Fresh off activating its latest price increases in North America, Netflix on Thursday announced a new across-the-board monthly rate spike in the UK and Ireland. 

In the UK, the price for the standard HD plan is going up £1 ($1.31) to £10.99 a month ($14.46), probably less than what HBO Max will cost when it launches in the territory later this year, but nearly twice as much as the $7.99 monthly bill for Disney Plus.

Meanwhile, Netflix's basic plan for the UK will also shoot up £1 ($1.31) to £6.99 ($9.19). 

In Ireland, the standard plan is going up by by €2 ($2.20) to €14.99 ($16.54), while the basic plan will increase by €1 ($1.10) to €8.99 ($9.92).

Netflix hasn't increased the price of the basic plan in the region in nearly a decade. 

Premium service -- which delivers 4K video while enabling four simultaneous streams -- will see a hike of £2 ($2.63) in the UK and €2 ($2.20) in Ireland.

New customers are subject to the price increases immediately while existing ones will ramp into the higher payments over the next 30 days. 

The UK represents Netflix's biggest region outside the U.S. in terms of production budget, with the streaming company reportedly spending $1 billion to make content there in 2020. 

Recent output in the region includes Power of the Dog, which is up for a Best Picture Oscar. 

Netflix has around 14 million subscribers in the UK and another 600,000 in Ireland, according to Ampere Analysis. 

"Our updated prices reflect the investment we have made in our service and catalog, and will allow us to continue making the series, documentaries and films our members love as well as investing in talent and the creative industry," Netflix said in a statement. ■

Liberty Global, the Denver-based international cable company controlled by industry legend John Malone, said that it is interested in pursuing deals with mobile carriers in Ireland and Poland and hopes to have agreements in hand by the end of the year.

On its Q4 earnings call with analysts, Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries said pursuing such deals was “high on our list” of priorities.

Liberty already has about 1 million cable and 120,000 mobile subscribers in Ireland through its Virgin Media unit. In Poland, its UPC Poland operation has about 3.3 million video, internet and telephone customers and 62,700 mobile subscribers through an MVNO agreement.

Also Read: Cadent Teams with Liberty on Addressable in Europe

The Irish mobile market is dominated by three carriers -- Vodafone; Three Group, owned by international telecom conglomerate CK Hutchison; and Eir, owned by French billionaire Xavier Niel. In Poland, potential targets could include Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Play and Polkomtel. Liberty tried to expand its presence in Poland in 2018 with the purchase of Multimedia Polska for about $876 million, but abandoned that deal because of regulatory opposition and difficulties in coming to financial terms with the sellers. 

Fries added that Liberty Global has been aggressive in the M&A space, completing more than $80 billion worth of transactions in the past five years, that allowed the company to exit or enter markets, depending on its scale. Most recently, Liberty Global’s agreement to merge its Virgin Media business with Telefonica’s O2 in a joint venture valued at about $38 billion is scheduled to close in the summer pending regulatory approval. 

“I think the way we’ve done it depends on the market - we either exited, bought or merged, and we think in all cases we’ve done the right thing, so we now have the number one or two player in these markets and that gives the scale to be, I would say, opportunistic and creative," Fries said on the call. 

Ireland and Poland, where Fries said Liberty Global hasn’t had the same M&A activity, will be looked at closely, especially in the fixed mobile space. 

“The markets that we haven’t yet done anything in, Ireland and Poland for example, of course we’re going to continue to evaluate what the right long-term future for those markets is in terms of their strategic footprint and whether there’s a fixed mobile opportunity, so you should assume that that’s high on our list,” Fries said. “It would be surprising to me if we ended 2021 without continued transformation even in those two markets, whatever that might look like.”

In 2020, Liberty Global said revenue declined 1.5% to $12 billion and EBITDA fell 3.9% to $4.9 billion. In the UK and Ireland, where broadband customers increased by 100,000 for the year, revenue was flat at about $6.6 billion. 

Cable networks will look to build on the momentum created for the genre by recent projects including FX’s American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson with limited series and specials of their own pulled from the pages of history.

HBO will tackle the 1990s controversy surrounding Anita Hill’s sex-discrimination charges levied during the 1991 Senate confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with the Saturday (April 16) premiere of original move Confirmation. It will also dig into President Lyndon B. Johnson’s first year in office with the May 21 telefilm All the Way.

On the dramatic-series side, Sundance TV will examine the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland on centenary Sunday, April 24, with the limited series Rebellion.

And A&E on Memorial Day (May 30) will premiere the four-episode remake of 1970’s slavery-themed miniseries Roots.

The projects follow the recent ratings success of high-profile, history-themed projects. FX’s 10-part series American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson drew 3.9 million viewers (per Nielsen live-plus-same-day ratings) for its finale April 5 after generating a network-record 5.1 million viewers (also on a live-plus-same-day basis) for the Feb. 2 series premiere.

The retelling of the infamous 1995 Simpson murder trial also generated significant press coverage and social-media buzz that helped build awareness and ratings.

WGN America set a network ratings record with the March 4 premiere of original drama series Underground — the story of slaves escaping bondage along the 19th century Underground Railroad — drawing 1.4 million viewers.

Network executives said the success of The People v. O.J Simpson and Underground are helping to build momentum for a genre that appeals both to older viewers and hard-to-reach younger watchers.

“The appeal of television it its ability to transport you into a story, and to be able to do that across time and go to early 20th century Ireland, or even just back to the 1990s to the O.J Simpson trial, is almost like time-traveling and immersing yourself in that time and place,” said Jan Diedrichsen, executive director of SundanceTV. “That has incredible appeal to viewers of all ages.”

Rebellion, which dramatizes Ireland’s fight for independence through the eyes of three women and their families, is a departure from the network’s mostly fiction-based scripted series. But Diedrichsen said the series fits the SundanceTV brand because it tells a strong and compelling story through well-developed, engaging and relatable characters.

Its historical backdrop is an added benefit for viewers, Diedrichsen said. “Viewers know the ending to the story — the Irish gained their independence — but you’re watching this story and experiencing history differently than reading about it. That allows you to connect and identify with the characters, because you know more than the characters know.”

History, which has scored in the past with shows such as Texas Rising, Hatfields & McCoys and The Bible, will look to draw viewers to its remake of Roots, a remake of the 1977 ABC miniseries based on Alex Haley’s best-selling novel about the journey of an African-American family through slavery. The four-night, eight-hour series will premiere May 30 on A+E Networks outlets History, A&E and Lifetime.

With viewers looking to the past to see how its events shaped today’s issues, the genre is as popular now as ever, History general manager Jana Bennett said.

“It’s not accidental that there’s been some success with shows that look at real stories, rather than just fictional depictions, and that’s true of O.J., Underground and [Netflix’s drug-themed series] Narcos,” she said. “I think the audience is really up to seeing the real story of how did we get here and looking at the bigger questions of what’s the context of where we are now, and how it reflects history.

“There’s a real need among viewers for a change of pace from the acceleration of today’s technology-driven environment and an appetite for history, which helps to answer the question of how we got here in the first place,” Bennett said.