Ad supported free streaming of current TV shows and movies on Hulu will come to an end over the next several weeks as it converts to an all-paid subscription service.

For the last few years, Hulu has progressed towards a goal of creating an online streaming alternative to cable television that is owned and operated by content creators, cutting out the middlemen — traditional distributors like cable, phone, and satellite companies.

When it launched in 2007, Hulu offered a central website for television shows from three of the four major networks – ABC/Disney, NBCUniversal, and 21st Century Fox all offered full-length shows and clips on Hulu. (CBS has always preferred to showcase its own content in-house or through very restrictive contracts with third-party distributors.)

Hulu began with a limited commercial load, but has gotten progressively more ad-heavy over the last nine years. Most of Hulu’s free content has been limited to a maximum of the five most recent episodes of a current show, each appearing about a week after it originally airs. Those looking to view Hulu on a variety of wireless devices have been required to subscribe to a subscription tier since 2010, dubbed Hulu Plus. Subscribers still saw commercials, but also received access to more content viewable on more devices.

Hulu’s growth has always been stunted by its marketing — charging a subscription fee and continuing to show 15-20 minutes of ads each viewing hour. In 2015, Hulu began offering customers an ad-free option for $11.99 a month, as much as $3 more than Netflix. But Hulu began adding new customers willing to pay their price to avoid commercials.

In the last two years, Hulu’s content library has grown substantially, and relying on viewers watching free content has become less important to a service with 12 million paying subscribers.

“For the past couple years, we’ve been focused on building a subscription service that provides the deepest, most personalized content experience possible to our viewers,” said Ben Smith, Hulu senior vp and head of experience. “As we have continued to enhance that offering with new originals, exclusive acquisitions, and movies, the free service became very limited and no longer aligned with the Hulu experience or content strategy.”

It has gotten so limited that new site visitors have trouble even finding the remaining free content.

Hulu is also preparing to launch a $40/month cable-TV replacement service sometime next year that will offer dozens of live cable channels bundled with Hulu’s on-demand content. The service could become a significant threat to traditional cable TV and promote more cord-cutting.

Hulu’s free content is moving to Yahoo View

Hulu has shown no interest in slowing down. In fact, in response to increasing competition for content, last week Hulu agreed to sell a 10% interest in itself to Time Warner (Entertainment) in a deal worth $583 million. That deal assures Time Warner-owned channels (TNT, CNN, Turner Classic Movies, TBS, etc.) will be on Hulu’s cable-TV service next year. Hulu is expected to spend that money on licensing more content for subscribers.

Current free Hulu viewers need not worry about the change in Hulu’s status. Visitors will be offered free trials of Hulu’s premium options and Yahoo has agreed to adopt Hulu’s player and its existing free ad-supported library of TV shows, movies and clips for its Yahoo View service, which launched this morning.

Apple TV

Apple’s ability to successfully force its way into the pay television business with a cord-cutter’s streaming TV solution has been left languishing since 2009, thanks to some of America’s largest cable and entertainment companies who think Apple is arrogant and out of touch.

The Wall Street Journal today published a story showing how Apple’s plans to challenge the cable TV industry much the same way it revolutionized digital music has rubbed the big and powerful the wrong way. Apple’s desire to launch a cheaper streaming video service with a slimmed down TV lineup and robust on-demand options has flopped, because executives have no interest in bending to Apple’s way of thinking.

In 2009, Apple decided it wanted in on the streaming pay-TV business. At the same time Time Warner Cable began experimenting with data caps, Apple was approaching local stations and broadcast networks and offering them premium payments — higher than what the cable industry itself paid — for Apple’s choice of stations and cable networks. The deal meant Apple would alone be free to pick only the channels it wanted to carry, a major departure from the industry practice of contract renewals that bundled popular networks with spinoff and lesser-known channels cable operators didn’t want to carry. Apple’s hard-charging negotiator, Eddy Cue, seemed to believe that if Apple was at the negotiating table, that alone would be enough to get a deal done. It wasn’t.

Two years later, Time Warner Cable approached Apple seeking to launch a joint TV venture that could compete nationwide with satellite and phone company competitors. The talks were at the highest levels at both companies, involving Time Warner Cable’s then-CEO Glenn Britt, Cue, and Apple CEO Tim Cook. Cook also approached Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast, promising him the service would only be sold through cable operators — good news for Comcast but bad news for open competition.

This time, Apple sought money from the cable companies, not the other way around. Cable operators were told they would need to pay $10 a month per subscriber to Apple, with no guarantee that fee would not increase in the future. Just as concerning was Apple’s insistence that subscriber authentication would require customers to use their Apple IDs, a departure from the cable industry’s push to adopt TV Everywhere, where customers could unlock streaming video from any cable network simply by logging in with the username and password they set up with their pay TV provider. Apple was also characteristically secretive about their user interface and left cable industry executives flummoxed when they asked Apple to sketch out what the service would look like on a napkin. An Apple official would only respond that their interface would be great and “better than anything you’ve ever had.” The fact Apple refused to answer the question did not go unnoticed.

