Disney is about to own all of Hulu | Disney’s paying more than $8 billion for Comcast’s stake in Hulu.::Disney and Comcast have reached a deal on Hulu’s buyout. Disney expects to pay about $8.61 billion to get the 33 percent owned by Comcast as a result of their agreement in 2019.
This does not look like it’ll end up well for the consumer… can we please get some company busting going on in this current capitalistic hellscape?
Avast, ya scurvy dog! 'Tis time to set sail!
Gimme a 🏴☠️! Gimme a 🧲! Gimme a 🌊!
By 2030:
DISNEY BUYS RIGHTS TO OXYGEN ON PLANET EARTH, WILL BEGIN A $500/MONTH SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE CALLED DISNEY AIR, FOR ANY CUSTOMERS WHO WOULD LIKE TO LIVE ON.
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Either this option or choose the slightly cheaper but riskier life deprivation option of being a Musk Mars Slave. Hopefully the plan of Susan B. Anthony dollar suicide booths will have been fleshed out and running by then.
Regulators: No. We’ll happily bust your asses instead.
LoL
I don’t actually expect much to change for the consumer end on this one. Comcast had already started moving their content over to Peacock.
Oh no, luxury services that nobody needs at all will make profit because the average consumer will pay for it. Whatever shall we do.
Ahoy.
I understand this reference.
I think they copied it from an online source…
Yarr!
Something something monopoly
Something something your government should do something about it but it doesn’t because it’s controlled by big corpos
Not really applicable here. Comcast went their own way with Peacock. CBS went with Paramount+. No idea what FOX is doing since they sold off their production to Disney.
We’re still looking at a monopoly from the perspective of accessing particular content.
We would all be more happier if the video streaming platforms operated closer to the music platforms where all platforms had mostly the same content, and we just got to pick the experience we want.
As is there is no choise if you’re looking for something in particular, which is pretty similar to a monopoly.
Would you rather have 5 services that you can choose which to pay for or have to pay the entire cost of all 5 together?
Neither?
I would rather have 20 services, all with access to most of the same content.
Some services give you the option to pick and choose which media packages you want.
These services are now able to compete on a mostly even ground in terms of content, and instead there is an incentive for them to provide a good user experience.
This would also encourage the media companies to stop licencing their content exclusively or as upfront large blocks, and instead per/stream style licensing could show up (where a content owner is paid based off how much their content is watched).
This would then encourage media companies to produce content people want to watch, rather than the last 10 years where the priority is to have larger libraries of exclusive content (even if that content isn’t good).
None of that is a given if content companies didn’t also own the streaming companies, but it’s is the sort of market that had the best version of Netflix (before they were making content their user experience was much better).
So you want tech companies to spend money on features completely outside of the content and then also have the content, and expect that not to cost substantially more?
Producing “content people want to watch” gets you lowest common denominator crap. Say goodbye to prestige TV and hello to reality TV.
You’re sooooo close.
I want tech companies to create streaming services.
I want content companies to make content.
AKA removing the monopoly.
And somehow you think it’ll be cheaper. It hasn’t made music streaming cheaper. It hasn’t made streaming cable replacements cheaper.
I’m back to where I started, 100% 🏴☠️. I tried to play nice for about 3 years only to get fucked about every year. No more.
Would this be a potential push to form a monopoly?
Always is. Competition isn’t profitable.
How so? They already had a majority stake in Hulu as part of the Fox acquisition. Originally Hulu was 30% Disney, 30% Fox, 30% Comcast, 10% private equity. Hulu purchased back that 10% stake before Disney purchased Fox.
When the Fox deal closed Disney owned 70% of the company, and it was announced that the earliest they could buy out Comcast’s stake was 2023/2024. The writing has been on the wall ever since.
A Disney monopoly in streaming? Further consolidation wouldn’t be the worst thing at this point. There are too many competing services.
