Why is Disney going to keep their Disney Plus streaming service separate from Hulu???
Why is Disney keeping ESPN Plus streaming service separate from Hulu (with hulu's massive push into live sports this year)???
- Hulu advertising tier: this can be the dumping ground for all the mainstream network television that Disney and Fox owned, allowing them to monetize that content after broadcast
- Hulu premium: compete with Netflix for premium television, can be more mature, and allows for monetizing viewers willing to pay for ad-free.
- Disney+: obviously a different brand with content requirements, it can allow Disney to grow their brand, and monetize the most “die-hard” fans, on top of other channels.
- ESPN+: live is very important, and allows premium advertising revenues to be generated. Sports does not have much crossover with other channels, and has unique business models.
All of these allow Disney to continue making tons of money from the current cable bundles, while opening new markets and segments for monetization, all while defending against threats like Netflix, etc.
I don’t own Disney stock, but their current situation seems very considered, given the current market and where it is going. I think they have single handedly disrupted Netflix’s plan to be the new “TV”.
{{citation needed}}
I found myself enjoying live Tennis on Amazon Prime, and it serves a very similar purpose to me as watching their vod shows
Less sure about the separation between Hulu's live sports play and ESPN+. It could just be a timing thing as Disney has only had a controlling stake in Hulu for a month (officially). There will likely be a lot of integration and cross over between the 2 eventually.
I think that one of the great ironies of on-demand media is just how much stuff is locked up by rights holders and is unavailable. The Disneys and Netflixes of the world make remarkably small catalogs available. You should see some of the libraries that tv stations have sitting on the shelf.
Maybe it's just that a serious change in format and/or delivery always loses 90% of the previous material. It's funny how few LPs made it to CD.
Choice only drives priced down when it is choice between options which are actually substitutes for each other. What is instead happening is that the uniquely attractive franchises that people are interest in and not willing to substitute for something else are getting distributed over more different offerings, which isn't really competition in the sense that drives down prices much.
You can rotate your National Amusement(Viacom/CBS/Paramount), Disney/Fox/Hulu, Comcast/UniversalNBC, Sony, ATT/DirecTV/WB/Turner/HBO, Netflix accounts. They arent a contract. You have the incumbents (Disney, NA, Sony, Comcast, ATT, Verizon) vs the tech giants (Netflix, Apple, Google, Facebook.) One thing to notice is that Sony, Disney, and NA are now the odd ones out not owning an ISP. You buy one for a month each, cancel, switch to the next one.
It ends up being a LOT cheaper than cable if you rotate, and probably more expensive if you decide you need all channels at all times. The ability to rotate through them is a huge plus over cable/satellite.
You're absolutely not alone and the fragmented ecosystem companies are building will accumulate interest. A lot of potential viewers will never be exposed to content due to fragmentation, and without a critical mass of subscribers, "must-see" content will never grow organically.
In reality I think most people's dream is access to everything ever made under one app for < $20 akin to Spotify.
Yes spinning the same content out into more services with smaller catalogs that each cost as much as the old large-catalog service is a verion of a la carte, but its a version that illustrates (rather than contradicts) that the vision of a la carte as cheaper is dead (or perhaps more accurately was always a pipe dream.)
No, individual streaming service prices are mostly constant or edging up over time as catalogs shrink and more content owners set up their own exclusive siloed services.
I personally don't think they are even comparable services but I have not had cable service in ~15 years so things might have changed considerably.
Shame that they're going to be totally separate ones. Seems purely branding, especially around "disney app" being more family friendly than a "Hulu app with just disney package."
That's exactly what "a la carte" means. It seems like what people really want is the opposite of "a la carte" service--a one-stop-shop for everything, like cable, except over the Internet.
The thing to remember about hulu is a TON of hardware remotes have a physical Hulu button. You wouldnt want to lose that kind of placement without remapping it to a new app.
Knows a lot? Probably not. Knows enough to disapprove of it? I'd say so. Especially when limited to the market of people interested in buying American video content.
I will give you 20th century fox, but I'm not sure that registers as being the same company.
E.g., this event got a fair amount of coverage the Netherlands:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/02/tucker-carlson-i...
But the general role and influence of Fox News in US politics and society is a frequent topic in journalism outside of the US as well of course.
It might also be branding - Disney wants everything Disney to scream DISNEY, as opposed to Hulu content.
Do we know if Disney has it's own rights for distribution? It must.
Look at Netflix. There’s no way to tell where any particular show fits without looking into it. Netflix needs some kind of sub branding to slit out the different niches of shows. Disney is going to get that out of the gate. And they will let just subxniches of people subscribe to just the part they want.
It also sounds from PR that despite taking control of Hulu, Disney also has interest in Hulu remaining their Live TV offering for non-Disney channels, and that Disney would still like Hulu to be a welcome home for what Time Warner and NBC Universal content it can continue to license, though that will probably start to get weird in coming years. It probably would still be in Disney's interests that Hulu seem a "neutral" or "cable" brand, especially given the actual cable infrastructure that AT&T (Time Warner) and Comcast (NBC Universal) directly control.
If money is speech, Disney has been talking a lot in how much money it has spent on both the Disney+ project and the Hulu buyout. But speech of the money will always be a bit of reading the tea leaves and the color of the wind.
Hulu is also only a US domestic service. Disney surely wants to sell subscriptions to its more mature material worldwide, just like Disney+.
Also, Disney seems to have renewed Hulu's exclusive contracts for Cloak & Dagger and The Runaways, so it sounds like Disney is very prepared to take a "split" approach to Marvel with Hulu being home to an interesting subset of Marvel properties. It does sound like R-rated films like Deadpool will be on Hulu rather than Disney+, at least based on conjecture so far.
(I also wouldn't be surprised if all of the Fox X-Men stuff ended up at Hulu rather than Disney+, rather than confuse young fans of the current MCU. It may be Disney makes the dividing line be the "Marvel Studios" brand, of which the Fox films were not. But of course that remains to be seen.)
Hulu also has day after broadcast content with NBC,ABC, and FOX. Those are much more valuable than library content.
>>> Disney sees Hulu as a key pillar in its direct-to-consumer strategy, serving as a home to more adult-oriented entertainment fare alongside the upcoming Disney Plus (launching in November in the U.S.) and the ESPN Plus sports package. Disney says it’s likely the trio of streaming services will be bundled together at a discount at some point.