Q. I read somewhere that DIRECTV tried to buy Netflix. Is that true? Boy, that would have been something. You could get satellite TV and Netflix from the same company. — Charles, Washington, D.C. 

Charles, with AT&T now apparently trying to sell DIRECTV for dimes on the dollar, it’s hard to believe that the satcaster was once interested in buying the world’s largest streaming service, Netflix. But according to cable TV legend John Malone, it’s true.

Deadline reports that roughly a decade ago when Malone was chairman of Liberty Media, which then had a controlling interest in DIRECTV, he tried to get the satellite TV service to buy Netflix. In fact, he summoned Netflix CEO, and co-founder, Reed Hastings to a Liberty Media board meeting to discuss the possibility.

“I tried when I chaired DIRECTV to acquire Netflix, and that was when (Hastings) was struggling with getting rid of his old mail platform. What I saw was global scale,” Malone said this month during a industry confab.

Apparently the talks never flourished, and Malone’s most prominent memory of the meeting was Hastings saying he didn’t think  Netflix would ever produce original content. Of course, the streamer has become one of the industry’s leading producers of original programming.

“He assured us all that he had no intention of producing his own content … to which I responded ‘bull—-,” Malone told the Paley Conference. “It was clear where he was headed. If he didn’t understand (yet), he would,”

Liberty Media later spun off DIRECTV as a separate company, which was sold to AT&T in 2015.

It’s easy to speculate how DIRECTV would have been different if it had purchased Netflix ten years ago. With a rapidly growing TV venture in the fold such as Netflix, DIRECTV’s shareholders and executive team may have preferred remaining as a standalone company. The AT&T sale may have never happened, and DIRECTV may have been able to leverage Netflix’s growing reach to keep the satellite TV business vibrant.

By the way, DIRECTV was once also interested in purchasing Hulu, but was rebuffed when the streamer’s owners at the time pulled it off the market. Former DIRECTV CEO Mike White often lamented publicly that the Hulu deal never went through.

Need to buy something today? Please buy it using this Amazon.com link. This site receives a small portion of each purchase, which helps us continue to provide these articles.

Have a question about new TV technologies? Send it to The TV Answer Man at swann@tvpredictions.com. Please include your first name and hometown in your message.

— Phillip Swann