Verizon, which launched a successful "Netflix on Us" promotion late last year to kickstart the official launch of its +play wholesale channels market, is going back to the well. 

For a "limited time," Verizon wireless, 5G Home and LTE Home customers can get 12 months free of the $19.99-a-month Netflix Premium service when they sign up through the subscription hub for premium channel Starz. 

Additionally, through its customizable wireless service bundle offering, myPlan, which was introduced in May, Verizon is offering customers the ability to purchase $15 in monthly +play credits for $10 a month. 

"The offer continues to demonstrate the complementary nature of our service that can be easily bundled together as a valuable addition to broad-base offerings," said Alison Hoffman, president of domestic networks for Starz.

Lionsgate said during its fiscal Q4 earnings report in May that Starz has 29.7 million subscribers across its linear and OTT Starz Play platforms. 

The Canadian media conglomerate specifically called out the success of "fan favorite" original series Party Down for helping drive 1.3 million global streaming signups during the quarter. 

On Wednesday, Party Down didn't receive an Emmy nomination from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. In fact, only two Starz shows, incarceration-themed comedy-drama Blindspotting (choreography) and strip-club-set drama P-Valley (hairstyling), received any Emmy love at all. 

As Starz subscribers ourselves, we continue to be puzzled by aggregate TV critic adoration for Starz shows, which seems to far outpace the viewership popularity and awards prowess of the content. 

Consider these Rotten Tomatoes scores ... and keep in mind that HBO's The Sopranos and The Wire, which are arguably two of the best TV series in the history of the premium cable originals format, have Rotten Tomatoes aggregation scores of 92% and 94%, respectively

* Survivors Remorse -- 97%

* Heels -- 96%

* P-Valley -- 95%

* Party Down -- 94%

* Outlander -- 90%

Of course, TV critics are people, too, and often, TV fans first, and they respond to attention like everyone else. Politically adept Starz showrunners seem to understand this. Or maybe, when compared to The Sopranos, Survivors Remorse is just a better written, better acted TV show. 

Starz Play, the premium network’s TV Everywhere app, is now available on several Android-TV powered devices, including the Google Nexus Player, 4K-capable Nvidia Shield (pictured) and certain models of connected Sony TVs.

The authenticated Starz Play app currently offers more than 500 monthtly selections, incuding more than 200 originals, such as Blunt Talk, Survivor’s Remorse, Power, Outlander and Black Sails.

Starz Play is also available on Web browsers, Samsung smart TVs, Roku players and Roku TVs, the Amazon Fire TV box and Fire TV Stick, Xbox One and Xbox 360, the Google Chromecast streaming adapter, iOS and Android mobile devices, as well as Fire HD tablets, the Nook HD and Nook HD+.

Starz Play, the premium programmer’s flagship TV Everywhere app, has launched on Samsung Smart TVs, providing authenticated access to hundreds of movies and Starz originals such as Blunt Talk, Survivor’s Remorse, Outlander, and  Power.

The Starz Play app, which offers more than 500 “monthly selections,” is available on Samsung App store within the Smart Hub across select 2014 and 2015 Samsung Smart TVs, the programmer said.

The Starz Play debut on Samsung follows a recent launch on the Roku platform. Starz has also developed versions of Starz Play for several other platforms, including the Amazon Fire TV box and Fire TV Stick, Web browsers, iOS and Android mobile devices, Kindle Fire and Nook tablets, and the Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Starz has also optimized the app for the Chromecast, Google’s streaming adapter.

Starz will launch its TV Everywhere service Starz Play on Roku players, the network said Tuesday.

The deal allows consumers with Roku Players and Roku TV models the ability to access Starz Play who are authenticated Starz premium subscribers, said network officials.

Roku customers can find Starz Play in the “Movies & TV” category within the Roku Channel Store, said network officials.

“Starz is pleased to launch Starz Play on Roku devices, expanding the reach of Starz Play to millions of Roku customers,” said Scott Barton, Senior Vice President of Branded Digital Content and Products for Starz in a statement. “The Roku platform is a significant addition for our TV Everywhere service and we’re proud to give subscribers another option to watch our critically-acclaimed STARZ Original series and premium movies.”

