Really? AMC makes 33 cents per month per cable subscriber. As of December 2012 AMC was making $30 million dollars a month off of an 80 million subscriber base [1]. They get that money because their product is in such high demand the relatively small number of viewers demands their cable providers include AMC. If they suddenly start giving away their content for next to free those demands go away and so does the revenue stream.
It rarely makes sense to give away new content on Netflix for next to free. You see it happen, but only rarely and in very select circumstances.
You can have different holdback times for different territories. Don't put it on Netflix for a month in the US but put it on right away in the UK where AMC is not available and Breaking Bad does not appear to have a pay network distributor.
The bigger issue is the fact that most shows DO have foreign distribution. At the point it's not AMC that's holding it back from Netflix, it's the company that's paid a bunch of money to air it over there. The rights windows in each country can have huge variations just depending on how the contracts are negotiated. It's never as simple as "the US airing network isn't allowing me to see this in the UK because they hate me."
Interesting, Australia gets breaking bad on cable the same time as US. Although there is always going to be a lot of piracy because you are looking at $100+ a month to get cable and the showtime/movies group of channels which show it.
I'm saying that the number Netflix pays per stream is so small it might as well round down to zero. If just getting users to watch your show on Netflix was a great way to make money then everyone would be putting their new shows on Netflix. Almost no one does that. Instead everyone puts old seasons of their shows on Netflix in hopes that consumers will then watch the new season on subscription cable or buy the show direct off iTunes.
Content holders effectively give away old content so they can sell new content. If they give away new content there is nothing left to sell.
They're not avoiding Netflix only because it doesn't pay enough, they're avoiding it because the medium threatens pretty much everything about their current way of doing business. It's deeper than just money.
Netflix doesn't pay per stream. Netflix pays for content in "windows". e.g. Netflix pays $20M to show Seasons 1-5 of Breaking Bad for 1 year. That's why content appears and disappears all the time.
It's the same how movie companies sell broadcast rights to HBO or other similar channels.
UK viewers would easily pay 50¢ to stream an episode though, that's only ~30p. For a series they'd be paying that once a fortnight it seems (USA sourced shows appear to be doing fortnightly showing now?), so > $1 a month.
How can taking 3 times the monthly subscriber profit for a single show harm them? Are they really making more selling that one show to other networks than they take selling their whole network to customers?
Instead it looks like it's $2 per episode on Amazon Instant, which is USA only or at least not in the UK. Instead UK has LoveFilm which doesn't have individual episodes and apparently requires mailing a DVD for you to watch Breaking Bad.
I've seen adverts for this show in the UK and find it weird that you can't just buy it and watch it.
It rarely makes sense to give away new content on Netflix for next to free. You see it happen, but only rarely and in very select circumstances.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/magazine/the-mad-men-econo...