Cablevision to sell subscriptions to Hulu Plus in first pay TV distribution deal for Hulu, but offers few details on cost, timing, method
Hulu Comes to Cable TV, Which Is Fine With Cable TV — Cablevision announced today that it will sell subscriptions to Hulu, the streaming TV service.
Context & Ripple Effects
Cablevision is again positioning itself as the pay TV operator willing to sell what rivals treat as competition: weeks after announcing HBO Now access for broadband-only customers, it becomes the first pay TV distributor ever to resell Hulu Plus subscriptions. For Hulu, which until now reached viewers only through its own apps and devices, this puts its subscription inside the cable bill.
The timing matters on both sides: Hulu has been testing how far it can push direct-to-consumer sales, undercutting Apple, Roku, and Sony on Showtime pricing sold online for $9, while Cablevision is hedging against cord-cutting by owning the storefront rather than fighting it.
First-order effects
- Cablevision subscribers gain the option to add Hulu Plus to their existing pay TV bill, making Hulu one of the first over-the-top services carried by a traditional cable operator.
- Hulu gains a new distribution channel with no customer-acquisition cost of its own, reaching households that never install a separate streaming app.
Second-order effects
- Other pay TV operators face pressure to follow Cablevision's template of reselling OTT subscriptions rather than blocking them, since the alternative is watching those subscriptions attach to competitors' broadband lines instead.
- Hulu's willingness to distribute through cable while also cutting exclusive online prices like its $9 Showtime deal forces device makers such as Apple, Roku, and Sony to compete on price for add-on channels they no longer exclusively control.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds toward full convergence, the endpoint visible in the coverage is Hulu's own $40-a-month live TV service — streaming platforms absorbing the cable bundle itself, with operators like Cablevision reduced to billing pipes or partners rather than gatekeepers.
- Distribution power shifts from whoever owns the network to whoever owns the customer relationship, pushing regulators and content owners alike to rethink how carriage deals and bundle economics work when 'pay TV' includes streaming inventory.
The trend: Pay TV operators are pivoting from gatekeepers of streaming rivals to distributors of them, as the boundary between the cable bundle and over-the-top subscriptions dissolves.