United States media conglomerate Time Warner will become a 10 per cent owner of Hulu, the premium streaming TV service that offers current season programming, premium original content, films and full seasons of series.
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Time Warner is about to give consumers a bit more reason to cut the cord. A year earlier the New York-based company earned $971 million, or $1.16 per share. Its 2016 per-share earnings, excluding some items, are now expected to be in the range of $5.35 to $5.45.
Shares closed down about 1.3% on Tuesday but added almost 3% in Wednesday’s premarket action, trading at $78.00. Second-quarter results also compare to the Thomson Reuters consensus estimates for $1.16 EPS and $7.05 billion in revenues.
Chief executive Jeff Bewkes said the company was committed to “supporting and developing new platforms”. At the same time, we’re capitalizing on new distribution opportunities to take advantage of the growing demand for high-quality video content around the world. The Walt Disney Company, 21st Century Fox, and Comcast are existing owners of the joint venture. But it said it sustained losses on investments because of a decline in interest rates. With the Hulu deal, The Wall Street Journal said, it is “attempting to carefully thread the needle in trying to reach younger viewers while not explicitly encouraging cord-cutting”. The Firm operates through three divisions: Turner, which consists of cable networks and digital media properties; Home Box Office, which consists of domestic premium pay television and streaming services, and global premium pay, basic tier television services and streaming services, and Warner Bros., which consists of television, feature film, home video and videogame production and distribution. Subscription revenue, paid by cable and satellite TV companies, climbed 11%.
Turner doesn’t have quite the mainstream broadcasting muscle, but it does own CNN, TBS, Cartoon Network, TNT and others. It is a library of online TV show after a 10-year long journey but it now wants to be cable business.
With all things Donald Trump blaring constantly on CNN, Turner’s advertising sales rose 6%.
None of which, of course, has been lost on Time Warner, whose entrance into the online market has been extremely slow. Revenue at HBO, which hosts the hit show “Game of Thrones”, was up 2 percent.
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Home Box Office, or HBO, saw a 3 percent increase in revenue due to an uptick in subscription revenues.
