At long last, fans of AMC’s Emmy award-winning drama “Mad Men” can get their fix anytime a craving hits: As of today, “Mad Men” seasons one through four are available through Netflix’s streaming service, the company announced today. Future seasons of the show will be available around the time the season is over on AMC, Netflix says.
Netflix originally scored the deal to deliver “Mad Men” reruns to its streaming customers back in April. The company reportedly payed AMC between $750,000 and $900,000 per episode for the deal, which equals out to at least $39 million in total.
The addition of “Mad Men” to Netflix’s streaming lineup comes just in time. Netflix recently sent customers into a frothy rage after announcing that it would no longer offer its absurdly good deal of unlimited streaming and one DVD at-a-time rental for a monthly charge of $9.99. Starting in September, customers will now have to pay $7.99 per month for streaming, and at least another $7.99 per month for mail-order DVD rental, which works out to an increase of 60 percent from the $9.99 charge for the same services.
The price bump has caused some serious public relations problems for the company — one study shows that the changes have dropped Netflix’s approval ratings down near that of Blockbuster — and during this week’s announcement’s of its second quarter earnings, Netflix said it expected subscriber growth to slow for the next quarter due to the price hike.
Despite these ominous signs, the long-term outlook for Netflix looks good. Of the 1.8 million new subscribers who signed up for the service during the second quarter, 75 percent of them opted for the streaming-only option. And the company has plans to expand to both Latin America and possibly even Europe in the near future.
