It's been about 18 months since Lionsgate started taking steps to separate its film and television studio business from Starz.
Hirsch told Hollywood Reporter In an interview Wednesday. Starz is now at the “House” point as streaming and premium cable outlets are officially separated from Lionsgate and begin trading as a separate company on the Nasdaq Exchange.
Hirsch joined Starz in July 2015, about a year and a half more than Lionsgate acquired it and has served as president and CEO since 2019. He noted that under Lionsgate, “there are multiple different parts of[the business]so things are right, so - the overall growth of the company is done correctly.” Since Starz is his own, he hopes to be able to help the company achieve its goals with a quirky focus – which is ambitious.
Staz has about 20 million subscribers in the U.S. and Canada, but Hirsch said he sees an opportunity for a tetrapod to 80 million people, and over time, Netflix has 89.6 million U.S. and Canadian subscribers by the end of 2024 for comparison. Recently, Hirsch's growth has been a year that continues to offer Starz, a family business in other popular services, the company's business has always served other streaming services, and the company's business has always been a multitude of services.
“We have always been a complementary companion of choice,” Hirsch said. “Comcast has replicated digitally by including Starz in a broad range of bundles. On Amazon, we are bundled with Max, we are bundled with AMC+, MGM+, BET. I think you'll be more inclined to our independent companies and have the ability to trade with everyone. ”
Starz and Lionsgate will continue to build a working relationship as studio production strength Starz's franchise and other series and reached its first window deal for Lionsgate's film Slate. Going forward, though, Hirsch hopes Starz can have more programming directly or through co-production deals with other studios. Starz has approximately 50 projects at all stages of development, overseen by Programming Chairman Kathryn Busby.
"I'm not talking about getting ownership and building a library and reigniting Starz's content machine and being Starz's content machine again," Hirsch said. "We want these economics to get back into business."
Starz started out as a premium cable channel, and while that remains a part of its business, the company is primarily a streamer: by the end of the fiscal year, about 70% of its revenue will come from the numbers, with an estimated profit margin of 15%. "We never viewed digital business as a new business. We just saw it as another distribution channel, and consumers wanted to see Starz," Hirsch said. "We didn't like one party or the other, we just moved to where the consumer was moving forward. This allowed us to avoid a lot of the conflicts that existed in linear businesses."
One thing Hirsch doesn't see Starz doing is to follow other streamers to launch a cheaper ad support layer (Starz's streaming price is $11 per month). “If you consider Starz’s content, it’s very R-rated and it’s hard to put ads on that content,” he said. “We’re not big, and since it will limit the number of advertisers we can use with content, I think it’s very difficult for us.”
Similar series strength Franchise, Outlander and BMFStarz tends to produce programming targeting women (and often by) women and often representative groups. "This will win the change. We will expand within the framework of women and underrepresented audiences, but we will be empowered to focus on the program with lasers."