CNN is Launching a Free Streaming Channel

welcome back to court cutting today where we break down some of the biggest stories happening in the world of Court cutting including today CNN is launching more free ad supported streaming services the doj May investigate the new venue streaming service from waren Brothers Discovery Disney and fox and lastly Comcast may get $5 billion for Hulu 5 billion more dollars than what Disney already planned to pay these stories and a whole lot more coming up in a quick second first though if you're new here do me a big favor hit that subscribe Buton hit that thumbs up it really does help us because it lets YouTube know you enjoy what we do here so YouTube recommends our videos to more people we would really appreciate your support and with that said let's dive into it all right CNN is launching another free ad supported Channel we actually broke this uh or covered this yesterday with with it going live but now it's official um they gave an exclusive to The Hollywood Reporter and with this there's a new free Channel called CNN originals but that's not the only one there's others um CNN shows are again 247 dedicated original channels but the CNN Originals ones will include a ton of documentaries and content created for CNN now airing 24/7 not news program per se some of them may have a news aspect to it but the documentaries and regular um shows they show in scene and they aren't like breaking news now they also had like strange eats and different things War Bros discoveries getting very heavily into free at supported streaming working around the clock creating new channels putting them on things like Plex tub the Roku Channel and more with this we're seeing a growing amount of free content for more Discovery why well it's a great way to get money you have all this content laying around it's not really doing anything why not put it online put some ads around it and offer it for free it's not doing anything sitting on your shelf in some Vault somewhere being unused or in today's world sitting on some hard drive unused right now but Wars Discovery is slowly getting into it there's been talk about them launching a free at sport streaming service of their own but for now it seems like they're very content just putting their content on other platforms we'll watch it what do you leave me a comment let me know what you think do you what do you think of CNN launching some ad supported free channels with their documentaries and other content do you like it leave me a comment let me know Hulu may be worth five billion more than early anticipate or May cost Disney may be a better way to say it's 5 billion more than earlier anticipated Comcast and Disney have been fighting over the final price of Hulu for some time originally several years ago when they struck the deal there was a rough agreed upon price Comcast would immediately turn over control of Hulu so all the board seats everything would go to Disney but in um the end of 2023 2024 Disney would have to cut a check for the value of Comcast's share with this now it turns out that Comcast which owned about 33 or so% of uh Hulu may be getting some more money they've been fighting over this to the point where they've hired multiple Financial firms to represent them but with this the short end of it is that Comcast may get 5 billion additional dollars on top of the originally agreed to price and the question here is the value of streaming the value of streaming has continued to grow um in recent years as more and more people shift away from cable to streaming services and who is one of the big beneficiaries of that they added like 900,000 subscribers in the second quarter of 2024 with that um Disney and fox or Disney and Comcast have been fighting Disney bought Fox share giving them a majority control Comcast agreed to sell them their share now the pric is Du they hired multiple investment firms to compare prices of course the Disney firm came in low the Comcast firm they hired came in high for the SMA value they've hired a third- party in arbitrator and it sounds like Disney may have to F over 5 billion additional dollars to Comcast to close this deal now the deal is pretty much is closed Disney is the full manager and owner of Hulu that doing all it the only question is what's the final check going to be as they fight that out leave me a comment let me know does it surprise you that Hulu has grown in value recently that much that5 billion additional is now owed to Comcast for that leave me a comment let me know remember that just represents 33% of the value of Hulu all right Department of Justice May investigate venue sports that's the new live TV streaming service from Disney Fox and warts Discovery two US senators have come out and asked um the doj to investigate something fubo has been asking for some time they want this as a potentially anti-competitive measure you know with these companies going direct to Consumer they're basically cutting up the Millman of Sling TV and uh YouTube TV and all these other companies and fubo believes it could cost them up to 30% of their subscrib if this is allowed to go through we'll see if it happens but the OJ has been requested it doesn't mean they have to just because Senators ask for an investigation the Department of Justice does not have to do it though they often do take it very seriously when um lawmakers say hey we believe something UNT is happening here against the law or something weird is happening and they go through the official process to officially request a review of it often the doj will at least look at it to consider if they should now will they we don't know a lot of people have argued that Disney and all these companies have perfect rights to