This week on TechHive: Hulu’s losing new NBC shows. What’s left?
Hulu could look a lot different this fall after losing a chunk of its on-demand TV catalog.
NBCUniversal announced last week that it will stop providing current-season shows to Hulu’s on-demand service later this year. Instead, shows such as “Saturday Night Live,” “The Voice,” and “Chicago Fire” will move over to NBC’s own Peacock streaming service.
It’s not unusual for shows to migrate between streaming services, especially now that so many cable networks have their own. Still, this particular pullback marks the end of an era for Hulu, whose next-day major network programming has always been its defining feature, and it comes as Hulu is also losing many of the on-demand shows that it licensed from other cable networks.
The result is a murky future for one of the streaming wars’ earliest contenders. Read the full column on TechHive.
Weekly rewind:
Ad-supported Disney+: Just as I was sending last week’s newsletter, Disney confirmed that it will launch an ad-supported tier for Disney+ later this year. The company didn’t announce a price, though its press release mentions “a lower price point” than the $8 per month ad-free version, so it probably won’t be free.
A chart in this Hollywood Reporter story helps explain why Disney is so interested in advertising: With the ad-supported version of Hulu, Disney brings in about $13 per user, per month, the same as what Hulu charges for its ad-free tier. The company likely sees a chance to bring in more users with little risk to its revenue, especially if it can share targeted ad sales and data across its products.
The rush to reintroduce ads in streaming TV is still a bummer to see, though, especially in a kid-friendly service like Disney+. (On the upside, Netflix is still saying that ads don’t make sense for its service, though it hasn’t ruled them out.)
More cable news unbundling: Starting this spring, Peacock will stream several MSNBC shows just hours after they air on cable, the Wall Street Journal reports. Shows coming to Peacock include “Morning Joe,” “All In With Chris Hayes,” and “The Beat with Ari Melber,” though MSNBC still seems to be reserving Rachel Maddow and some of its other heavy-hitters for cable.
The announcement follows a similar move by Fox News, which started streaming replays of “Hannity,” “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” and several other primetime shows on its $6 per month Fox Nation service last fall. Both companies are trying to bring in meaningful streaming revenue without tanking their cable businesses, and so they’ve settled on a strategy of making cord-cutters wait a little while to see some popular cable shows.
CNN, meanwhile, seems intent on charging $6 per month for an entirely separate slate of programming with its forthcoming CNN+ service. Good luck with that.
Baseball on Apple TV: With the MLB lockout likely over, Apple will be streaming two games every Friday night on Apple TV+. The games on Friday Night Baseball, as Apple calls it, will be exclusive to the service, so if your local team is involved, your regional sports network won’t carry the game. (Apple says it will allow free access to the games for a “limited time”.)
I’m normally the last one to complain about “fragmentation” among streaming services, but it’s irksome to see games get divvied up piecemeal. (See also: Peacock reportedly has a deal to stream baseball games on Mondays and Wednesday.) Though I think the unbundling of sports from expensive pay TV packages is a good thing overall, I’m not sure what deals like these will accomplish other than making fans more confused and annoyed. More thoughts along that line in this story of mine over at Fast Company.
More catch-up
- Apple TV+ lands on Comcast cable boxes and streaming devices with a three-month trial.
- WarnerMedia considers adding NBA games to HBO Max.
- The numbers are in: 4.7 million people ditched their TV packages last year.
- Here’s my profile of KweliTV, which streams the Black stories that larger services overlook.
Save more money
If you’re new to YouTube TV, you may be able to get two weeks of the service for free, followed by up to three months for $55 per month, which is $10 off the usual price. Cord Cutters News also reports that some users are seeing an offer of $45 per month for three months, albeit without the two-week trial. (I have not confirmed the latter.) There’s no way to control which offer you get, though you may be able to refresh your page or use a different device to try and get the opposite one.
Meanwhile, Sling TV is offering a bunch of streaming device deals for new customers:
- Buy a Fire TV Stick 4K (on sale for $30 right now) and get a two-week trial.
- Some customers can grab the faster Fire TV Stick 4K Max for $35 with the code AddFTV at checkout, also with a two-week Sling trial.
- Prepay for a month of Sling TV and get a Chromecast with Google TV for free.
Amazon says you can redeem the trial anytime before April 18, so these might be decent ways to get through the early stages of March Madness if you’re in need of a new streaming device. (And if you’ve subscribed to Sling already, creating a new email address is easier than you might think.)
Thanks for reading!
Got cord cutting questions you’d like me to answer? Just reply to this email and I’ll do my best to respond!
Until next week,
Jared