The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday night that Hulu is developing its own over-the-top “skinny bundle” for release sometime in the first half of 2017. (Note: since the WSJ article is paywalled, most of this info comes from a Mutlichannel News writeup of it.)
According to the WSJ, the bundle would include, at minimum, channels associated with two of Hulu’s co-owners, Disney and Fox, including ABC and Fox owned-and-operated stations and other popular channels they own, including ESPN, FS1, and Fox’s regional sports networks. The reports I’ve seen don’t say whether the service would include channels from anyone else other than the third co-owner, NBC Universal, but one analyst speculated a little over a week ago that it might end up including channels from CBS and Time Warner, both of which have contributed to Hulu’s existing on-demand service (with Time Warner even approached about a stake in the company last year). In other words, it would include the five companies that offer substantial sports content and that, together, keep the cable bundle together. Even if Disney and Fox were only able to get the Turner networks on board, the Hulu service could conceivably be a one-stop-shop for sports fans with every nationally-televised game from MLB, the NBA, and every major college conference, every bowl game of significance, and every NCAA Tournament game not on broadcast television, plus, for fans of local teams, games of any team with an agreement with a Fox network. The main reason to get NBCU on board would be to appeal to NHL, NASCAR, golf, and soccer fans, as well as fans of teams on Comcast’s RSNs. All told, it could well be the biggest step yet towards the breakup of the cable bundle.
Which is precisely why the companies creating it, especially Disney, won’t let it be.
Both the analyst that speculated about this a couple weeks ago and the WSJ report suggest that a Hulu skinny bundle would cost around $40 per month. After slashing the price earlier this year, PlayStation Vue currently offers broadcast stations and a broad selection of popular channels, including ESPN, ESPN2, FS1, FS2, and all three of Turner’s networks that carry NCAA Tournament games, and popular networks from NBCU (but not NBCSN) and all of the non-sports four, for $39.99 a month in the markets where it carries broadcast stations. If you have an antenna and live in one of Vue’s non-broadcast markets, for just $5 more than the proposed Hulu skinny bundle, you can add most of the channels left out of Vue’s base package, including NBCSN, Golf Channel, beIN Sport, ESPNU, BTN, SEC Network, and regional sports networks. Of course, considering PS Vue dropped its price at the same time it added the uber-expensive Disney networks, it may well be operating at a loss in an attempt to spur adoption, and may hike its prices again later. Still, if the Hulu skinny bundle is competing with PS Vue at those prices, not to mention Sling TV currently offering (with the single stream package) all the ESPNs, including SEC Network, plus TNT and TBS for $25 a month or (with the multi-stream package) FS1, the Fox RSNs, and all three Turner networks for $20 a month (suggesting Sling would probably offer all those channels for around $40 once it synchronizes its packages, depending on the effect of adding the Viacom channels), there’s really little reason to sign up for the Hulu skinny bundle unless you really want NBCSN and Golf Channel or you just want to deny the non-sports four your money out of principle.
It’s hard to see who the Hulu skinny bundle would appeal to that wouldn’t be better served with Vue or Sling – which, of course, is probably the point. Disney and Fox don’t really want to do anything that would hasten the breakup of the cable bundle, so it’s not surprising they’d price it to be uncompetitive with Sling and Vue given its selection, even though they could theoretically offer a lower price since they’re not really going through middlemen, potentially setting it up to fail and giving them a reason to claim skinny bundles and going direct-to-consumer doesn’t work. If they did try to competitively price it, Disney likely wouldn’t sign off on launching it unless it had the non-sports four on board, effectively making it the same as Vue, because there’s nothing Disney fears more than cutting the non-sports four out of, and thus motivating them to become independent from, the cable bundle. (Incidentally, that same analyst that speculated about a Hulu skinny bundle, and about a skinny bundle with the non-sports four, suggests that the latter could cost just $9 a month. That’s cheaper than anything I speculated about at the time, though only barely.)
It’s become increasingly apparent that the current batch of “skinny bundles” is more about the Big Nine declaring their independence from cable companies and networks not owned by the Big Nine (not to mention broadcast stations) than from the cable bundle itself, with all of them too scared of the consequences of leaving the others. In that sense, there is some importance to a Hulu skinny bundle that gives Disney and Fox a distribution mechanism independent not only of cable companies but of any middlemen whatsoever. But don’t be fooled by the uncritical pro-cord-cutting media touting it as some sort of landmark development in the breakup of the cable bundle. In the end, a Hulu skinny bundle will do little to benefit the consumer, at least in the short term, only its owners.