Disney To Merge Hulu + Live TV With Fubo (hollywoodreporter.com) 37
The Walt Disney Co. will merge its streaming multichannel video service Hulu with Live TV with its competitor Fubo in a surprise deal that will shake up the streaming TV business, the companies said Monday. From a report: The new company will continue to be traded publicly under the Fubo name, however Disney will control 70% and appoint a majority of the board. Fubo management, including co-founder and CEO David Gandler, will run the combined venture.
The deal will do a couple of big things if and when it is completed: For starters, it will create a much bigger player in the virtual multichannel video provider (vMVPD) space, one that can more aggressively take on the market leader YouTube TV. YouTube TV said a year ago that it had 8 million subscribers, while Hulu + Live TV had 4.6 million subscribers and Fubo had 1.6 million subscribers, giving a combined offering 6.2 million subs.
The deal will do a couple of big things if and when it is completed: For starters, it will create a much bigger player in the virtual multichannel video provider (vMVPD) space, one that can more aggressively take on the market leader YouTube TV. YouTube TV said a year ago that it had 8 million subscribers, while Hulu + Live TV had 4.6 million subscribers and Fubo had 1.6 million subscribers, giving a combined offering 6.2 million subs.
Great! (Score:1)
Three streaming services I don't use are merging into one mega service I won't be using either. How this "shakes up the streaming market" I'm not sure.
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Three streaming services I don't use are merging into one mega service I won't be using either. How this "shakes up the streaming market" I'm not sure.
Disney will own yet another of its competitors. You would think at some point there would be a "hold on a minute here" move from the government as Disney slowly subsumes the entertainment industry, but it seems to be full steam ahead as they suck up studio, service, and other types of entertainment companies one after another.
Headline - Disney cuts costs by merging 2 services (Score:2)
Existing headline: "Disney to Merge Hulu + Live TV With Fubo, Taking on YouTube TV and Ending Venu Lawsuit"
Suggested headline: "Disney Cuts costs by Merging Two streaming Services"
Conjecture: Out of copyright Australian TV shows will become popular. Shows produced 1969-1974 are in the public domain in Australia per https://copyright.unimelb.edu.... [unimelb.edu.au]. Earlier TV shows have a different copyright term.
Only sports (Score:2)
Predict:
1) That sports live TV streaming will be the last profitable broadcast/streaming TV service left.
2) Content based streaming/live TV production cost will be too excessive and will compete and largely lose to people streaming older, much lower cost to license TV shows.
It's so bizarre... (Score:5, Insightful)
Recently had a trial for one of these services and it just seemed so backwards to going back to the "bad old days" of scheduled programming where you had to wait for your showtime before the "DVR" could let you watch it. The whole concept made sense on shared media solutions like broadcast, cable, and satellite, but just are obnoxious nonsense in this era of individualized content access.
Further, they cost even more than the on-demand services.
An antiquated model that is held up by weird licensing arrangements that just isn't worth it.
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It's sports. Basically every scripted or shitty "reality" show is available via streaming platform at this point, and is better served by the streaming platforms. But if you're a sports fan and talk with anyone else that is also a sports fan, you have to watch live. This is why ESPN et. al. can command the fees that they do - they know they're the ones propping up linear broadcasting at this point, and they're beholden to the increasing licensing cost coming from the NCAA conferences and pro leagues beca
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The purpose is to give people the same channels as they had with cable, so they can "cut the cord" without losing access to HGTV and Comedy Central.
If that's not of interest to you, it's not of interest to you. But there are people out there who like "cable TV", and others who are reluctant to get rid of it completely, so having an online version, be it GoogleTV, Sling, or whatever this is, is a great way to cut costs.
Also bear in mind how much content right now is behind cable-subscription firewalls. You c
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is a great way to cut costs.
From what I see, they are charging just as much, if not more so than what would be my typical cable tv provider.
Also bear in mind how much content right now is behind cable-subscription firewalls.
