The long anticipated wait for Hulu’s live streaming cable-TV replacement is over with today’s soft launch of Hulu with Live TV, offering 50 cable networks and local affiliates of ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX in select larger cities.

“Hulu can now be a viewer’s primary source of television,” said Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins. “It’s a natural extension of our business, and an exciting new chapter for Hulu.”

The new service will bundle Hulu’s live/linear TV service with its well-known on-demand package of movies and television shows. The service represents a direct challenge to cable television subscriptions and for Hulu’s owners — Disney, 21st Century Fox, Comcast’s NBCUniversal and Time Warner, Inc., is the first major industry effort to keep subscription fees closer to home, and cuts out the cable middleman.

The lineup includes many, but not all, popular cable networks. There are very significant gaps — notably Viacom networks Hulu says it has no plans to add (Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, MTV). Also missing: AMC, Discovery Networks, HBO/Cinemax and Starz. Showtime is available for $8.99 a month.

The lineup:

Fox
Fox Local Station (New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Chicago)
Big Ten Network
Fox Business Network
Fox News Channel
Fox regional sports networks
Fox Sports 1
Fox Sports 2
FX
FXX
FXM
National Geographic Channel
National Geographic Wild

Disney
ABC Local Station (New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Chicago)
ESPN
ESPN2
ESPNU
ESPNEWS
ESPN-SEC Network
Freeform
Disney Channel
Disney XD
Disney Junior

Comcast/NBCUniversal
NBC Local Station (New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Chicago)
Telemundo Local Station (New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Chicago)
Comcast RSNs
NECN
USA Network
Bravo
E!
Syfy
MSNBC
CNBC
NBCSN
Golf Channel
Chiller
Oxygen Network
Sprout

A+E Networks
A&E
History
Lifetime
Viceland
Lifetime Movie Network (LMN)
FYI

Scripps Networks Interactive
Food Network
HGTV
Travel Channel

Turner Broadcasting
CNN
HLN
CNN International
TBS
TNT
TruTV
TCM
Turner Classic Movies
Cartoon Network & Adult Swim
Boomerang

CBS
CBS Local Station (New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Chicago)
CBS Sports Network
POP
Showtime ($8.99 per month extra)

(Broadcast stations may be available in certain other cities, but not all network affiliates are included.)

Hulu with Live TV is available on Microsoft’s Xbox One, Apple TV (fourth generation), iOS and Android mobile devices, and Google’s Chromecast. Future support for Roku, Amazon’s Fire TV and Fire TV Stick and Samsung Smart TVs will come later. Oddly, desktop viewing on a Mac or PC is not currently supported.

The new service joins an increasingly crowded marketplace of online cable television replacements, including Dish’s pioneering Sling TV, Sony’s game console-platform PlayStation Vue, AT&T’s DirecTV Now, and YouTube TV — the newest before today.

Hulu’s most formidable competitor in the streaming TV space will likely be AT&T’s DirecTV Now service, which offers a broader range of networks and has become popular for its promotional equipment offers. Hulu plans to counter AT&T with a marketing effort that highlights its existing on-demand service of more than 3,000 TV shows and movies is included with every subscription.

Hulu also comes bundled with its own limited cloud DVR storage service, which will record up to 50 hours of programming. But similar to Google’s YouTube TV, customers will not be able to skip the commercials that are included in the shows they record. In fact, advertisers will be able to dynamically change their advertising spots in recorded shows as long as the customer keeps them in their personal recordings library. Customers will need to upgrade to “Premium DVR” service ($14.99) to enable fast-forwarding through ads. The premium DVR add-on also includes 200 hours of storage, unlimited simultaneous recordings, and the ability to watch recorded shows outside of the home.

Customers signed up to the base package will be able to create up to six individual profiles for the household, which allows each user to track and “favorite” TV shows and movies they enjoy the most. The service will provide recommended shows based on each person’s viewing habits. The feature also allows each family member to choose their favorite sports teams and Hulu will automatically record any available game that includes a favorite team.

