Is Fox planning to pull shows off Hulu for its new streamer?
Is Fox planning to pull shows off Hulu for its new streamer?
The new Fox streaming service will highlight the company’s biggest brands, but what about titles that are currently sent to Hulu?
Fox has a big decision to make. The company is hard at work on its new streaming service, which will reportedly launch by the end of 2025. Company officials have said more than once that the service will leverage Fox’s most popular brands, which presumably includes content from the company’s broadcast channel, as well as from Fox News and Fox Sports. But will it include next-day streams of Fox primetime shows as well? That’s the choice Fox faces now, as those episodes currently stream on Hulu.
Key Details:
- Fox and Hulu extended their output deal in November 2024.
- Fox officials recently revealed that the new streamer wouldn’t have exclusive content.
- Hulu could end up sharing Fox content with the new service for a period of time.
Until now, Fox has been perfectly satisfied with having its primetime titles stream on Hulu the day after they air on linear TV. Fox used to own one-third of Hulu but gave that up when it sold the majority of its entertainment assets to Disney in 2019.
Fox signed a new deal to keep its primetime content streaming on Hulu in 2023, and the two sides extended that deal in another multi-year agreement in November 2024. The full terms of that deal were not disclosed, but as a multi-year deal, it run at least through 2026. That means that Fox likely won’t be able to pull its titles off of Hulu immediately if it intends to do so at all.
In lieu of a deal of that nature, it would seem that Fox’s new streamer won’t have access to next-day episodes of shows like “Family Guy” and “The Simpsons,” and “The Masked Singer” right away. Of course, the two sides could work out an addendum to the agreement — if one was not initially included — allowing Fox’s forthcoming platform to share the next-day streaming rights with Hulu, for a reduced licensing fee.
An arrangement like that would seem to make the most sense, especially since the Fox streaming service won’t have any exclusive content. Fox COO John Nallen confirmed as much when speaking at a tech conference last week, indicating that the Fox streamer would avoid original content in an effort to keep people who watch Fox channels through a pay-TV service from canceling those subscriptions. Without next-day streams of Fox primetime content, that would seem to leave a big hole in the streamer’s on-demand library absent a sharing deal with Hulu.
A sharing arrangement would probably still lead to Fox shows departing from Hulu eventually. That’s what happened with NBC titles; in 2022, shows from NBCUniversal cable channels like Bravo migrated from Hulu to NBCU’s flagship streamer Peacock, as parent company Comcast prepared to sell its stake in Hulu to Disney. Now, all NBCU titles not purposefully licensed to other streamers show up on Peacock first.
As recently as 2023, Fox executives called the company's relationship with Hulu “symbiotic.” It may be time for that relationship to change, however, given that Fox is preparing to launch a new streaming service of its own.
Hulu
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