sell their channels direct to Consumers without having to go through Comcast Spectrum YouTube TV Hulu Plus live TV and others funny Hulu Plus live TV is owned by Disney but you get the idea so question should these companies be able to cut a package they want direct to Consumers now part of the argument here is fubo and YouTube TV and others have talked about doing smaller skinnier packages like this for years years have been told by these companies they can't do it if you want ESPN you also have to have the Disney Channel free form and all the others but now suddenly these companies saying well never mind we'll give you ESPN direct without the Disney Channel without free form without all those other things that drive up the cost leave me a comment let me know what you think of this should there be an investigation or should there not be an investigation I'll love to hear from you with all this all right moving along um next up is um tablet loads here Disney plus will start cracking down on password sharing aggressively now last year Disney announced on their streaming service and it's not just Disney plus it's Hulu and others that they would start cracking down on password sharing the practice of hey Hey Brother mine you have a Disney Plus account I'll let you use my Netflix account you let me use your Disney plus and we'll split the cost Netflix was one of the first to really crack down on this and successfully drove people to leave that And subscribe on the own Disney has been slowly testing this out they picked up steam a little bit in June and now Disney during their earnings call has announced that they will aggressively in September of 2024 start cracking down on this now messages have been starting to pop up warning people about password sharing or are you really at your home all kinds of things but what they're going to use is a combination of IP address and behavior for example if I'm here at my home in Michigan and I have a sibling in another state or another city we're both streaming at the same time at two home devices on two different Roku Disney's going to go hm that's weird most people don't have you know this all the time and maybe you're traveling it's for a week or two it's one thing but if it's month after month of that kind of behavior that's when they're going to start cracking down on it we'll see what happens but leave me a comment let me know what you think should crackdowns like this be happening so far for Netflix it really has driven up a lot of new subscribers we'll keep an eye on it next story up War brother Discovery will Rebrand True TV as TNT Sports in prime time now this was announced during their earnings call today when I'm recording this uh or yesterday excuse me now with this this is much like Adult Swim so they'll it'll still be true TV but during prime time it will operate under the TNT sports brand this is part of waren Bor Discovery move to make True TV more of a sports network and air sports related content um including sporting events sporting shows documentaries re highlight reels and even replays of popular games much like Adult Swim it kind of treat gets treated as its own entity but they share the channel so during the daytime it's true TV during prime time it becomes TNT Sports now that will happen later this year they announced and with this it will um include like a 30 minute news Show starting at 8 600 p.m. sports betting show at 6:30 and um handles a late night programming focuses on the NBA other things will include they announced some uh the bananas baseball um games un like Friday nights and Saturdays are coming up and other sporting events are happening that way too very interesting with everything but we'll have to keep a very close eye on all this and see what happens what do you think of TNT Sports prediction few years from now True TV is probably not going to be anything true true TV brand will go away of TNT Sports is half as successful as I think it will be that'll be a 24/7 channel sports sports is very profitable because people are still most likely to watch it live when they're watching it live they're watching the commercials live it means the ads on commercials for sports are much more expensive than ads on anything else all right next up paramont plus lost 2.8 million subscribers in the second quarter now a few things with this excuse me few things with this um some of that was because in um Korea they had a bundle deal which bundled Paramount plus into a bunch of customers it was called a force bundle so um if you had that other service you automatically got free Paramount plus much like how Walmart plus gives free Paramount plus now with this um there's a few good things so lost 2.8 but they saw a revenue per subscriber jump 16% largely driven by the popularity of or that was advertising about Paramount plus more people on Paramount Plus's add subscription plans help that but they also saw um subscription Revenue jump 12% year-over year so they're getting more money from the people who are actually paying a few things there was a subscription jump but the revenue from people who are subscribing directly versus people who get it bundled is probably higher a lot of factors here but I think it's one more sign of people Orly streaming services caring less about the number of subscribers they have and more about how much money they're making with them in order to try to become profitable Paramount plus is still not profit but they hope to fix that soon well that's it for today I hope you have a fantastic day it's Friday I hope you have a fantastic weekend take care be safe enjoy the beautiful alus weather it's absolutely stunning here in Michigan I hope you all take care be safe I'll talk to you all real soon