Television Distribution Rights, Net (Tables) |
12 Months Ended | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Dec. 31, 2023 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Television Distribution Rights [Abstract] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Schedule of television distribution rights | Television Distribution Rights, Net
Television distribution rights consisted of the following:
The Company enters into affiliation agreements with television providers for carriage of the Company's shopping service, as well as for certain channel placement. If these television providers were to change the number of subscribers to the agreement through acquisition, it may change the amount paid by the Company.
The Company's ability to continue to sell products to its customers is dependent on its ability to maintain and renew these affiliation agreements. In some cases, renewals are not agreed upon prior to the expiration of a given agreement while the programming continues to be carried by the relevant distributor without an effective agreement in place. The Company does not have distribution agreements with some of the cable operators that carry its programming.
Television distribution rights are amortized using the straight-line method over the lives of the individual agreements. The remaining weighted average lives of the television distribution rights was approximately 1.4 years as of December 31, 2023. Amortization expense for television distribution rights was $91 million, $116 million and $107 million for the years ended December 31, 2023, 2022 and 2021, respectively.
As of December 31, 2023, related amortization expense for each of the next five years ending December 31 was as follows (in millions):
In return for carrying QVC's signals, most programming distributors in the U.S. receive an allocated portion, based upon market share, of up to 5% of the net sales of merchandise sold via the television programs and from certain internet sales to customers located in the programming distributors' service areas. In some cases, we also pay programming distributors additional compensation in the form of incentives in exchange for their commitments to maintain specific channel positioning benchmarks. In Germany, Japan, the U.K., and Italy, programming distributors predominately receive an agreed-upon annual fee, a monthly fee per subscriber regardless of the net sales, a variable percentage of net sales or some combination of the above arrangements. The Company recorded expense related to these commissions of $364 million, $358 million, and $375 million for the years ended December 31, 2023, 2022 and 2021, respectively, which is included as part of operating expenses in the consolidated statements of operations.
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| Schedule of expected amortization expense |
As of December 31, 2023, related amortization expense for each of the next five years ending December 31 was as follows (in millions):
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