Hollywood Reporter:
NBCUniversal — the parent company of producers Universal TV — won an auction for the library after outbidding Netflix in a $100 million-per-year pact.
And:
Disney, meanwhile, has made clear that it doesn’t plan to stay in business with Netflix given its own streaming ambitions. Now that the company has majority control of Hulu, that platform is likely to benefit from the pullback of Disney-owned ABC’s programming from Netflix.
If you are into the biz side of TV streaming, this is a fascinating read. Lots of detail.
My takeaway: The breakup of content bundles is going to create a lot of options for consumers, and that’s not necessarily a good thing. If you want Star Trek, you’ll need to pony up for CBS All Access. Want The Office? You’ll need to get the service from NBC (if and when they ship one), or the service they ultimately license to. Add in Netflix, HBO, Disney, etc., and things are going to get expensive.
This is the universe Apple is walking into. They’ll start at zero, with no library to woo viewers away from all the other content-heavy services. But they have the advantage of a passionate user base, already ensconced in the ecosystem, likely to give Apple’s TV+ a try. And they have deep pockets, which will let Apple ride out the early, lean times.
Gonna be interesting.
Can’t say I’m impressed with that move, but then again I prefer the U.K. version of The Office. It looks like an ego/pride issue from NBCU, trying to stick it to Netflix. Is (U.S.) The Office still that popular? I tried watching it but couldn’t get through 10 minutes of it.
I think Apple has the right approach if they can demonstrate their value-added aggregate model is more effective, than the a la carte model, at keeping subscribers enrolled. But can Apple do that better than Hulu? We shall see.
I’d better watch those newer Pixar movies while I can.
So much for cord cutting saving money. It will not be long until its much more expensive to get the same package I was getting with cable. Not to mention having to deal with several different apps and devices. Maybe time to go back to DirecTV.
And then, we go back to the torrent-is-easier-than-paying days and the whole fight starts over.
Or, you just don’t care about certain shows.
We dropped Comcast a few months ago went with Hulu Live and Netflix.
We spend our 1 hour/day of watching whatever is available. It really doesn’t matter as we are just looking for brain rot for 1 hour.