“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,” Joe Flint and Shalini Ramachandran report for The Wall Street Journal. “The company 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.”
“Disney’s ABC, ESPN and Disney Channel are expected to be available on the service along with the Fox broadcast network, Fox News, FX and Fox’s national and regional sports channels,” Flint and Ramachandran report. “Preliminary conversations with other programmers have begun, but the service isn’t looking to offer all the hundreds of channels found in the traditional cable bundle, according to the people familiar with the plans. Comcast Corp.’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”
“Hulu hasn’t set a price for its planned service but Sanford C. Bernstein media analyst Todd Juenger estimated that it would likely cost around $40 a month. An executive close to Hulu said that figure was in the ballpark,” Flint and Ramachandran report. “Many companies are vying to offer an online version of cable TV in some form… Besides Sling and Vue, other new entrants in digital TV include Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube, AT&T Inc., T-Mobile US and Apple Inc. Many of these players are seeking to deliver a subscription pay-TV package that includes a dozen or so popular channels for a price between $24.99 and $39.99, media executives have said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hopefully, Apple can work out deals to finally launch their long-awaited programming bundle(s) before first quarter 2017. How about for Christmas 2016, please, at least?!
As we’ve oft written: Apple’s Internet TV service will have to have ESPN. It will also likely require the “Big Four” networks (ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC) – although it could launch with three out of four and eventually hammer out a deal with whichever one is being the most reticent. That said, having already missed the launch of the new Apple TV, Christmas 2015, and the Chinese New Year, Apple might as well wait until they have a full dance card.
What others networks should be considered to be must-haves?
Beyond the Big Four, if you go by primetime ratings (total viewers), the top 20 U.S. cable networks are:
1. ESPN
2. Fox News Channel
2. USA
3. TBS
4. Disney
5. Discovery Channel
6. History Channel
7. TNT
8. HGTV
9. Nickelodeon
10. AMC
11. Adult Swim
12. FX
13. Cartoon Network
14. Food Channel
15. Lifetime
16. ABC Family
17. Syfy
18. TLC
19. Hallmark
20. Investigation DiscoverySource: Nielsen estimates, Live plus-3 for Dec. 29, 2014 – Dec. 16, 2015 (M-Su 8-11 p.m.)
SEE ALSO:
ESPN president: Don’t hold your breath for standalone ESPN streaming – February 18, 2016
Apple cuts the cord on Internet TV plans – December 17, 2015
Apple, TV networks clash over size and makeup of Internet TV bundle – December 9, 2015
Apple debuts new Apple TV ad, ‘The Future of Television’ – December 9, 2015
Greedy media companies stymie Apple’s plan to offer Apple TV Internet TV package – December 9, 2015
CBS CEO Moonves says Apple puts live TV service ‘on hold’ – December 8, 2015
Fox’s James Murdoch, CBS’s Les Moonves hint at looming Apple Web TV service launch – November 5, 2015
CBS CEO Moonves says Apple TV content deal is likely – October 14, 2015
CBS CEO: We’re still in negotiations with Apple over new Internet TV service – May 27, 2015
If they offer fox “news” then they’ll need CNN and MSNBC. There has to be some 24hr cable news and analysis.
The ratings do not support your infantile babbling. Yup, fucking Hallmark and CARTOONS have higher ratings than CNN and MSNBC, likely higher than both of those blatantly leftist promotional outlets combined.
So sorry to invade your “safe-space” with actual reality, you naive special snowflake, you.
While I am not defending CNN and MSNBC, I would not recommend using Fox News ratings as a metric for the quality of the show’s content. Consider all of the other semi-fictional shows that get great ratings. For a “news” show, it contains a lot of opinion…some of it rather sketchy.
No, you weren’t ‘defending’ any Net, just using your eighth-grade level critical thinking skill to spew your hate against Fox News.
And Fox News, as far as their ‘news’ goes, is decidedly leftist led by that ditz Shep (the lost Stooge) Smith and Establisment Republicans. Not to mention Chris Wallace and various other lefties stolen from the major Nets.
Dude, it’s time to quit the thumb-sucking and grow up and leave mommie’s house….
I mean, you know, if you want to use hyperbole and middle school insults….
Sorry to invade your safe space, anonymous poster. Please just keep the politicrap out of this forum.
JWW is right. People have to have real news network. Fox News is
Little more than a PR mouthpiece for the conservative movement and The Republcan Party. Fox News cannot be trusted to accurately report political or government stories.
I guess im buying this service from Hulu instead of waiting for vaporservice from Apple.
You’d think Apple would have more leverage for deals like this than than Hulu. After all, Laurene Powell Jobs owns a significant chunk of ESPN ABC and DISNEY
Hulu is not run by a homosexual seeking social justice living on the residues of his genius boss…that helps.
And Apple will never be allowed to play in the TV sandbox – at any cost.