Starz has also developed versions of Starz Play for the Amazon Fire TV box and Fire TV Stick, Web browsers, iOS and Android mobile devices, Kindle Fire and Nook tablets, and the Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Starz has also optimized the app for the Chromecast, Google’s streaming adapter.

Multichannel News technology editor Jeff Baumgartner contributed to this story. 

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Premium pay TV network Starz is borrowing an over-the-top programming tactic by offering all episodes of two original series — Da Vinci’s Demons and Flesh and Bone — on its Starz Play TV everywhere app before they premiere on the cable network. The programmer also said it’s considering a standalone online subscription offering, a path recently paved in part by rivals HBO and Showtime. Starz CEO Chris Albrecht discussed those topics, as well as Starz’s desire to reach diverse audiences, with Multichannel News programming editor R. Thomas Umstead at last week’s Television Critics Association summer press tour here.

MCN:What prompted you to provide binge-viewing opportunities for two original series?

Chris Albrecht: We made the fans wait a long time for the third season of Da Vinci’s Demons, so we’ll put it up and let the fans gorge themselves on it. I think when people watch the first episode of Flesh and Bone, they’ll want to immediately see episode two and episode three. We have the TV everywhere platform on Starz Play so we can do it without affecting the linear run, so if you want to watch one a week you can, but if the fans want to watch it a different way it’s one of the nice promises of premium — you can have it any way you want.

MCN:Will it affect the performance of episodes when they premiere on the linear channel?

CA: You hope that all of this stuff is additive. What we and everybody else do now is count multiplatform viewers, so where they watch it and when they watch it is a lot less material than it would be if you were in an ad-supported space, where you’re trying to drive eyeballs to the first commercial. This is the third season of Da Vinci’s Demons, so the fans are waiting for it, and we have what is going to be a well-talked-about show in Flesh and Bone, so these are two interesting ones to try this with. If it works, we’ll do some more. We’re curious to see how this plays out and what we learn from this so we can start thinking about other things that we might do going forward.

MCN:Staying with new technologies, can you talk about Starz’s plans to potentially launch an over-the-top service?

CA: We’re watching what’s going on. We’re hoping for and seeing some interesting innovations within our traditional [pay TV] partners — I wish they would do more and do it faster — but that’s their businesses. We’re interested to see what the results are from what HBO and Showtime are doing. We have the capability of doing the same thing, but it’s early days for us, and we’re looking at everything to try to figure out what’s the best net benefit for Starz’s business, and make those choices based on that.

MCN:You recently mentioned that the network would generate some 75 to 80 of scripted shows in 2015. Has Starz reached its ceiling for original content, or are you looking to add more shows to the portfolio?

CA: I think it’s a bit of wait-and-see. We have a lot of shows in the pipeline. We have three dramas we’ve green-lit — American Gods, One Percent and Counterpart — and we have [the second season of] The Missing and The Girlfriend Experience in the pipeline. We’re not going to throw more stuff because we want to see what goes where.

Obviously, we announced some new programming like Antonio Banderas and the Havana Project. Plus our existing shows are doing well: Power is shooting the lights out with audiences, and we have two great comedies coming up, and Ash vs. Evil Dead will be — no pun intended — a monster, so we are in good shape. More is probably better, but we’ll see as we get these things figured out.

MCN:How do you see the competition shaping up with regard to original programming in the marketplace?

CA: There are a lot of people making a lot of television in the marketplace, and a lot of it seems to be pretty good. The flip side of the fact that there are a lot of shows out there is that there are a lot of training grounds for new writers and new voices. So the biggest obstacle to making a TV show is finding the really talented person who can do it who has a great point of view about something. I think good television shows are the breeding ground for those people.

MCN:Are there any other directives you’re looking to initiate for Starz over the next few months?

CA: I think we’re doing a real good job reaching women and African-Americans, and we’d like to reach out to bilingual, second-generation Hispanic audiences as well. We’re also into reaching millennials and I think they will be drawn to Ash vs. Evil Dead. The LGBT audience is one that we’d like to reach and one that isn’t really being serviced in the premium space all that well. The idea of serving underserved audiences is one that we like and we’ve been getting traction with it, and then good shows bring in other audiences.

