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Disney closing Hotstar in US

Disney is to close down its Hotstar streaming service in the United States in late 2022, but has yet to confirm an end date. It is streamlining its streaming services by moving content over to Hulu and ESPN+. “The move from Hotstar, a premium brand for South Asian content, to ESPN+ and Hulu in the […]

September 1, 2021By Colin Mann

HBO: 45-day Asia SVoD window for Warner titles

New blockbuster movies from Warner Bros such as The Suicide Squad will soon be available to stream on HBO GO as early as 45 days after their in-market theatrical premiere in Southeast Asia, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The first movies out of the blocks are The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It – available […]

September 1, 2021

Disney’s Star+ launches in LatAm

Star+, The Walt Disney Company’s new general entertainment and sports streaming service for adults, has launched in Latin America. The service includes fiction and non-fiction productions fully created in Latin America, a broad offering of live sports from ESPN, new international original productions, the full collection of animated comedies from 20th Television, exclusive movie premieres, […]

September 1, 2021

Analysis: SVoDs take churn revenue hit

Findings from Wurl Analytics, the research division of streaming TV specialist Wurl, suggest that lost US revenue for four of the top SVoD platforms as a result of churn totalled $80.2 million (€68.1m) in the month of April 2021 alone. In its first report, Churn Analysis Report 2021, Wurl Analytics uncovers the far-reaching financial impact […]

August 31, 2021

Analyst: 15m Arabic SVoD subs by 2026

There will be 15 million SVoD subscriptions across 13 Arabic countries by 2026, up from 8.61 million in 2021, according to the Middle East and North Africa SVOD Forecasts report from analyst firm Digital TV Research. Netflix will bring in more subscribers than second-place OSN and third-placed StarzPlay combined. [Disney+ will not start in the […]

August 31, 2021

BritBox launches on Roku

The BritBox SVoD service is now available on Roku streaming players and Roku TV models. Existing BritBox customers can log in to BritBox on their Roku streaming device whilst Roku users who do not yet have BritBox can sign up via their remote control thanks to seamless integration with Roku Pay. BritBox UK, a joint […]

August 31, 2021By Nik Roseveare

Forecast: Under 50% Canadian homes subscribe to pay-TV in 2022

In 2022, 48.9 per cent of households in Canada will have pay-TV, marking a massive and continuing trend of cable cord-cutting in the country, according to forecasts by eMarketer. As recently as 2015, more than 75 per cent of households in Canada – a total of 10.5 million – had pay-TV. That figure has been […]

August 31, 2021

HBO Max, YouTube launch on Spectrum TV platform

Spectrum has announced the launch of HBO Max and YouTube within Spectrum Guide on eligible devices across its service area in the US, providing customers access to the streaming services directly from the Spectrum TV platform. “As the video landscape continues to change, we are evolving our products and making it easier for our customers […]

August 31, 2021

BARB: 18.8m UK homes have SVoD service

BARB, the UK’s television audience measurement currency, has released data from its Establishment Survey for Q2 2021. Due to restrictions on carrying out fieldwork during the pandemic, these are the first quarterly results released since Q3 2020. The survey reveals that the number of UK households with a subscription to any SVoD service is now […]

August 27, 2021

Portugal: SVoD platforms to pay 1% annual tax

Streaming services in Portugal such as Netflix, HBO Portugal, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video will have to pay an annual tax of 1 per cent on “relevant income” by April 30th every year, for the previous year. If it is not possible to ascertain the ‘relevant income’ of these platforms, the annual fee will be […]

August 26, 2021From Branislav Pekic in Rome