‘Alaska Daily,’ ‘The Company You Keep’ Leaving Hulu as Disney Content Purge Continues
There’s not a lot of summer lovin’ spreading through the streaming industry. A black cloud hangs over the corporate offices of most streaming platforms nowadays, as seemingly every service is pulling titles in order to cut maintenance costs in every way possible.
Hulu has already undergone one round of cuts, but as The Streamable speculated earlier this month, that doesn’t mean it’s out of the woods. Those suspicions were confirmed on Wednesday, as an exclusive Deadline report revealed that “Alaska Daily” and “The Company You Keep” were both being pulled from the service in early July.
The two series had already been canceled by their broadcast network ABC, meaning unlike some of the shows removed from Paramount+ earlier in the week, fans were not hopeful that they would return with new episodes at some point. Still, under normal circumstances they would have remained on Hulu until September, or even longer if the service had reached a deal to continue carrying them.
Audiences can still purchase the shows on Prime Video; “The Company You Keep” runs $1.99 per episode or $19.99 for the entire season; “Alaska Daily” currently sells for $2.99 per episode or $24.99 for the season. In addition to these shows, titles licensed by Hulu from third parties including “Angie Tribeca,” “The Detour,” and “The Last Ship” will all depart the service as of July 1.
The reason this new round of removals was so foreseeable is that Disney court filings from earlier this month indicated the company expected to incur an additional $400 million in impairment charges—fees companies must pay to remove items from their taxable budgets— on top of the $1.5 billion it had already incurred from its first wave of content cuts. Since the initial deletions were mostly aimed at Disney+, it’s grimly logical that the next go-around would target Hulu.
The good news for fans of Disney streaming is that the company is likely nearing the end of its housekeeping cycle. The cost-cutting measures have claimed plenty of victims, but if Disney expected to incur another $400 million in impairment charges, these latest content cuts will likely make up a big chunk of that total.
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