Providing Market Intelligence for 40 Years

In The News

Hulu Adds (Mostly) Ad-Free Subscription Service

Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins chalked up the exceptions to rights held by studios on select series. “They have other commitments that they couldn’t free them up for a complete commercial-free offering,” he said, adding that the service will clearly delineate the exceptions to users before they stream those series.

Other series that will have pre-roll include four ABC series: “How to Get Away with Murder,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Once Upon a Time,” “Agents of SHIELD,” and an NBC series, “Grimm.”

Hulu is making the move in response to subscriber complaints voiced in various forms of consumer research about having to pay yet still watch ads. Earlier this month, a Parks Associates survey found that half of Hulu subscribers have canceled service over the past 12 months, compared to just 9% for Netflix over the same span.

The new subscription option brings Hulu in line with its commercial-free rivals Netflix, which remains several dollars cheaper than Hulu depending on which rate its own subscribers pay, and Amazon Prime, which charges $99 per year for access to its content library in addition to free two-day shipping.

From the article "Hulu Adds (Mostly) Ad-Free Subscription Service" by Andrew Wallenstein. 

Previously In The News

Sling TV: How Many Subscribers Does It Have?

Parks Associates thinks so. The research group this week issued a study showing that Sling has surpassed the one million subscriber mark, becoming the nation's sixth leading subscription streaming ser...

Two out of five U.S. homes want to swap the remote for their voice

So notes a recent report from Parks Associates, which found that 43 percent of all broadband households in the U.S. that use — or plan to use — a smart TV or streaming media player want to be able to...

OTT Churn Edges Up In US

About 20% of US broadband homes had cancelled at least one OTT service in the last 12 months at the end of 2015, according to data from Parks Associates. Netflix has the lowest churn among US OTT s...

Netflix Is King Of Paid Streaming, Study Says

Netflix beats all its streaming-video rivals both on number of members and success rate of keeping them signed up, a new study said Thursday. But the rest of the over-the-top market doesn’t need to...