Hence my "held up by weird licensing arrangements". I can roughly get why people would want the content, but the style of the service is just so off-putting I'd have to *really* want that particular content to put up with it, even at the same price but they charge a premium. Given how much content is available with on-demand services, I'm surprised people are still that hungry for broadcast-exclu
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It's around $50, vs around $80-120 for a cable TV package. I think basic cable in terms of how we think of basic cable (ie a bundle of 60-70 channels plus antenna channels) was last under $50 25 years ago.
Re: It's so bizarre... (Score:2)
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Why would the rates go up of unrelated stuff? Netflix isn't going to hike it's prices because Sling upped their's. They're different products and aren't even in the same market.
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Even that's becoming more fragmented into the streaming. With regard to the NFL, all Thursday night football is on Amazon Prime. Next week one playoff game will also be on Prime. Netflix also did their first NFL game.
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There's always going to be some time at which the show becomes available, and before that it's not. How can it be otherwise?
Did a cat walk across their keyboard? (Score:3)
Hulu and Fubo merging sounds like parodies of generic tech company names. Is the combined company going to be Fulo, Hubo or some other completely random combination of letters?
Re:Did a cat walk across their keyboard? (Score:5, Funny)
" Is the combined company going to be Fulo, Hubo or some other completely random combination of letters?"
My guess would be FUBAR
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I've been wondering if that's why Vudu has been rebranding itself to the far more clumsy and harder to remember "Fandango at Home". I'd have rebranded Fandango to Vudu instead in their position, as I'm pretty sure more people are familiar with Vudu, but maybe they feel it keeps being confused with Hulu, Roku, and Fubo.
This is about the Venu sports JV (Score:2)
Enshittification (Score:4, Insightful)
Is anyone else sick of these fucking "streaming shake ups"?
Seems like every week, now
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Is anyone else sick of these fucking "streaming shake ups"? Seems like every week, now
None of them are even "shake ups." They're actually consolidations. Consolidation of all things into the vast conglomerate companies that'll eventually own our very lives if we don't slow it down. But, our government is owned by these corporations already, so I'm not sure who will slow them down until it's too late.
Hell, why don't we just get down to it and start having the "there can be only one" corporate wars. To be followed by the "there can be only one" ultra-rich wars, fought between individuals wealt
I just kicked YTTY to the curb... (Score:2)
These streaming services must learn there are limits to how much we are willing to pay for lackluster content.
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Works great until the broadcaster turns on DRM, which is happening in an ever-expanding area.
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This is why I ended up having to shitcan my homegrown DVR setup back in the day - the chucklefucks at Charter / Time Warner wanted to encrypt every single cable channel they legally could, and the only software that could do anything about it was Windows Media Center which Microsoft killed. They basically made sure that the only thing a CableCard setup could work with was channels that were also broadcast over-the-air, which (for me) made firing them very easy.
it's time to drop ESPN if it can't be an add on pa (Score:2)
it's time to drop ESPN if it can't be an add on package and if ESPN starting it's own stand alone package the cable co's really don't lose as much with ESPN not being on there TV system.
Streaming is expensive and CAC is often unknown (Score:2)
This has been the problem since streaming services started. Streaming services are like gyms, they want customers to pay but not to actually show up. On demand streams are pricey and actual regular users cost real money. Spending millions on advertising campaigns and new content has no honest way to calculate how many customers are added or retained with the investment. The whole business is luck and hope. Eventually there will be 2-3 streaming companies and they will share/trade almost all the same co
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Eventually there will be 2-3 streaming companies and they will share/trade almost all the same content have almost 0 growth and barely afford new content.
Did you mean, like, later today? Cause this seems to already be the case.
Only the Live TV part (Score:2)
That was my concern. As a Hulu subscriber, to me the Live TV part has always been an expensive add-on to the core service I don't want, and the article is presenting it like Hulu is a Live Pay TV service and the on-demand part is just a bonus.
So it sounds like what's really going on is the Live TV part of Hulu is being moved to a different streaming
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Yeah, but it's a limited selection. If you did a side-by-side comparison of programming you'd find there is content on Hulu that is not on Disney+.
Hmm (Score:2)
There can only be one ... (Score:3)