Base subscribers get up to two simultaneous streams of live and recorded content. An “Unlimited Screens” add-on ($14.99) removes the limit and allows unlimited home streams and up to three concurrent streams outside of the home. Customers who want both Premium DVR and Unlimited Screens can bundle both features together for $20 a month — a $10 savings.

An introduction to Hulu’s new interface and live TV option. (1:55)

AirTV Player

Sling TV subscribers that prepay for three months of Sling TV’s $20/mo “Orange” 30-channel streaming cable TV plan can get an AirTV Player + Adapter for $50, a discount of $79.99 off the $129.99 retail price.

Dish Network’s Sling TV service rebranded its service today, in light of competitive pressure from AT&T’s DirecTV Now and new streaming services from YouTube and Hulu. The company ditched its “basic TV” marketing pitch and has now recast the service as “A La Carte TV,” but the changes are in name-only. There is nothing different about the packages or pricing, just the marketing message pushing their packages.

“A La Carte TV is choice in an industry that prevents it,” the Sling TV website states. “Personalize your own channel lineup. Start with the service that’s best for you, then customize with Extras in your favorite TV genres like Sports, Comedy, Kids, News, Lifestyle, Hollywood Movies, and Spanish TV. Change your service online anytime.”

“As we expected, competitors are coming out of the woodwork,” wrote Sling TV CEO Roger Lynch in a blog post. “However, we didn’t expect that they’d drag three key pieces of Old TV baggage with them: bloated bundles, higher prices and lack of flexibility. The only choices these competitors give consumers is a big bundle or even bigger bundles. That isn’t the choice consumers want. Plus, they’re making people pay for features and channels they may not want. The ‘new guys’ are missing the point and re-creating the sins of Old TV.”

Lynch admits Sling TV isn’t true “a la carte,” because subscribers still end up with channels they don’t want.

“Every consumer would love to just pay $20 and then choose the twenty channels they want,” Lynch wrote. “And we would love that too. We would do that in a heartbeat if programmers would let us…but they won’t.”

Sling TV is also attempting to find a niche targeting international audiences with packages of international networks that are either not available on cable, or can cost a fortune.

“Sling TV is the only pay-TV service that offers the ability to subscribe only to programming from a specific region, including Mexico, Spain, South America and the Caribbean,” Lynch wrote, adding the service now offers more than 300 channels across more than 20 language groups.

The total price of the three-months of prepaid Orange service and the AirPlay TV + Adapter is $124.97, before state and local sales taxes are applied. Subscribers can also qualify for the deal with other packages:

• Prepay for four months of Sling TV if your monthly payment is between $15-$20 and get AirTV Player and AirTV Adapter for $50.
• Prepay for six months of Sling TV if your monthly payment is under $15 and get AirTV Player and AirTV Adapter for $50.

Sling TV customers can visit sling.com/devices/airtv to buy the bundle. A separate deal offering a 25% discount off an RCA indoor TV antenna was not working at the time this article was written. Existing Sling TV customers can also qualify for this promotion by writing to the company’s social media team on Sling TV’s Facebook page.

The AirTV Player allows users to combine over-the-air free TV with streaming services without having to change viewing sources on your television.

Thought paying $65 a month for broadband service is too much? Just wait a few years when one Wall Street analyst predicts you will be paying twice that rate for internet access, all because the cable industry is gradually achieving a high-speed broadband monopoly.

Jonathan Chaplin, New Street Research analyst, predicts as a result of cord-cutting and the retreat of phone companies from offering high-speed internet service competition, the cable industry will win as much as 72.2% of the broadband market by the year 2020. With it, they also win the power to raise prices both fast and furiously.

In a note to investors, Chapin wrote the number of Americans left to sign up for broadband service for the first time has dwindled, and most of the rest of new customer additions will come at the expense of phone companies, especially those still selling nothing better than DSL.

“Our long-term penetration forecast is predicated on cable increasing its market share, given a strong network advantage in 70% of the country (this assumes that telco fiber deployment increases from 16% of the country today to close to 30% five years from now),” Chaplin wrote.

