🎧 Listen: In today’s episode of The Journal podcast, jtoonkel explains Disney and Comcast’s multiyear battle over Hulu and what a looming deal between the co-owners could mean for the streamer’s future
This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated.Jessica Toonkel: I just canceled one, so I probably subscribe to about five right now.Jessica Toonkel: If you don't have cable, but you want to watch shows the next day, Hulu's a great place to go for a lot of that content. AVID Elementary, one of my favorites, is on there.Speaker 2: Do forget everything she taught you, toss it right out of the window.
Jessica Toonkel: I think this is almost like siblings fighting over a toy and that fight will come to a head next year. Jessica Toonkel: I mean, they had a common enemy and they saw it. They just said, "Let's get together and let's bulk up and let's do this." They came up with Hulu as a solution of we will provide entertainment shows after they appear on TV through this streaming service, and this will be our solution to Netflix. This is how we'll protect ourselves.
Speaker 6: The Walt Disney Company is buying a large portion of 21st Century Fox, that includes its movie and TV studios, the Hulu streaming service, and a number of hit franchises. The deal was... Jessica Toonkel: They just had to be a passive owner, so that meant that they had an economic interest, but they didn't have any people on the board of Hulu. They couldn't make any active decisions around Hulu.
Jessica Toonkel: And Comcast didn't find out about it until months later when they became an active owner and they went through all of the board minutes and everything. That's according to our reporting.Jessica Toonkel: It was pretty sneaky. It was a pretty sneaky moment. Yes.Jessica Toonkel: They threatened to sue. Calmer heads prevailed.
Jessica Toonkel: Comcast is like, hey, we just think this is going to grow. Everyone loves streaming. This is just going to get bigger and you're going to go international, and that will be even bigger. Whether that is in writing is up for debate. I don't know that it was in writing, but there are people close to Comcast that were definitely under the impression that that was the agreement. And then Disney didn't do that. Disney scrapped its plans to launch Hulu internationally.
Jessica Toonkel: Comcast thinks Disney didn't expand Hulu to hurt the valuation of Hulu and keep it as low as it could. Now, they are in arbitration over this. They've been in arbitration for several months. Many of the top executives were deposed late last year. We are expecting a decision on this imminently.Jessica Toonkel: It'll be damages, right? If Comcast loses, then we'll just move on. But if Comcast wins, Disney will have to pay Comcast a certain amount of damages.
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