AT&T who has acquired Time Warner and renamed it WarnerMedia will launch a streaming services in late 2019. The library will include content from HBO, Turner, and Warner Bros, and other studios.
Content from HBO, Turner & Warner Bros
When AT&T paid a dizzying sum to acquire Time Warner, the company got its hands on HBO, Turner, Warner Bros, and other content studios. It now owns franchises and titles such as Harry Potter, Game of Thrones and The Big Bang Theory as well as titles under DC Comics.
The company will use its newly acquired content slate as the basis for a new streaming service that will launch in the fourth quarter of 2019. AT&T has made it clear that it will be a global streaming service aimed to compete head-to-head with Netflix. If the timeline holds, it will launch almost simultaneously with Disney’s new streaming service – and perhaps Apple’s streaming service.
- “Today we announced plans to launch a new direct-to-consumer streaming service in the fourth quarter of 2019. This is another benefit of the AT&T/Time Warner merger, and we are committed to launching a compelling and competitive product that will serve as a complement to our existing businesses and help us to expand our reach by offering a new choice for entertainment with the WarnerMedia collection of films, television series, libraries, documentaries and animation loved by consumers around the world. We expect to create such a compelling product that it will help distributors increase consumer penetration of their current packages and help us successfully reach more customers,” said John Stankey, WarnerMedia CEO.
At a Vanity Fair conference, John Stankey said that content spend will be "competitive” to that of Netflix who now spends 12-13 billion dollars annually on content.
He also said that the new streaming service will include content from HBO but without commenting specifically on how it will relate to the current HBO Go and HBO Now services. Pricing was not confirmed but he said that it will be priced higher than the HBO Now, which costs $15 dollars per month.
WarnerMedia is planning to launch the streaming service in the fourth quarter of 2019.
- Source: WarnerMedia via Variety
