Nine and Fairfax unveil new venture as Australian TV providers fight back against Netflix with new products and low prices

Netflix is set to launch an Australian service in 2015, and Australian TV providers are fighting back, providing a range of new initiatives to compete with the US streaming giant.

Foxtel this week dropped the cost of their entry level 42-channel package to $25 per month and today a joint partnership between Nine and Fairfax has been announced for Stan, a streaming video service designed to challenge Netflix head-on.

Netflix already have an estimated 200,000 subscribers with Australians claiming they’re in the US.

Unlike Australia’s other Netflix competitor, Quickflix, which launched its streaming service with a complicated set of plans that involved renting mail-order DVDs, Stan launches with a simple, uncomplicated model. For approximately $10 a month (an exact price is still to be revealed), subscribers can stream all the movies and TV shows they want from the service. Currently Netflix charges a US$8.99 subscription price.

Stan faces a number of hurdles in launching a streaming television service in Australia. The two big problems rest with providing suitable content for Australian viewers while also making sure enough subscribers are able to watch the service streamed to their televisions.

When it launches, Stan will be available on iOS and Android devices with Apple AirPlay and Google Chromecast support. An app for Apple TV streaming boxes is also expected. From a technology standpoint, that should be enough to provide most Australians with access to the service.

The bigger issue surrounds the content.

It’s worth keeping in mind that Netflix is not “Spotify for TV”. Unlike Spotify, which offers its subscribers access to a library so large that it covers almost every album your average listener will want to hear, Netflix is far more limited. It’s a rotating library that provides all of the casual viewing needs a subscriber desires, but for viewers wanting a specific show or movie they can be left wanting.

Similarly, Stan won’t have all the TV shows and movies subscribers are looking for. But its library will be different to what is available on Netflix. For potential Stan subscribers it won’t be an issue of subscribing to either Netflix or to Stan, but whether to add a subscription to Stan on top of their existing Netflix subscription.

In today’s announcement it was revealed that Stan would have the rights to Breaking Bad along with exclusive rights to the upcoming spin-off series Better Call Saul. Episodes of Better Call Saul will be available just hours after their initial US broadcast on AMC when it launches in February 2015. Despite the success of Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul is an unproven series that may not catch on with viewers.

Stan promises “first-run exclusives, award-winning TV shows, classic catalogue, blockbuster movies and an exciting slate of kids content”. While the TV content and movies will drive subscribers, kids content is going to be very important to Stan.

Netflix discovered that children’s content is important to customer retention and have bulked up their kids library heavily – going as far as to launch kids-content-only logins for users.

Netflix are already ahead of the game with their exclusive original series. Big-name series like Orange Is the New Black and House of Cards have already been lost to Foxtel, but when Netflix does launch in Australia they will have new series like Marco Polo, Sense8, Bojack Horseman, Daredevil and Richie Rich on their 2015 schedule among others. When Stan launches it will need to provide titles that offer the same level of excitement.

The acquisition of launch title Better Call Saul suggests that Stan is off to a promising start. If Stan can offer a handful of new movie and TV show titles of a similar standard matched with a library of quality back-catalogue titles, Stan can tackle Netflix head-on.