Arrested Development, Friday Night Lights, and House Of Cards not available on Netflix’s ad tier
A few Netflix originals and beloved licensed shows aren't even on the new Basic With Ads tier
Netflix’s Basic With Ads tier launched today, lowering the price of a subscription to the service for anyone who’s willing to sit through some ads, but—as we heard a month ago when the new cheaper tier was first detailed—there is a second catch in addition to the inclusion of ads: Not every show on regular Netflix is available on Basic With Ads. The problem is licensing restrictions, which makes sense for a thing with no ads that is now becoming a thing with some ads, and Netflix COO Greg Peters said in October that 90-95 percent of the library would still be available.
But now we have some specific titles that aren’t available on Basic With Ads, and it’s a rough list. According to Deadline, Netflix’s own House Of Cards and Arrested Development are not available on Basic With Ads, since they aren’t wholly owned by Netflix (unlike more recent Netflix originals), and the lower tier is also missing some shows that weren’t made by Netflix but are associated with the service since it’s where they’ve been available for a long time. Shows like Peaky Blinders, New Girl, The Magicians, Friday Night Lights, The Good Place, and “various movies from various studios.” These things can still be seen in the menus, but they’ll have a lock icon on the thumbnail if you don’t have access.
Other than House Of Cards and Arrested Development, which are a bit surprising, a lot of that probably could’ve been predicted. Some of them are high-profile shows with in-demand streaming rights, and their Netflix deals probably go back pretty far, but also shows like Peaky Blinders aren’t available anywhere else. If you can only afford the Basic With Ads tier and really want to watch New Girl, you’re just out of luck.
Netflix said when it first announced these details that it would be working to get those shows onto the cheaper tier “over time,” so this is hopefully just a problem for early adopters. Someday, when the ads tier has proven so popular that Netflix starts putting ads on the very expensive 4K UHD tier just for fun, we’ll think it was silly that some shows were ever missing.