Cable companies already control 65% of the U.S. broadband market as of late last year. Chaplin points out large cable operators have largely given up on slapping usage caps and usage pricing on broadband service to replace revenue lost from TV cord-cutting, so now they are likely going to raise general broadband pricing on everyone.

“Comcast and Charter have given up on usage-based pricing for now; however, we expect them to continue annual price increases,” Chaplin said. “As the primary source of value to households shifts increasingly from pay-TV to broadband, we would expect the cable companies to reflect more of the annual rate increases they push through on their bundles to be reflected in broadband than in the past. Interestingly, Comcast is now pricing standalone broadband at $85 for their flagship product, which is a $20 premium to the rack rate bundled price.”

Chaplin himself regularly cheerleads cable operators to do exactly as he predicts: raise prices. Back in late 2015, Chaplin pestered then CEO Robert Marcus of Time Warner Cable about why TWC was avoiding data caps, and in June of that year, Chaplin sent a note to investors claiming broadband was too cheap.

“Our analysis suggests that broadband as a product is underpriced,” Chaplin wrote. “Our work suggests that cable companies have room to take up broadband pricing significantly and we believe regulators should not oppose the re-pricing (it is good for competition & investment).”

“The companies will undoubtedly have to take pay-TV pricing down to help ‘fund’ the price increase for broadband, but this is a good thing for the business,” Chaplin added. “Post re-pricing, [online video] competition would cease to be a threat and the companies would grow revenue and free cash flow at a far faster rate than they would otherwise.”

Cartoon lover? Turner Broadcasting and Warner Bros. have something for you: Boomerang’s Online Video on Demand service launches today, featuring more than 5,000 cartoons from the Looney Tunes, Hanna Barbera, and MGM toon libraries.

Boomerang is now available on Desktop, iPad, iPhone, and most Android devices with more platforms including Apple TV, Fire TV, Roku, and Chromecast coming soon.

Turner, which runs the companion Boomerang cable network, pushed aside its TV-oriented website to push the new on-demand online service instead. Turner officials said they would continue to distribute the linear-TV cable network, but the company could make even more revenue in the future putting the extensive classic animation libraries of three toon powerhouse studios online and on-demand.

Some of the cartoon characters featured on Boomerang Online Video on Demand.

Boomerang says they will add new cartoons every week to keep the service fresh and interesting to subscribers.

The introductory price:

• $4.99 per month with a 7-day free trial;
• $39.99 for 1 year of Boomerang with a 30-day free trial

Payments can be made with a major credit card or through iTunes or Google Play Store.

Comcast’s NBCUniversal is laying plans to introduce a premium online video service highlighting NBC Network content and possibly various programming from the various cable channels owned by Comcast.

After watching rival CBS amass more than 1.5 million subscribers for its “All Access Pass” ($5.99, $9.99/mo for commercial-free option), Comcast’s NBC entertainment division isn’t willing to leave money on the table any longer.

The yet unnamed service is expected to compete with services like Hulu and Netflix, but will most likely be comparable to CBS’ premium subscription offering. In addition to featuring a deep library of NBC content, the service could include a significant catalog of past and present shows from cable networks like Bravo, SyFy and USA. Also to be determined is whether NBC will follow CBS’ lead and offer viewers live streaming of their local NBC station as part of the package.

The new service may not launch in the immediate future because Comcast is still observing restrictions imposed by regulators as a condition of its 2011 acquisition of NBCUniversal. The rules make it difficult for Comcast to develop services comprised entirely of content it owns or controls. Federal regulators added the restriction out of concern Comcast could interfere with Hulu’s access to NBC content. Hulu is popular with cord-cutters, and is seen as a viable alternative to cable television. The last of these restrictions expire in September 2018, about the time Bloomberg News reports Comcast is likely to launch the service.

If all the major American networks decide to develop their own premium streaming services, it could have significant implications for Hulu, which combines content from its partners NBC, ABC, and FOX. If NBC pulls out of the partnership, it will be free to keep all the revenue earned from its own streaming platform, and could inspire ABC and FOX to follow.

Observers suspect this represents more evidence that broadcast networks increasingly expect viewers to pay for access to their programming, at least online.