But that might not matter too much: The newspaper’s sources tell it that Hulu “isn’t looking to offer all the hundreds of channels found in the traditional cable bundle”. Hulu is owned jointly by Disney, 21st Century Fox, and Comcast, but Comcast doesn’t have any say in the management of the company because of the terms of its acquisition of NBCUniversal.
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Another online TV bundle could be hitting the market as soon as next year, and this one may have big TV networks behind it. According to The Wall Street Journal, Disney and 20th Century Fox are close to making a deal with Hulu to license channels and content for a new digital TV service that could be available in early 2017.
Disney and Fox will likely argue that they’re not trying to compete directly with cable companies; they simply see working with Hulu as a way to reach cord-cutters and people who never had cable subscriptions to begin with. Notably, Comcast’s NBCUniversal is an owner in Hulu but it has yet to agree to license its networks for the service. In fact, the Journal makes it sound like Hulu’s offering won’t be all the different from Sling’s. The Wall Street Journal reports Hulu now plans to price the service at roughly $40 per month based on analyst estimates, with content partners including ESPN, ABC, FX, and Fox. Before HBO launched its stand-alone live-streaming service, HBO Now, which lets users buy a Netflix-like subscription to HBO’s shows both live and on-demand, there was some question as to whether HBO would be able to pull it off, creating competition with the pay-TV providers that paid their bills. That’s just speculation, however.
Hulu wouldn’t be the first company to bring cable-like services to customers.
It’s thought that Hulu would provide an online DVR system as part of the service, as well as providing on-demand access to old episodes of some shows.
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With Dish’s Sling TV and Sony’s PlayStation Vue, the online TV service market is already covered.
