In November of previous year, reports surfaced regarding discussions for media streaming service Hulu to sell a stake to Time Warner.
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Hulu, whose current owners include Walt Disney Co.
The Wall Street Journal reports that TWX has resumed discussions that were earlier scuttled about the company acquiring a 25 percent interest in Hulu.
The deal would boost the value Hulu at more than $5 billion and would advance the media streaming service’s efforts in competing with rivals such a Netflix and Amazon.
The talks illustrate the headache facing media companies when it comes to Hulu. However mirroring the TV model will leave TV with nothing to offer over streaming and would only lure more cord-cutters.
Time Warner has been under pressure to show to its investors that it has a plan to continue thriving in an entertainment industry where streaming content is rapidly on the rise.
Just how much longer should cord-cutters be able to watch episodes from the current seasons of TV shows on Hulu?
Hulu contains current-season episodes for shows such as “Empire” of Fox and “Quantico” of ABC.
Those familiar with the matter say that Time Warner has already made this clear to Hulu’s owners, but current seasons aren’t going anywhere yet.
Hulu’s owners don’t have plans to remove current seasons for now, according to people familiar with their thinking. DIS, +2.45%, 21st Century Fox and Comcast Corp. The former agreement requires them to make almost all current seasons of shows produced in-house available to the service directly after air. The agreement has been receiving short-term extensions during the interim as discussions drag out.
Time Warner has accused Hulu of hurting TV networks and accelerating cord-cutting by offering current episodes of TV shows.
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Hulu services are offered to subscribers in Japan and the US. Time Warner clearly has an appreciation for the popularity and utility of the service, but it also sees current-season streaming as a threat to the traditional pay-TV model. The free-range access has Time Warner’s gears grinding because the company believes that access to full seasons and current seasons on Hulu, or elsewhere apart from pay-TV, is causing harm to the producers and owners of the series as it will lead to people disconnecting subscriptions to pay-TV, or as the media refers to it, “cutting the cord”.
