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Time Warner is still in talks with Hulu about taking an equity stake in the streaming TV provider, but one sticking point is the availability of current series, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Hulu — which is owned by a partnership between major studios the Walt Disney Co., 21st Century Fox and Comcast Corp. — is currently the only streaming TV provider that offers subscribers entire series, up to and including current episodes. Netflix and Amazon typically offer only previously aired series, but don’t carry current series until well after they’ve concluded their network runs.
According to the Journal, Time Warner believes that “the presence of full, current seasons on Hulu—or anywhere else outside the bounds of pay-TV—is harmful to its owners because it contributes to people dropping their pay-TV subscriptions, or ‘cutting the cord.’”
Ending this practice isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker, but it’s something that concerns Time Warner, which owns Warner Bros. Television, a producer of many television programs, including NBC’s Blindspot (pictured above), Fox’s Gotham and The CW’s Arrow, Flash and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.
The issue isn’t just something that bothers Time Warner: other content providers also are debating how and when to sell series to streaming services. Those sales have made a huge difference to studios’ cash flow, particularly as the off-net stream to cable and television stations has dried up somewhat.
It’s also an issue for Hulu, says the Journal: allowing subscribers to catch all the way up on series is a huge point of differentiation between Hulu and its rivals.
Hulu currently has approximately 10 million subscribers, up from 6 million in 2014. Comparably, Netflix has some 45 million U.S. subscribers and 75 million globally.
Brief Take: What’s unclear is whether not offering current episodes would effectively drive cord-cutters back to linear television. In many cases, they’ll just wait until those seasons arrive on whatever service to which they subscribe.
Read more: The Wall Street Journal
[Image of NBC’s Blindspot, produced by Warner Bros. Television, courtesy of NBC via The Wall Street Journal.]
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