Disney’s paying more than $8 billion for Comcast’s stake in Hulu.
Considering they are already trying to sell a $15 subscription with ads, they can suck my ass regardless of their corporate overlord.
“Everyone is leaving Disney+, but keeping Hulu, we must own Hulu so we can make it seem like our subscribers line went up!”
Comcast made the deal to sell their shares to Disney back in 2019. This was supposed to happen in 2024, but both companies agreed to move up the deadline.
Sorry guys it’s my fault. I canceled my D+ from my Hulu account when the prices went up. Didn’t realize Disney would stage a full-on takeover of Hulu to get me back.
“Alright now that we fully control Hulu, let’s make some changes around here to REALLY make that line go up.”
I’m about to start cutting everything lol. I’d rather be bored instead of buying another sub human CEO a fifth yacht. Bottom line go brr? Nah fam count me out.
Unironically based
sub human
I choose to believe that you mean submarine human, and will gladly kick in for any CEO who would like to
joinexplore the titanic
Isn’t it time to call the anti-monopoly?
Is that where you unflip a board game, get 3 hours of your life back, and your kids start talking to each other again?
Antitrust, sorry.
No no, anti-Monopoly is fine. I like the image it evokes in my mind of flipping tables. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
Eventually, Disney is going to own all of corporate media. Your choices are going to be bland, flavorless, Disney mass market appeal, or independent cinema.
There just needs to be a better way to market and distribute independent media.
Something better than this exclusivity bullshit
The fact no one has created an indie streaming service boggles my mind. You’d think a company like A24 or Criterion would try something
Ohh, didn’t know about that!
I can’t imagine how difficult those contracts would be to negotiate
Thanks for the reminder to cancel Disney+ I just saw my last invoice went up to like $27/mo or something. Fuck all this lol.
That’s what I’m here for
Cancelled mine recently when i saw the price almost doubled. Only still have Netflix, Dropout, and plex. Netflix is next on the chopping block.
Do they charge taxes and fees above the monthly? Just curious. Have never paid for, nor ever want to pay for the service. The Hulu+, ESPN+, Disney+ combo claims to be $24.99/mon, that’s nuts! You combine a few of these streaming services together and it’s more than basic cable.
Library card for the win.
$27.24 is what hit my bank account
I would be canceling disney as well, but I can bundle it with hulu for $2, so for now I’ll keep it.
Let me know when they buy The Pirate Bay.
I’m pretty sure that’s a new attraction at California Adventures.
Disney already over saturated marvel and Star Wars. I can’t wait for them to ruin regular tv streaming.
Piracy about to make a huge comeback.
I read an article a couple weeks ago that said it’s on the rise
Good.
I gotta learn how to sail the seas
Learn thee magical words in the ancient language of Docquer: Radar Sonarr Lidarr Bazaarr Sabnzb Sing them to great god Uzenaat and you will be blessed with all the content
Huh I wonder if there’s even any point in hulu continuing to exist in that case - why not just combine it with disney+?
They use Hulu for the not family friendly content
Deadpool movies are on Disney plus. So I guess that is not the reason anymore.
In America. In Europe they just have that content on disney+
As an American, I find this so stupid. Just put it all under one thing. I can’t believe how fragile we are as a culture that we need to separate these.
I was having this conversation yesterday - how Americans (mostly gen x and earlier) classify what is or isn’t “family friendly” is some bullshit.
At my job I play a lot of music. One night I played Ticks, Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off, and another song about getting a woman naked and no one cared.
I accidentally played the uncensored version of payphone and 6 people reported me to my boss for playing a song with swear words.
Older conservatives are just the biggest damn snowflakes in the world
This is what we said about HBO and now it’s relegated to a singlw category within a larger service.
But Disney doesn’t own Max yet.
Of course but these companies love to copy each other. Twitter is a shit show but introduced a subscription fee and now the rest of the social media companies are following suit for example.
So they can double charge
I think that’s the plan.
Does this mean Disney will be moving most/all their content to Disney+ in the US like it is in other countries? Isn’t Hulu a predominantly American used streaming service?
Hulu will continue existing and Disney+ will likely not take on any content. They cater to two target markets and they own both, so that works for them.
It also helps obscure the monopolistic back-to-cable tactic they’re playing. “Oh we have Hulu, Disney+, ESPN+, our customers get to choose what they want! There’s value and choice and freedom!”
