Something that’s always confused me is the joint existence of Hulu and Peacock. I know Hulu does more live television than Peacock, but I associate both with NBC. Why? Why?? Is this a long con to get people to subscribe to multiple services owned by the same company?? Is every broadcaster forcing me to subscribe to a separate streaming platform for every sport going to be the long-term norm in this industry???
It turns out that NBC doesn’t own Hulu. NBC Universal (NBCU, I’m seeing it called) was one of the original partners (along with Myspace and a few others—Hulu is way older than I realized), and NBCU appears to have stood up the first Hulu product. Now, though, it only owns 33% of Hulu, and it doesn’t even really own that. Comcast owns that 33%, because Comcast owns NBCU, and Comcast is in the (very long) process of selling the 33% to Disney, who’s recently picked up the remaining 67%. How did Disney get that 67%? It acquired 21st Century Fox, who had a 60% stake in Hulu, and then it got two thirds of Time Warner’s 10% stake when Time Warner sold its 10% back to Hulu.
This is a lot to keep track of.
The timeline, from NBCU’s perspective:
- 2007–2018: NBCU partners with Hulu on a bunch of stuff, and while I don’t know if it always had 30% or if that number rose and fell, it ends this time period owning 30% of Hulu.
- 2019: NBCU gains another 3% of Hulu from Time Warner’s sale of its 10% stake back to Hulu. Disney acquires 21st Century Fox, making the split: Disney 67%, NBCU 33%. NBCU announces it’s launching Peacock, and it works out a deal to sell its 33% to Disney, making Hulu all Disney’s and Peacock all NBCU’s.
The timeline, from Disney’s perspective:
- 2017–2018: Disney launches ESPN+ and begins preparations to launch Disney+.
- 2019: Disney acquires 21st Century Fox, acquiring 60% of Hulu in the process. This 60% quickly turns into 67% through the Time Warner sale. Disney starts speculation about combining Hulu, ESPN+, and Disney+ into one service, but in the meantime it starts selling a bundle of the three streaming services which functions really poorly.*
So, Hulu and Peacock are separate now. But they did both start with NBC.
*If anyone at Disney is reading this, please make it possible for me to access written ESPN+ content on my computer. I am paying you bastards, and I have to go on my phone and find the article on your app if I want to read anything. You stink, and I hate you, but I will stop hating you and you will stop stinking if you fix this. This is not my first time complaining about the issue. It messes up my work. I cannot read my Bill Connelly!!
