Hulu ‘missing piece’ in Disney streaming arsenal

Hulu was the “missing piece in Disney’s streaming strategy”, claims a new report.

According to analysis from Ampere, gaining full control of Hulu in 2024 will “allow Disney to reinvent the TV ‘channel family’ for the streaming generation and give it the content scale and bundling flexibility it needs to take the fight to Netflix and Amazon”.

In the US, the three SVOD ‘majors’ (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon) average 42,000 hours of content, compared with just 3,800 hours for streaming studio brands like Showtime, HBO Go and CBS All Access.

By gaining access to Hulu’s catalogue, Disney will be able to bolster and complement its catalogue of already announced original content.

Guy Bisson, research director at Ampere Analysis said: “With full operational control of Hulu, Disney’s streaming jigsaw puzzle is complete. The concept of building a family of services to capture audience in a fragmented and competitive world is not new – it was first explored when digital TV came along in the early 1990s – Disney now needs to update that model for the 21st century and Hulu is the key to doing that.”