Starz CEO Chris Albrecht said the premium channel is evaluating the possibility of launching its own standalone, direct-to-consumer service a la HBO Now and Showtime’s OTT service, but said that at the moment it is concentrating on its Starz Play TV Everywhere  strategy.

Albrecht, speaking on a conference call with analysts to discuss second quarter results, said that the company continues to roll out its Starz Play service, which lets current Starz customers access content on multiple devices. He added that new platforms and devices will be introduced  for the service, which is sold through its relationships with multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs), in the future.

Albrecht said Starz believes there is still value in TV Everywhere, and acknowledged that other players like Home Box Office and Showtime have launched standalone products recently. While Starz is keeping an eye on those products, he said he has yet to see hard data concerning such services.

“We certainly see an increased interest; new distributors [are] placing value on premiums, ” Albrecht said of a Starz direct-to-consumer product. “We think that is a good story for Starz. We are evaluating what others are doing; it’s early days, we have yet to see any hard reported data on the benefit of that to brands. That said, I can tell you that a lot of people are interested in distributing Starz. We have the full capability of following in the footsteps of what other premium brands are doing. We are evaluating all of these things on the basis of which ones we think provide the best net benefit to Starz.”

Starz has launched a version of Starz Play, its authenticated TV Everywhere app, for the Amazon Fire TV box and Fire TV Stick.

In addition to the Fire TV and browsers, Starz has also built and launched Starz Play apps for iOS and Android mobile devices, Kindle Fire and Nook tablets, and the Xbox 360 and Xbox One. It has also optimized the app to run on the Chromecast, Google’s streaming adapter.

Starz said the app currently offers more than 450 monthly selections, including about 300 movies and more than 150 episodes from originals such as Power, Outlander, Survivor’s Remorse, Black Sails and Spartacus.

The premium programmer also announced that has begun to offer a live, linear feed of the flagshp Starz channel via Starz Play on PCs and Macs. Starz has not announced when it might bring live feeds to its other TVE platforms.

The programmer’s two other TVE apps – Encore Play and Movieplex Play  – are offered on Web browsers, iOS and Android devices, the Kindle Fire, Nook tablets, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, and via the Chromecast.

Amazon’s Fire TV platform supports several other TVE apps, including HBO Go, Showtime Anytime and WatchESPN, among others.

Starz has broadened its TV Everywhere scope on the Xbox One with the launch of ENCORE PLAY and MOVIEPLEX PLAY on Microsoft’s flagship gaming console.

The launch of those authenticated apps follows the debut of the STARZ PLAY app on the Xbox One in August. All three apps are also offered on the Xbox 360. 

Starz has also launched TVE apps on several other platforms. Including a recent optimization for the Google Chromecast adapter, Starz also supports apps on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, the Kindle Fire, Kindle Fire HD, Nook HD, Nook HD, and the Google Nexus 4, Nexus 7, and Nexus 7.  

Starz said its trio of TVE apps offers online access to more than 2,000 movies, originals, and additional TV episodes from the company’s premium stable.

Starz has launched Starz Play, its flagship TV Everywhere service, on the Microsoft’s new Xbox One console, complementing the app’s earlier debut on the earlier-generation Xbox 360.

The launch makes Starz Play the first authenticated TV service from a U.S.-based premium programmer to launch on both Xbox platforms. Showtime Anytime, already offered on the Xbox 360, is expected to launch on the Xbox One later this year. HBO is also looking to extend access to the Xbox One as well.

Starz said its other TVE services, Encore Play and Movieplex Play, are expected to launch on Xbox One by year-end. Both of those TVE apps launched on the Xbox 360 in March 2014. Starz Play launched on the Xbox 360 in December 2013.

Starz noted that the series premiere for new original series, Outlander, is currently available now for complimentary sampling on all supported platforms and devices with the free Starz Play app.

In addition to the Xbox 360 and Xbox One, Starz also supports TVE apps on several other platforms, including PCs and Macs, iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, as well as the Kindle Fire, Kindle Fire HD, NOOK HD, NOOK HD+ and select Google Nexus models, including the Nexus 4, Nexus 7 and Nexus 10.