Great article! The points you raise about Hulu now that an international rollout is gone I think highlight the issues/ benefits of what exactly Hulu is. I think the biggest reason a Hulu branded international rollout has now been canned is that Hulu isn’t entirely owned by Disney. Rolling out a service in to new markets is expensive at the start, so let’s say even if Disney wanted to take Hulu globally, they would need to get some cash from Comcast or at the very least permission to increase losses with that service. Something that I expect in a pandemic is a hard sell. The flip side is that Hulu international is successful then they would be giving Comcast revenue from something that they had no part in promoting. Also take the UK for example - Hulu would be in competition with a Comcast streaming service in NowTV. I’d expect that the new star service will basically be as close to Hulu is at the moment without the 3rd party content, and I’d expect a price to reflect that. As to what is Hulu will be when Star is available elsewhere in the world - an American only version of Star. I’d expect that all Hulu originals 2021 onwards will be Hulu branded in the US and Star branded in ROW. And hopefully by the time the content is being pulled from Hulu by other studios Disney is at a much higher content release rate so that subscribers don’t feel they have lost value.
Great article! The points you raise about Hulu now that an international rollout is gone I think highlight the issues/ benefits of what exactly Hulu is. I think the biggest reason a Hulu branded international rollout has now been canned is that Hulu isn’t entirely owned by Disney. Rolling out a service in to new markets is expensive at the start, so let’s say even if Disney wanted to take Hulu globally, they would need to get some cash from Comcast or at the very least permission to increase losses with that service. Something that I expect in a pandemic is a hard sell. The flip side is that Hulu international is successful then they would be giving Comcast revenue from something that they had no part in promoting. Also take the UK for example - Hulu would be in competition with a Comcast streaming service in NowTV. I’d expect that the new star service will basically be as close to Hulu is at the moment without the 3rd party content, and I’d expect a price to reflect that. As to what is Hulu will be when Star is available elsewhere in the world - an American only version of Star. I’d expect that all Hulu originals 2021 onwards will be Hulu branded in the US and Star branded in ROW. And hopefully by the time the content is being pulled from Hulu by other studios Disney is at a much higher content release rate so that subscribers don’t feel they have lost value.