fairfax subsidiary, also note that “new film and TV franchise exclusives [will come] to Stan every week leading up to the launch”; it also promises to be ad and contract free.
Add to that an exclusive content agreement with Sony Entertainment and a face for the brand in the form of Rebel Wilson and you might just have the viable paid entertainment option that has for so long been missing and that, coupled with the imminent arrival of Netflix, shouldn’t be a problem for much longer.
Mumbrella are reporting that at a launch press conference this morning, Wilson suggested the service would be available at a $10 price point. However, CEO of StreamCo, Mike Sneesby, was quick to amend that, adding, “We haven’t nailed down our consumer pricing yet, but again our pricing will be around the $10 price point but the exact pricing is to be determined.”
Sneesby was also quick to point out that they tested a lot of different names before settling on Stan:
“[We wanted a name] that consumers could actually associate with and actually have a character with. Stan is not going to be a character in itself but a brand that will build its own character in being truly Australian. [‘Stan’ the name] passes the ex-boyfriend test in that no one sort of sits there and goes ‘my ex-boyfriend Stan is a real arsehole’. It actually tested really well in the focus groups as effectively a clean palate.“
Stan. Definitely not a real arsehole name. Sure, why not?
