Hulu signs licensing deals with 21st Century Fox and Walt Disney for upcoming streaming TV service

[Shawn Knight]

Hulu on Tuesday said it has reached licensing agreements that’ll allow the company to stream live and on-demand content from 21^st Century Fox and The Walt Disney Company through its upcoming streaming TV service.

Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins said they’re building a service that offers subscribers the most sought-after programming on television, noting that channels from 21^st Century Fox and The Walt Disney Company are essential to the mix.

Between the two, Hulu will gain access to more than 35 networks including FOX, ABC, Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports 2, BTN, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN-SEC, ESPN 3, Fox Regional Sports Networks across dozens of key national markets, Disney Channel, Disney XD, Disney Junior, Fox News, Fox Business, Freeform, FX, FXX, FXM, National Geographic and Nat Geo Wild.

Licensing deals with 21^st Century Fox and The Walt Disney Company were more or less a sure thing considering each owns a 30 percent stake in Hulu (Comcast owns another 30 percent with Time Warner owning the remaining 10 percent stake).

Speaking of, Hulu inked a similar licensing deal with Time Warner back in August that’ll make available its live and on-demand programming from networks like TNT, TBS, CNN, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, truTV, Boomerang and Turner Classic Movies.

Hulu will join a market that’s already populated by players including Sling TV, PlayStation Vue and soon, DirecTV Now. Given that most will share the same content, providers will have to differentiate themselves based on other factors such as features and pricing.

Hulu’s streaming TV service is set to arrive in early 2017.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/66890-hulu-signs-licensing-deals-21st-century-fox-walt.html

 

[wiyosaya]

While I am currently a Hulu subscriber, I will not subscribe to this, or if I am forced onto this, I will unsubscribe from Hulu. The only way I might subscribe is if the stations are available independently at say $1/mo. I will not pay a high price for a fixed package that contains many stations I will never watch just to subsidize those stations with my subscription fee. I wonder just what Hulu was able to negotiate because at least some of the stations mentioned have insisted services like traditional cable and satellite carry them as a condition to getting other stations in the package.

This seems yet another effort to keep an outdated and overpriced model in play. I am perfectly happy with OTA, and Netflix.

As I see it, the digital conversion of OTA stations in the US did not work our so well as reception is highly dependent on location - my location in particular has difficulty because I am essentially in a valley. However, with ATSC 3.0 in the works, OTA could live up to the promise that it had when the digital conversion took place. I only hope that people consider this when looking to subscribe to a service like this. In my opinion, a one-time cost for a small antenna and a DVR or HTPC-like solution is far cheaper than paying an ever increasing monthly fee forever.