I was under the impression that the BBC might be in active talks with potential streaming partners to fund new Doctor Who seasons… but apparently one of the likeliest candidates, HBO, hasn’t even been approached:
In conversation with Radio Times, Casey Bloys (chairman and CEO, HBO and Max Content) was asked if he’d be interested in partnering on Doctor Who – and Bloys also seemed open to the idea.
“It has not been presented to us,” he clarified. “As with anything, I would say ‘Never say never’ – it’s just not something that I know about.”
Unless the Beeb are covertly finalising a deal with, say Apple+, this sounds a bit like they’re sleeping at the wheel, and there is no active Who planning beyond this year’s special.
The D+ seasons are the only ones I didn’t pirate out of convenience. I’ve been watching since the 2005 reboot. Every other episode I torrented, because trying to figure out when an how to watch/stream Doctor Who has always been a pain in the ass.
It’s a BBC show - if you lived in the U.K, DVRing it would be 100 times easier.
Here in the us, you pretty much could only watch it on “BBC America” if you had cable TV. Sometimes it would be on Netflix I think, but always a year after it aired. So it was generally the pirates life for me.
Not gonna pay $100+ per month for cable to watch one show.
Sure. The issue is not so much “where will I have to sign up to watch it,” it’s “where will they find money to produce new seasons”.
Because I really doubt the BBC are in any condition to shoulder a scifi show on their own.
I always felt like Amazon might be the natural streaming partner.
But maybe they’re just going back to the original status quo of regional streaming rights, without a single global partner?
Oof, that means new episodes just slide further and further toward the horizon. They’ll need to sell rights to finance new productions, and with an uncertain future for the show, how attractive is it going to be to have it on your platform?
Yeah, it seems like even the old partners might be reluctant, having lost the rights once before.
At least HBO seem open to the proposal. It’s frustrating though, that apparently no formal inquiries has been made yet.
