NBCUniversal Ends Hulu Content Sharing Deal

Beginning this fall, Saturday Night Live fans will have to head to Peacock, not Hulu, to catch the latest episodes of the show—along with all of NBC's other in-season series. NBCUniversal has terminated its partnership with Hulu, an NBCU spokesperson confirmed, with all current in-season programming—including Saturday Night Live, The Voice along with the Chicago and Law & Order franchises—now streaming exclusively to the company’s own streaming service Peacock, starting in September. Currently the shows stream on both Hulu and Peacock the day after they air on NBC. The deal doesn’t include library content, so shows like 30 Rock and Parenthood will remain on Hulu until those agreements are up for renewal. The content move to Peacock from Hulu stems from the deal Disney made back in 2019, taking full operational control of Hulu from NBCUniversal’s parent company Comcast in an agreement that allowed Disney, which now owns two-thirds of the company, to buy out NBCU's 33% ownership stake as soon as 2024. As part of that agreement, NBCUniversal had an option to pull its content from Hulu in 2022, which it has exercised. NBCU Shifts Peacock Focus From Free to Paid Tier, Finally Reveals Subscriber Count NBCUniversal is working to strengthen Peacock, which clocked in at 24.5 million active subscribers last quarter, and the company is shifting its focus from the streamer's free tier to its paid one (currently, only Peacock Premium subscribers, who pay $5 per month, receive next-day access to NBC content). Hulu, meanwhile, has 45.3 million U.S. subscribers. That was the first time NBCUniversal broke out specific details when it came to subscriber numbers, with Comcast CEO Brian Roberts reporting that Peacock has over 9 million paid subscribers, with an additional 7 million coming from bundles with the company’s Xfinity service and other distributors such as Cox. Growing Peacock is one of NBCUniversal’s top priorities. When Peacock first debuted in the summer of 2020, the company heavily emphasized its free tier. Those priorities have since shifted after the company said that Peacock’s paid subscribers saw “much lower” churn and “significantly higher” engagement. Peacock’s paid Premium tiers cost either $5 a month or $10 a month for the ad-free offering, and according to the company, the “vast majority” of subscribers are opting for the ad-supported premium tier. Shifting more content from Hulu to Peacock is the company’s latest move to increase subscriber numbers. Comcast is planning to double spending on Peacock content to $3 billion this year—ramping up to $5 billion over the next couple of years—and some of that increased spending will be incremental while some will be a reallocation from linear. Update: “With the proliferation of streaming services entering the marketplace, we have long anticipated changes to our third-party content offering and over the past few years have increased our investment in original content, including popular and award-nominated titles like Only Murders in the Building, Dopesick, Reservation Dogs, How I Met Your Father and the Academy Award-nominated Summer of Soul," said a Hulu spokesperson in a statement. "As a leading destination for breakthrough storytelling, we continue to transform Hulu into an exclusive home for stories from across The Walt Disney Company and beyond to bring our viewers even more premium content led by Hulu Originals and next-day television programming." The Wall Street Journal first reported that NBCU was considered exercising its option to pull its content from Hulu in 2022 instead of 2024.

Streaming & OTT

NBCUniversal Ends Hulu Content Sharing Deal, Shows Will Be Exclusive to Peacock

The move, which should help strengthen its in-house streamer, takes effect this fall

Mollie Cahillane

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Mollie Cahillane