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WSJ, re/code

Fox and Disney to Offer Web-Based Skinny Bundle Via Hulu

May 2, 2016  •  Post A Comment

“Hulu is developing a subscription service that would stream feeds of popular broadcast and cable TV channels, people familiar with the plans said, a move that would make the company a competitor to traditional pay-TV providers and other new digital entrants,” report Joe Flint and  Shalini Ramachandran in The Wall Street Journal. [Note: The Wall Street Journal is behind a pay-wall and may charge you to read its article. If so, a good alternative would be to see the re/code piece on the subject.]

The Journal says that Hulu “hopes to launch the new cable TV-style online service in the first quarter of 2017, the people said. Walt Disney Co. and 21st Century Fox, which are co-owners of Hulu, are near agreements to license many of their channels for the platform. Comcast’s NBCUniversal is also an owner in Hulu, but so far hasn’t agreed to license its networks for the planned digital pay-TV service, the people said.”

Cost of the service would likely be about $40 per month, the story notes.

Notes re/code in its follow-up story, “Disney and 21st Century Fox — which own two-thirds of Hulu and control its management — want to sell a service that competes directly with the pay TV distributors who are their most important customers.”

 

 

 

4 Comments

  1. Depending on the number of channels offered, this could still be way over-priced. If this is for 4 or 5 channels, I doubt it’s going to fly.

    The way most people think about bundling vs. ala carte pricing, they’re expecting to pay 1 to maybe 2 dollars, at most, per channel… maybe a bit more (3 to 4 dollars) for premium channels like HBO, Starz, etc. Their math on this is… average monthly cable cost divided by number of channels. This is around a dollar per channel, maybe even less, depending on the package they subscribed to. This is the customer expectation these companies are going to have to deal with. Maybe these companies could “educate” customers by explaining how their pricing structure is (will be?) determined and convince customers they are paying a fair price.

    But I doubt it would work, even if they did that… which would be highly unlikely.

  2. People are not going to pay for a bundle if it includes channels they never watch. That is why we continue to see cable and satellite subscriptions going down. People are willing to pay more than $1 per channel if it is a channel that they want to watch – HBO and Showtime have proven this. But no one wants to pay over $20 a month for sport channels if they are not a sports fan. This is the major issue with bundling – paying for channels never watched. The public is beginning to understand the pricing structure and are looking for ways to get around it. Netflix and Amazon provide most shows people want to see, even if they have to wait a month to a year, to see the current episodes. They don’t mind waiting because there are plenty of other shows to watch during the wait

  3. I am a 76yr old widow. I am totally in interested in sports of any kind. I watch local news and world news and the news opinion channels. I watch htgtv and history, lifetime and Daystar. I cabled my house in 1971 with cable sold by a cable company supplier and had an atenna on the roof. When the city said I had to have cable, we joined. I have ONE 13″ TV and my cable bill is practically $90 per month which is a large chunk out of my meager fixed income. Everybody wants to replace my cable for $$$. I need a skinny bundle!

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