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Fox Could Buy Tubi While NBCUniversal Eyes Vudu

posted by janrinok on Tuesday February 25 2020, @04:20PM   
from the tubey-and-voodoo dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Fox is reportedly eyeing Tubi. [Editor's Note: Tubi is a streaming service.]

Tubi is available in the US, Canada and Australia on Android and iOS, as well as on devices such as Amazon Echo Show, Google Nest Hub Max, Roku and Apple TV. Content is also viewable at www.tubi.tv. The company plans to launch in more areas including the UK and Mexico in the coming year.

[...] As more streaming services such as Disney Plus and Apple TV Plus launch to compete with the likes of Netflix, several companies are also looking to free, ad-supported platforms aimed at customers who might not be willing to dish out more money for an ever-growing list of paid offerings.

Last year, it was reported that Walmart could be thinking of selling Vudu, a service that lets customers rent or purchase individual shows or movies. Vudu also launched a free, ad-supported service in 2016. 

Walmart reportedly purchased Vudu for around $100 million in 2010, and says the service is installed on more than 100 million devices in the US. It's not clear if there will be a deal between NBCUniversal and Vudu, people familiar with the matter told The Journal. A Walmart representative declined to comment, but said the company is "constantly having conversations with partners."

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Original Submission

• Re:Dumbass Naming Fads (Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday February 25 2020, @05:01PM

  by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday February 25 2020, @05:01PM (#962441) Journal

  They might as well call it PooDoo [fandom.com], because 75% of these streaming services are going to go bankrupt, get shut down, or merge into the larger ones.

  The one I'll be watching closely is the MILLENNIAL-OPTIMIZED Quibi [soylentnews.org], which has Meg Whitman of all people running captaining it. They splurged on a Super Bowl ad:

  Quibi knows you have no idea what Quibi is [qz.com]

  The upcoming mobile streaming service, debuting April 6 in North America, aired its first national ad in the United States during the Super Bowl last night, attempting to add its quirky name to the cultural lexicon. “I’ll be there in a Quibi,” radios the getaway driver for a bank heist as his partners wait for pickup. “A what?!” one of them asks. “A Quibi,” the driver replies, “less than ten minutes.”

  Quibi’s pitch is that its content can be consumed in short, easy spurts on the go, while still boasting Hollywood-level production and A-list talent. (The made-up word is a portmanteau of “quick bites.”) Available only on phones, the app will stream a variety of shows to subscribers, from a reality series hosted by Chrissy Teigen to a horror anthology show created by Steven Spielberg.

  [...] The $5.6 million for 30 seconds of Super Bowl ad time was a small price to pay for Quibi, which has secured more than $1 billion in funding from companies like Disney, WarnerMedia, and Alibaba. Its founder, Jeffrey Katzenberg, used to run Disney’s film studio in the 1980s and early 1990s. Its CEO, Meg Whitman, once served in the same position at both Hewlett Packard and eBay.

  [...] But hardly anyone knows this yet. After the Super Bowl ad aired, Twitter was filled with reactions from viewers saying they still didn’t really get what, exactly, Quibi was. “We have to build a brand—no one’s heard of Quibi—and we have to build the use case,” Whitman said at the 2020 Upfront Summit in Los Angeles last week.

  The Streaming Wars are going to show us some glorious, spectacular multi-billion-dollar failures. Which will possibly be more entertaining to watch than the content they host.

  --
  [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]

  Parent

  Starting Score:	1		point
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