Viacom's MTV Networks and BET have refreshed the content available from Netflix to stream over the Internet -- although most of the shows are more than a year old.
As of May 23, Netflix offered subscribers episodes of Nickelodeon's Yo Gabba Gabba, as well as additional episodes of Spongebob SquarePants, True Jackson VP, iCarly and Dora the Explorer. Shows from MTV include Jersey Shore, The Hills, The Buried Life and The City.
Other shows include BET's American Gangster and Comedy Central's The Sarah Silverman Show as well as series from VH1, Logo and Spike.
According to Viacom, the "new" content is actually old: About 75% of the assets are more than one year old and even the newest material is at least six months old.
"Overall, the total amount of content we offer on Netflix remains the same -- we've just cycled different content in," MTVN spokesman Mark Jafar said.
MTVN previously announced the content-licensing pact with Netflix, covering more than 300 shows, in April 2009.
Netflix accounts for 29.7% of peak downstream Internet traffic in North America-and has become the largest source of Internet traffic overall, according to a March 2011 survey by bandwidth-management vendor Sandvine. As of the end of March, Netflix had 23.6 million subscribers in the U.S. and Canada, after adding a net 6.67 million in the previous six months.