Who are you douchebag?? People are entitled to different lifestyles, channels, freedom!!! Your either for freedom or against it, you can like and dislike things but when you trample on others freedoms just cause they don’t hold true to yours, you are not a patriot you are a douchebag!!!!! Works for both sides of the ledger by the way!!!
Wow, MDN, way to think not an inch outside the box. Your list of stations, with the exception of AMC and maybe ESPN, is a list of entertainment for a nation of dullards. If this is the kind of package deal Apple has in mind, count a lot of us out.
It’s not a case of MDN not thinking “outside the box,” Mr. Hackneyed.
MDN clearly explained their list is “primetime ratings (total viewers), the top 20 U.S. cable networks. Source: Nielsen estimates, Live plus-3 for Dec. 29, 2014 – Dec. 16, 2015 (M-Su 8-11 p.m.)”
I would not pay for ESPN, but I’d pay to Not have Fox!
God forbid any truth should disrupt your highly confused worldview.
Good point. Fox News is the only network that caught the Benghazi lying from the current administration while the others were all parroting the White House lies.
Steve Jobs would have got this done asap!
According to his biography, Steve told Issacson that he “solved” the TV problem but wouldn’t reveal his solution.
Apparently the networks haven’t bought into that “solution.”
My guess is that they are terrified of giving Apple the keys to the kingdom which is what they think the record labels did with iTunes.
You nailed it. Record labels *and* app developers.
We plan on nuking cable soon and will adopt the service that is available. Shame on Apple if Hulu wins the race.
Right behind you. Cutting cable TV and limiting my ‘solutions’ to $99 a month to include the cost of Internet.
I can always read a book…or write some more….
I just don’t see how Apple adds any value to a TV service.
PBS, yeah? What, are we all mindless dolts?
😉
BBC, likewise….
I don’t need Apple’s snail’s pace to rely on for my content as long as I’ve got Kodi and a dozen updated add-ons. Apple is going to continue to get its ass kicked by companies who move quickly. I honestly understand Apple’s conservative pace but it’s getting the company nowhere in terms of value. Apple has become the ocean liner that takes 20 miles to make a simple turn while Amazon is a speedboat that can turn on a dime. Investors like that sort of agility from a company. Apple is becoming a fuddy-duddy and it shows. Don’t expect Apple to be a first-mover at anything as it’s become a committee-based company with a CEO who’d prefer to tackle social issues rather than company issues.
Well, Amazon’s net profit for an entire year doesn’t reach Apple’s in a single quarter. Not even close.
And while I despise Apple’s incremental releases and high prices vs high volume, a company like Amazon only enriches investors, not its employees….
With Tim Cook at the helm I believe that Hulu could easily capture market share. Cook is walking in daze, oblivious and unaware of how to build and develop Apple products and services. I am sick with those who excuse Cook’s failures and mistakes.
Tim Cook should buy Hulu now.
I believe Tim Cook the supply-chain genius is outside his comfort zone dealing with media moguls, and prefers to delegate those negotiations to his lieutenants, who so far have proven ineffective. I miss Steve Jobs, who’d storm into board rooms and take over meetings like Robert Preston in The Music Man. There’d be flim-flam alright, but it would work and he’d get his agreements from a bemused crowd of old-school operators.
That being said, Steve Jobs claimed he’d “cracked” television but somehow never came through, like how Fermat’s Last Theorem took 200 years before it got proven. None of us wants to wait that long for television to be solved, and a lot of us would feel uncomfortable living with the Google Approximation.
I foresee lots of bumbling and blundering ahead as these companies attempt to emulate the lousy-ass cable TV bundling bullshit over the Internet. I foresee lots of FAIL. I also foresee lots of incentive for Internet users to find OTHER ways, some of which will be nefarious, to get their programming without having to deal with all this corporate manipulation and price gouging.
Agreed. There is a big revolution waiting to occur here. The pent-up demand for reasonably priced TV access is massive. Cost will be the #1 criterion. I believe the winner is going to be the company that can provide that service with the smallest possible margins. I don’t think Apple can do that. The winner may be a company that we least expected. Hulu might have something here.
Certainly if cost is the #1 criterion, this is not a place Apple knows how to play in. Apple charges premium prices, period. I don’t see if Apple is simply packaging someone else’s programming, exactly what is Apple bringing to the party, the Apple TV hardware?, hardly groundbreaking enough.
Comparing “apples” to oranges, product wise – attention to detail, overall excellence, I would bet more on Hulu than on Apple from looking at AppleTV4,
I do not want a bundle- I want a la carte. I already have a bundle of shit from Comcast that I do not want and do not wish to subsidize.
HULU is owned by Comcast (NBC), Disney (ABC/ESPN), and Murdoch (Fox TV). Do you think there is a chance in hell they will sell you a package without their cash cows?
No fucking bundles
Its not over till its over. Nobody knows who will have it out first. and just because its first does’t mean it will be the best anyway.