The greatest cable program of this century — a crown jewel in the newly-crowned Second Golden Age of Television — is about to become the hottest free agent prospect since Kevin Durant decided that he wanted to win rings. Yes, that’s right — tonight (June 9) at 11:59 PDT, Mad Men will finally leave Netflix (meaning we get an extra three hours on the East Coast), and with it draw to a close, somewhat, of the golden age of independent streaming services as hosts of premium licensed content. Matthew Weiner’s brilliant drama felt like a staple of the service since it arrived there roughly a decade ago, and we’re certain that most of the people who have discovered it in the months and years after its conclusion have done so via Netflix. But that’s all about to change, and the series doesn’t have a home as of right now.
According to this article from the Observer, a few places have stood out as a new and good home for the show: There’s Starz, which is partially owned by Lionsgate, who produced Mad Men for AMC when it was still in production, and there’s Apple TV+, which is apparently looking to license legacy content to buffet its admittedly-weak line-up of exclusive. Given that those two services have, say, a significantly smaller user base than the genuine giants in this sector, this means you’ll probably have to sign up for yet another fucking streaming service. Remind us again what the benefits of cord-cutting were as opposed to the ease of a cable package?
Either way, it looks like it’ll fetch a hell of a lot of money on the open market from whatever service is willing to front the cash. Per the Observer, Netflix apparently paid more than $500 million for the rights to Seinfeld — that comparative figure being what NBC/Universal paid to get the streaming rights to The Office back from Netflix. This is why most streamers have started investing in original content — get ’em on board with shows like Mad Men, and get them to stick around with new series like Stranger Things and Tiger King, and they won’t even know what they’re missing.
Anyway, if you haven’t seen the show, we’d recommend you stay away from watching the Mad Men pilot before it leaves Netflix. Seriously, you’ll have withdrawals the next day, and you might actually have to buy a Blu-Ray in order to watch the rest. Psh, owning a license to view a thing forever is so 2007. Who’d do that in this day and age?