Hulu could soon be in the hands of Disney, as a high stakes game of asset trading overseas could have a dramatic impact on the streaming service.

After a winning $39 billion bid to acquire British satellite TV company Sky, CNBC reports Comcast is willing to shed some of its assets back home, including its 30% minority stake in Hulu.

Analysts report Comcast has lost interest in the streaming venture because the cable company will face a permanently-reduced say in the venture after Disney completes its acquisition of 21st Century Fox, which controls 30% of Hulu. After the dust settles, Hulu will be 60% owned by Disney, 30% by Comcast and the remaining 10% held by AT&T, as part of its merger with Time Warner (Entertainment).

Originally formed in 2007 as an almost equal partnership between Disney, Comcast, and Fox, Hulu provides a controlled streaming platform for ABC, NBC, and FOX shows. Originally offering free, ad-supported access to recently aired network programs, Hulu has since grown dramatically under a subscription model, deepening its catalog of TV shows and movies and launching original content. In the last year, it launched its own cable-TV replacement service, offering streaming live television. Hulu is estimated to have 20 million paid streaming subscribers and an additional 1 million are signed up for Hulu with Live TV.

If Disney takes control of Hulu, CEO Bob Iger claims it will operate independently of Disney’s own, forthcoming subscription streaming service, set to debut in 2019. Iger said Disney may offer bundled discounts if customers subscribe to both Hulu and Disney’s own streaming service.

Comcast has dropped sports network beIN Sports off the lineup after its contract with the cable company expired July 31.

Customers who tune to the channel will find a series of rotating on-screen messages explaining the network was switched off because the renewal price was too high:

Have you heard about a disagreement between beIn Sports and Comcast?

Every month Comcast has to pay networks to bring their programming to you. That’s right, we pay the network. Not the other way around.

Now beIN sports is asking for a major increase in fees for the channel you already have, which could have a big impact on your bill.

beIN Sports won’t allow Comcast to carry its channels until this is resolved.

beIN Media Group, a spinoff of Al Jazeera Media Network, owns the network and has already filed a complaint against Comcast for violation of the deal conditions imposed by the FCC after approving the merger of Comcast and NBCUniversal. The complaint alleges Comcast is giving preferential treatment to its own sports networks, a violation of program carriage rules. That complaint remains pending.

“We are deeply disappointed that despite our best efforts over the last year to resolve the situation, millions of Comcast XFINITY subscribers have lost access to the content they love. We are happy to extend existing terms while we continue to negotiate, but unfortunately Comcast would rather continue to charge the same while taking away valuable and loved content from customers,” said Antonio Briceño, beIN Sports’ deputy managing director for the U.S. and Canada. “The truth is, we face a disheartening trend of media consolidation, where the big get bigger and innovative brands like ours that serve diverse audiences get pushed-out. This is almost always to the detriment of consumers who end up paying the price. We hope it stops now.”

NBC News will appeal to cord cutters and online news junkies with a new streaming network to be launched this summer, according to a report in Variety.

NBC News Digital is an experimental project from NBC News and will not duplicate existing NBC and MSNBC programming. Instead, the news division is hiring producers and talent to create new, original news shows for online audiences.

NBC News chairman Andrew Lack hinted that NBC was getting into the live-streaming business back in March, but had offered few details.

Most 24/7 news channels are behind the cable industry’s “TV Everywhere” authentication paywall, requiring viewers to prove they are current paid cable television subscribers to gain access.

NBC will face immediate competition from CBSN, the free digital streaming service from CBS offering live coverage of important news events and a regularly updated playlist of pre-recorded news segments and airings of CBS network news programming and features.

Fox News is working on its own subscription-based online news channel called Fox Nation that is expected to arrive by the end of this year.

In contrast, other cable news networks have been substantially cutting back on digital projects. CNN laid off its digital staffers in early 2018 and MSNBC relies exclusively on streaming material that has already aired on the cable news channel.

Pai

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s chairman said Tuesday the agency does not have authority to revoke broadcast licenses, despite suggestions from President Donald Trump.

Ajit Pai, a Republican who was named chairman of the telecommunications regulator in January, broke days of silence by rejecting Trump’s tweet that the FCC could challenge the license of NBC after stories Trump declared were not true.

“Under the law, the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on the content,” Pai said at a forum. “The FCC under my leadership will stand for the First Amendment.”

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

Democrats had been pushing Pai to denounce Trump’s suggestion that broadcast licenses could be threatened following reports by NBC News that his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, had called him a “moron” after a discussion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

“With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!” Trump tweeted last Wednesday.

Trump and his supporters have repeatedly used the term “fake news” to cast doubt on media reports critical of his administration, often without providing any evidence to support their case that the reports were untrue.

Any move to challenge media companies’ licenses, however, would likely face significant hurdles.

The FCC, an independent federal agency, does not license broadcast networks, but issues them to individual broadcast stations that are renewed on a staggered basis for eight-year periods.

Comcast Corp, which owns NBC Universal, also owns 11 broadcast stations, including outlets in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Dallas and Chicago.

When reviewing licenses the FCC must determine if a renewal is in the public interest. Courts have held that a station exercising its First Amendment rights is not adequate grounds to challenge a license.

The agency does not issue similar licenses for cable networks such as CNN and MSNBC, or regulate internet news or other websites.

In the early 1970s, then-President Richard Nixon and his top aides discussed using the FCC’s license renewal process as a way of punishing The Washington Post for its coverage of the Watergate burglary that ultimately brought down his presidency.

Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Jonathan Oatis

DirecTV Now is continuing to boost the number of live, local stations included in its streaming service with the addition of more than 25 local ABC, NBC and Fox affiliates, most in smaller cities.

The additions bring the station total to nearly 130 stations in 70 cities.

“We’re giving DirecTV Now customers more live local channels to stay connected, with more channels coming,” said Daniel York, senior executive vice president and chief content officer of the AT&T Entertainment Group.

The new stations: