Why do you think public TV overpaid? If they didn't like the terms they could always not renew the license, and ultimately I guess they did.
Similar arrangements are quite common in the startup world were you invent something novel. You then make a second company with a license for a specific purpose and sell the second company with the license and retain the core IP. There's nothing fraudulent about it as long as the buyers know they're getting a license and not the core IP
“There’s nothing fraudulent as long as the buyers know they’e getting a license and not the core IP”
That’s making a lot of assumptions, imagine the CEO of IBM set up his own company which he the sold to IBM. That kind of transaction is just ripe for conflicts of interest.
Now to be clear Sesame Workshop is a nonprofit so this specific deal is less of a concern. However, public TV didn’t get the better end of this deal which is my concern as it demonstrates the obvious loophole.
>However, public TV didn’t get the better end of this deal which is my concern as it demonstrates the obvious loophole.
Why do you consider it a loophole? It seems like a clear win win in retrospect? They got decades of high quality licensed programing that they wanted.
Why do you think they didnt get the better end of the deal, or at least a good deal? Maybe they could have payed more for more rights, but that doesn't account for other shows where full rights are worthless. Should PBS have done the same for every show they contracted with where the IP ended up worthless?
Companies don't acquire every vendor or contractor they work with for good reason. There is a reason that Netflix or HBO dont buy perpetual IP to everything they air. You dont know what will be a winner or loser, so you pay less and license opposed to buy.
It is easy to armchair past decisions with future knowledge, but those making the decision didn't have that knowledge. You and I should have invested in apple, google, amazon, tesla, ect for pennies. however, we would be broke if we invested in every company that could be worth something.
> That’s making a lot of assumptions, imagine the CEO of IBM set up his own company which he the sold to IBM. That kind of transaction is just ripe for conflicts of interest.
But, that's not what is happening HERE, which is closer to IBM still contractually paying patent royalties to a former employee of the purchased company.
Sure but it illustrates things are complex. My personal belief is PBS should at a minimum have gotten perpetual rights to the episodes inside the US for any purpose.
PS: IMO, toy sales is somewhat sketchy because the show acted like a commercial in the same way Transformers or My Little Pony did, but that's a different issue. Should they include shows with a toy line is more a question of their mission than how cost effective the deal is.
You changed my comment in your quote. You quoted me as having written, "not what happened HERE". But, I wrote, "that's not what is happening HERE" in present tense. This is currently happening, which is present tense.
Though it can be used as a quote, it can also be adjusted to make a point as people can just look up. Anyway are talking about a 50 year relationship not just what happened recently.
Some do, Saturday Night Live is a similarly long running and prolific show owned by NBC.
As to why PBS should have negotiated, they where getting well over 100 new 1 hour episodes per year as PBS was also running a lot of reruns. I am not saying very young kids don’t deserve that much new content but PBS would have been better off owning fewer episodes they could rerun than paying for that deluge and then also paying to rerun episodes. It's one thing not to negotiate after year one, but by year 30?
In which year should they have renegotiated and how much of a premium should they have paid for total ownership? I think your argument is predicated on PBS being able to read the future and their partner being able to lose more control without the product suffering.
Similar arrangements are quite common in the startup world were you invent something novel. You then make a second company with a license for a specific purpose and sell the second company with the license and retain the core IP. There's nothing fraudulent about it as long as the buyers know they're getting a license and not the core IP