So just cable 2.0, I’m sure they wouldn’t screw us again right? /s
Have you looked at Hulu’s add-ons? You can get sports packages, movie packages, random-ass-bunch-of-channels packages. Sound familiar?
This is just techbros inventing stuff… They invented taxi (Uber), bed and breakfast accomodation (Airbnb), food delivery etc…
Holy shit Airbnb sure is shitty af
Oh no no no no no, they’ll still exist, it will all just be owned by Disney
Don’t they already basically have a monopoly? They can do anything they want, they own almost everything and are too big to fail.
No way! How could you say that?
They’ve won the game at that point. Only Paramount and Netflix will be the holdouts, and this all just turns into another $100/mo package like cable.
Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime aren’t going anywhere since their parent companies have infinite money to burn on streaming. For this reason alone I think these two services are more likely to survive in the long run than Disney+ or Netflix. There’s also Max, which has some great content but I’m not as confident it’ll still be around in 10 years.
In Europe there is also sky, who has all rights on HBO stuff here and thus can hold out despite its terrible player. Also DAZN for sport events. Both are imo completely relying on third parties though (sky on HBO and dazn on the leagues).
Yeah but those are mostly shit.
HBO is Discovery now I believe…
Comcast has mostly moved over to using Peacock already, I think. Warner Bros is also separated with Max. And of course Amazon/MGM is doing their own thing as well.
HBO is part of Warner which is part of Discovery (I think).
Right, I said Warner has Max for their streaming service.
In the uk Hulu stuff is already on Disney+ as “Star”. I imagine they want that in the US as well since it gives a lot of value to Disney+. I think it’s better however… Monopolies and all that.
For all the stuff Disney own, there sure is a lot of fuck all new on Disney+.
They’re relying on their stupidly big back catalogue.
Yeah it is a bit of a trickle, but I personally don’t mind it since I’m not a binge watcher anymore. I enjoy focusing on one or two shows at a time and if theyre releasing weekly, even better.
I remember back in 2008 it was free and that’s how I watched all of Veronica Mars
I’ve been looking into setting up a home server with Jellyfin and qBittorrent, so this just makes me feel better about that decision
I can upgrade my internet to gigabit and get rid of my two streaming services and save money. Win win, imo
Throw in overseerr/jellyseerr, sonarr, radarr, jackett/prowlarr, and you’re cookin’ with gas!
Maybe they’ll roll Hulu’s content into Disney+ without raising prices.
Without raising prices, right?
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It’s a condition for me at this stage. I dropped Netflix for fucking around with Jojo, pricejacking, and more.
Hulu went up a dollar last year, but somehow needed to go up three dollars this year. I’ve been an honest consumer since getting spotify, but this year I added a bunch of extra storage to my computer with nothing to fill it.
Disney isn’t allowed to take away Big Sexy
I mean, it seems Jared is pretty respectful so even if they do mess with it I’m sure he’ll find somewhere else to go, but damn it.
I’m wondering how this will affect Spotify, because back when I paid for Spotify it came bundled with Hulu.
It shouldn’t. They’re both separate entities and remain so, they just bundled themselves to entice customers.
All I know is Charlie Brown Holiday cartoons are behind a pay way now
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
The entertainment giant announced Wednesday that it “expects it will pay” $8.61 billion to acquire Comcast’s 33 percent stake, giving Disney full ownership of Hulu.
Both Disney and Comcast agreed to an appraisal process that will evaluate Hulu’s equity fair value as of September 30th.
The deal was initially set to take place in 2024, but Comcast and Disney agreed to move the date to September 30th.
“That was just a hypothetical that we picked five years ago,” said Comcast CEO Brian Roberts during an investors conference in September.
With Hulu barely seeing a shift in subscribers last quarter, Disney announced a price hike across all of its streaming services and hinted at a password-sharing crackdown.
Disclosure: Comcast’s NBCU division is a minority investor in Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company.
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