AT&T Will Yank Its Popular Shows from Netflix, Hulu for New Streaming Service

[Tsing]

Netflix and Hulu will have to wave goodbye to Friends, ER, and Seinfeld in the near future. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said his company would be pulling TV shows and movies from rivals for its own streaming service, which is slated to launch later this year.

AT&T "will be bringing a lot of these media rights, licensing rights back to ourselves to put on our own SVOD (subscription video-on-demand) product," Stephenson said Tuesday morning at the JPMorgan Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference in Boston.

AT&T purchased Time Warner (now Warner Media) last year, putting them in control of a media conglomerate that includes the likes of HBO, TBS, and Warner TV.

AT&T's new subscription video service is expected to launch in late 2019. It will be anchored by HBO TV shows and movies, along with content from Warner Bros. studios and Turner Networks. AT&T became the owner of the valuable entertainment library last June when it bought Time Warner in a deal valued at about $108.7 billion, including debt.

 

[Grebuloner]

So, everybody cut the cord because of the ridiculous cost of cable and went to a couple streaming services to get what they wanted for much less, and now every company is individually saying "pay us $X/mo if you want to see our content" and we're back at cable costs again but getting much less. Wonder what media revolution 3.0 will be. Personally, I'll stick with the ol' Linux ISOs and OTA antenna.

 

[David_Schroth]

Wonder what media revolution 3.0 will be.

I would think that we would see loyalty to any given service decline. People have been Netflix subscribers for ages due to the recent (but quickly declining) content levels. As every content house gets their own exclusive streaming service, I'll probably start hopping around based in what I want to watch at the time. A month or two here, a month or two there, which will keep my spending flat but just add a bit of hassle in the search. That's at least how 2.0 may go down, with 3.0 going back to bundling...

 

[maddude]

I'd love to see the numbers behind these separate services. I subscribe to HBO for 1-2 months a year to catch up on shows and I plan on doing the same for all the other new services. Would they get more of my money by just licensing the content to netflix? Or do other people just sign up for all the services, forget they have them, and pay forever. Like the shocking number of AOL accounts that are still out there?