Nor did Cue’s unconventional way of negotiating with some of the most powerful entertainment executives in the country. When Jeff Bewkes, CEO of Time Warner (Entertainment) agreed to meet with Cue about Apple licensing Time Warner’s critical networks — which include HBO, CNN, and TNT — Apple’s negotiator showed up 10 minutes late. While Time Warner’s negotiators were smartly dressed in business attire, Cue turned up wearing jeans, a Hawaiian shirt, and sneakers with no socks. It went downhill from there, because Apple insisted on valuable on-demand rights to full seasons of hit shows and permission to let viewers store their favorite recordings on a massive cloud-based DVR that included features like automatic recordings of hit shows and advanced ad-skipping technology.

Crickets.

More than a few programmers used to having their way with cable operators were shocked by Apple’s ‘arrogance’ and unconventional way of doing business. The newspaper reports one former Time Warner Cable executive watched with amusement as stone-faced programmers were unimpressed with Apple’s demands.

Jon Lovitz offers a visual hint what Mr. Cue must have looked like meeting with high-powered execs at Time Warner (Entertainment)

“[They] kept looking at the Apple guys like: ‘Do you have any idea how this industry works?'” said the former executive.

Apple responded ‘doing new things requires changes that often are unsettling.’

A year later the negotiations were on life support, as Apple struggled with the arrival of 2015 with no slimmed down streaming TV package to offer Apple TV owners.

Apple’s demands flew in the face of decades of cable industry business practices, which give channel owners virtual guarantees of rate hikes with each contract renewal, the right to force their spinoff networks on the cable lineup in return for a comfortable renewal process, and the cable industry’s right to an assurance everyone was getting the same kind of deal (except volume discounts). Any deviation from this would result in panic on Wall Street, as investors’ dependence on perpetually improving quarterly financial results based on revenue boosts from new or higher fees would come crashing down if a company like Apple got a better deal.

One industry insider suggested once a company like Apple got a deal on sweetheart terms, every other distributor would demand the same deal (and many have contract provisions that require it). Apple may have assumed that because it managed to get the recording industry to agree to its iTunes digital music distribution deal 15 years earlier, so the cable industry would go. Except the road to cut-throat deals for entertainment programming is littered with dead-end business plans that had to be quickly modified when the discounts ended.

Netflix and Starz both learned expensive lessons when early discounts on licensing deals ended after Hollywood saw how much money those companies made from streaming. When licensing contracts expired, entertainment companies sought massive increases in licensing fees to “fairly share” the proceeds. Netflix ended up walking away from several studios, seriously impacting their online streaming catalog. Eventually, Netflix decided if they cannot beat the studios, they should join them, creating original programming to attract and keep subscribers.

Cue in real life

After almost a decade spent trying to get into the online cable business, Apple now seems more likely to follow Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu, and devote time and money on developing its own original programming. Instead of trying to license and bundle network programming, Apple TV today supports independent apps created by various networks. Viewers still get to watch their favorite shows, Apple does not have to pay for streaming rights, and there is a joint effort to create and support a single login so viewers can get access to content without constantly re-entering usernames and passwords.

Apple’s original shows include “Planet of the Apps,” a reality series, a miniseries being developed by Dr. Dre, and a spinoff of CBS’ “Carpool Karaoke.” The shows serve a dual purpose — entertaining viewers and helping push sales in Apple’s App Store and streaming music service.

Also under consideration are big budget, critically acclaimed original shows and series that could generate positive buzz for Apple TV, like “House of Cards” has done for Netflix.

Developing programming keeps negotiators like Apple’s Mr. Cue from having to challenge a very profitable pay television industry on their terms and spares Apple from creating a cable package of linear TV channels subscribers increasingly don’t care about. Viewers want on-demand access to the shows they want to see and don’t care that much about who supplies them and how.

So in the end, the intransigence of Big Cable and Hollywood studios that are now worried about cord-cutting may have done Apple an enormous favor, sparing them from being entangled in a business that buys and sells channels to fill a bloated and expensive cable television lineup more and more consumers are now deciding they can do without.

Updated: Link to WSJ story corrected.

Video programmers that want to avoid the problem of usage allowances that can deter internet video streaming have a new way to make an end run around Net Neutrality, distributing their content “cap-free” through “virtual cable channels” that are distributed over broadband, but appear like traditional cable TV channels on a set-top box.

