NBC Ends Hulu Content Sharing Deal
NBC has ended the flow of its content to Hulu, instead opting to focus on Peacock. We’re seeing a lot of reshuffled content deals as the streaming wars hot up, but this one seems a little more purposeful than most, so we turned to Brandon Blake of Blake & Wang P.A for more on the news.
Starting This Fall
This means that, as of Fall 2022, we will see hit shows like Saturday Night Live, The Voice, and American Auto premier on Peacock, instead of being available through Hulu the day after they air. Hulu will, however, retain the right to show some older NBCU properties, including Will & Grace and Law & Order: SVU.
Hulu seems- officially at least- unperturbed by the new development, explaining that they have anticipated the streaming reshuffle as an inevitable consequence of new streamers entering the marketplace.
Wrangle with Disney
However, it’s likely there’s a little more to this one than is immediately obvious. Disney, which owns Hulu, and Comcast, the parent company for NBCU, have been in arbitration over Hulu for a while now, with Comcast still maintaining a 33% stake in the service. In the meantime, Peacock is struggling to carve a meaningful share of the market out for itself, with only 9M paying subscribers and 24.5M active accounts.
Since its launch in 2020, Peacock has had an uneasy relationship with Hulu, sharing much of the NBCU catalog with it. By pulling back their content to Peacock exclusives, this could potentially boost Peacock’s profile over Hulu’s, at least, and perhaps pep up those sluggish subscriber numbers for Peacock.
It doesn’t take an entertainment attorney to realize this particular content reshuffle could be far more strategic than many others we’ve seen. Will it make a difference for Peacock in the long run? It will be interesting to see.
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