Now I want to watch Thank You for Smoking.
if they are smart they will make hulu more of free service like it originally was and then put their played out content on it as an alternative to allowing it on a competitors service.
Hm, I don’t think that is impossible and I’d love to see it go that way. I would love for a streaming service to make any step towards being good for the consumer instead of the share holders.
Its sorta both. Its like friends and seinfeld. They are big enough hits for streaming platforms to vie for them but when their various shinies lose their shine then they just make ad money off them (well and privacy violation money)
One can hope.
They didn’t already?
No, they got 60% of Hulu when they bought FOX. WarnerMedia sold back their shares after the merger, giving Disney 67% and Comcast 33%.
Comcast and Disney set up a deal where either one could force a buyout of Comcast’s shares. The buyout is now happening and Disney will own 100% of Hulu.
Yes, this is the context missing from the article. There’s the requirement of one party from the 3 party joint venture (fox, comcast, disney) to buy out the other parties if one acquired a majority steak. There was also a lot of politics because Comcast and Disney both got into a bidding war with each other to acquire Fox as well as Sky. So in some sense, although Comcast lost the bid for Fox, they forced Disney to make over inflated bids for Fox and were then on the hook to buy Comcast out for all of Hulu. So there’s a lot of bad blood recently, but it it also goes back to Comcast’s attempt at a hostile takeover of Disney back in the early 2000s that is probably like HBO’s Succession type stuff.
Thanks for the information. I wasn’t aware of any of that
Curious, I see most people complaining about this merger, but I have also seen the argument that there are too many streaming services with exclusive content. Wouldn’t this acquisition work towards consolidating content again under one subscription. Similar to how Netflix used to be the main player in the space before competition came along.
I only have spotify at the moment. I used to Netflix and Hulu.
The problem isn’t so much the number of streaming services as it is the fact that they’re all vertically integrating so each has their exclusive content and is the only game in town to get it. If production and distribution were broken up so that the same content were available from a number of competing platforms, it wouldn’t matter that there were “too many” because you wouldn’t feel like you needed them all to avoid missing out.
A world where you could picked based on the user experience of the apps instead of slice of content? Sign me up. To hell with that HBO Max app.
literally just cancelled disney+ last week. now they’re gonna buy hulu and jack the prices up?
I would love to just get a tiny glimpse of the future in say 10-15 years. At this rate I would bet Disney will own literally all media of every type…
We’ll have Disney Entertainment, Nestle Foods, Amazon Everything, and Musk Internet. That will be the entire economy.
This is why I don’t look forward to the future lol
this was always the end stage of capitalism: one megacorporation that everyone rents everything from, permanently entrenched and either in bed with a government they’ve bought and paid for or so powerful on its own that government dare not attempt to do anything to regulate it.
I don’t think musk will corner the Internet market. I don’t have a timeline in mind, and I could be wrong, but as established car makers start getting into the EV game with gusto I think Tesla could end up losing a lot of value and absorbed by one of the big international car manufacturers as their inhouse EV brand.
He’s talking about starlink, not Tesla. Ford isnt about to launch an ISP
I know. I was extremely unclear but I was using Tesla as an example how I think musk won’t be as wealthy and powerful in the future. I don’t think that there’s a chance that starlink will replace all ISPs in the future
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Disney used to own 66% of Hulu. All they did was buy the remaining 33% of it.
All this really changes is a bit of accounting and divying up the profits. Disney rolled Disney Streaming and Hulu into one combined engineering team several years back. They own ESPN, too.
So when Disney’s price hike doesn’t produce the amount of new money that selling the same thing is expected to produce do you think they’ll just take it on the chin and say “Oh well, we’re already very profitable and successful we dont need extra money” or do you think they’ll raise the price of Hulu while cutting the quality of service?
No, but would they when they had to give Comcast their share?
I’m so glad we don’t have Hulu in Canada, it makes Disney actually worth it. I don’t think I’d be willing to pay for either if the content was split. As it is, it’s my most used streaming service. I hear the common thought is it’s just for kids, but that couldn’t be further from the truth, there’s a ton of adult stuff on there (I don’t even have kids).
I think that’s why they’re buying it actually. I think Hulu will be teen and adult and Disney will be kids and adolescents
Which is why I’m glad it’s all 1 service in Canada.
All one service… for now
Until you hiked my bundle from $7.50 to $19/mo I was a loyal customer who supported you getting sued and broken up.
Now I just can’t wait for you to grow large enough that you get broken up and I give you zero shekels.