This morning, Fierce Cable noted Wurl’s IP-based streaming cable television network platform was here, offering cable operators new cable channels that are actually delivered over the customer’s internet connection. The Alt Channel, Streaming News Network, The Sports Feed and Popcornflix will appear on set-top boxes and onscreen guides like traditional linear cable channels, starting in August. Wurl claims at least 51, mostly small and independent cable operators, have already signed up for the service, which could quickly expand to 10-12 channels in the future. But Multichannel News has confirmed only one partner so far — Fidelity Communications, a small cable operator serving parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.

What makes these channels very different from the other networks on the lineup is that they are delivered over the customer’s internet connection directly into a cable set-top box, and will generally be exempt from any usage allowances or caps providers impose on broadband usage. Wurl acts as a distributor, obtaining content from “popular online studios” that “until now has only been available on computers and mobile devices.” Wurl’s partners can get their content exposed on traditional cable TV to a potentially greater audience, who can watch while not worrying about using up their monthly internet usage allowance.

The first series of bracketed channels are Wurl-TV broadband based channels, while the second are traditional linear cable networks delivered by RF or QAM. Both integrate seamlessly into the cable set-top box’s on-screen program guide.

Wurl’s unicast approach relies on its own content delivery network to provide one internet stream for each set-top box accessing its programming, which also allows for support of on-demand programming. But every cable customer watching a Wurl channel is effectively streaming video over their internet connection. Cable operators usually blame internet video for consuming most of their available internet bandwidth, necessitating the “need” for usage allowances/caps or usage based billing to manage and pay for bandwidth “fairly.” Yet Wurl’s networks consume just as much bandwidth as traditional online video. But because Wurl is partnering with cable operators, that content is not subject to the usage caps Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Video customers have to contend with.

Wurl claims its approach is so cable-operator friendly, “there’s no reason to say no,” said Sean Doherty, Wurl’s CEO and co-founder.

Cable operators are offered Wurl channels for free, with no affiliate fees or upfront costs, and no significant technology costs since the channels are distributed direct to the set-top box over broadband, not RF or QAM. A video player is embedded into the virtual cable channel, which allows viewers to pause, rewind, and fast forward programming.

In the future, cable systems are expected to gradually transition to IP-delivery of all of their video content, turning the cable TV line in your home into one giant broadband connection, across which television, internet access, and phone service are delivered.

But cable operators are still making distinctions between services that are gradually becoming different in name only. If a customer watches a Wurl channel over the internet on their desktop, that would count against their usage allowance. But if they watch over a cable-TV set-top box, it won’t, despite the fact the journey the channel takes to reach the viewer is exactly the same. That gives certain content providers an advantage others lack, representing a classic end run around Net Neutrality.

To be fair, that is not a distinction Wurl has made in any of its marketing material, but the fact preferred content can be managed this way is just one more reason the FCC should ban usage caps and usage-based billing on consumer internet accounts. Wurl’s own marketing material tells operators the cost and impact of its video streaming on the cable operator’s existing infrastructure is next to zero… because Wurl’s content comes across broadband platforms already so robust, they can easily accommodate the potential of thousands of viewers all watching Wurl channels without any issues. That reality undermines the cable industry’s own questionable arguments about the need for data caps or usage billing.

Sony PlayStation Vue has added live streams of CBS stations in nine new markets, expanding the reach of CBS-affiliated stations on the cable TV online alternative.

Effective immediately, subscribers can watch these CBS affiliates if you are located within the local coverage area (thanks to Cord Cutters News):

• California: KFMB San Diego
• Florida: WPEC West Palm Beach
• Michigan: WWMT Grand Rapids/Kalamazoo
• North Carolina: WBTV Charlotte
• Ohio: WKRC Cincinnati, WOIO Cleveland
• Pennsylvania: WHP Harrisburg
• Texas: KEYE Austin
• Utah: KUTV Salt Lake City

PlayStation Vue isn’t just for game consoles, available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Google Chromecast, Roku, Amazon Fire TV/Stick, and also available on the PlayStation Vue mobile app (iOS/Android). A seven-day free trial is available to U.S. viewers.

The service appears to be a more direct competitor to traditional cable television, offering a substantial number of traditional cable networks and an increasing number of local over the air stations:

PlayStation Vue Packages:

• Access: 55+ channels, including an assortment of cable, movie and sports channels for $29.99 per month ($39.99 if local stations are provided)
• Core: 70+ channels and regional sports networks for $34.99 per month ($44.99 if local stations are provided)
• Elite: 100+ channels, including all channels noted above plus Epix Hits and two other entertainment channels for $44.99 per month ($54.99 if local stations are provided)

Showtime is available a-la-carte. In smaller cities without live local station streaming, the service offers on-demand access to selected network shows.