Ten live daily shows will also debut on the service upon its launch, with eight to twelve hours of live news broadcast every day. Titles from CNN’s library that will feature includes seasons of shows such as Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy, This is Life with Lisa Ling and United Shades of America.

CNN+ and the company’s traditional TV content (from its CNN, CNN International and HLN channels) will be offered on a single app. The streaming service will cost subscribers $6 per month or $60 per years. CNN is offering customers who sign up within the first four weeks 50% off the monthly plan for life.

Andrew Morse, CNN EVP, Chief Digital Officer and Head of CNN+, said: “We are thrilled to be able to offer CNN+ to customers on each of these platforms on launch day. Getting this product into the hands of our customers is an important milestone for CNN, and our partners will be critical to the future success of this product.”

Tony Goncalves, EVP and Chief Revenue Officer, WarnerMedia, said: “The launch of CNN+ marks another key moment in WarnerMedia’s evolution and CNN’s storied history. We’re so pleased to work with our partners to provide consumers access to all that CNN+ has to offer wherever they choose.”

Titles migrating from Funimation and Wakanim to Crunchyroll include My Hero Academia, Tokyo Ghoul, as well as Cowboy Bebop and Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation.

Colin Decker, CEO of Crunchyroll, said:  “When we brought Funimation and Crunchyroll together last year, our top priority was to put fans first. Unifying all of our brands and services under the Crunchyroll brand globally enables us to offer more value than ever before as we combine subs, dubs, simulcasts, library, music, movies, manga—all into one subscription. The new Crunchyroll is the realisation of a dream, and we are grateful to the creators of anime and the millions of fans who have joined us in making the community what it is today.”

Sony acquired Crunchyroll from WarnerMedia in August 2021, in a deal valued at $1.175B. Last year, the service surpassed 5 million global subscribers and 120 million registered users. Subscription fees currently range from $7.99 to $14.99 – Crunchyroll has said the pricing of the subscription has not change in the wake of the merger.

The service is currently available in 46 territories across Europe and the Americas, and this latest expansion will bring that number to 61 territories. The company has said this move comes off the back of a successful rollout in Spain and the Nordic region last October, and that it intends to launch in six more European markets later this year, including Greece and Turkey. While WarnerMedia has previously said they intend to launch HBO Max in 190 countries by 2026, it has not yet announced plans to expand to Asian markets.

HBO Max’s catalogue of content includes series and movies from Warner Bros., HBO, DC, Cartoon Network and Max Originals. The service ‘platforms’ Warner Bros. movies within 45 days of their release, and includes titles such as The Matrix Resurrections, Dune and The Suicide Squad. New Max Originals include Station Eleven, Peacemaker and Raised by Wolves, and the service also has a range of non-scripted shows, such as Expecting Amy and Finding Magic Mike.

WarnerMedia ended last year with 73.8 million combined total subscribers for HBO Max and its cable network, HBO. Johannes Larcher, Head of HBO Max International, has said that the streaming service garnered 8 million additional subscribers outside of the United States in 2021.

Larcher comments: “We are delivering on our strategy to go direct-to-consumer around the world, which coupled with our beloved content will give us the scale needed to be one of the top global streaming platforms.”

HBO Max will be available on Smart TVs (Samsung, LG and Android TV), via other connected TV  devices (Apple TV 4K and Google Chromecast and  major game consoles), and on mobile and tablets (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Android). Users will be able to create up to five personalised viewer profiles, with no limit on registered devices per subscription.

NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) are the latest blockchain phenomenon to have made waves on the internet, with attitudes towards the crypto-based tokens ranging from excitement to skepticism to derision. Unlike a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, where one bitcoin is precisely equivalent in value to any other bitcoin, NFTs are non-fungible, meaning that each token is unique and cannot be traded for another qualitatively identical token. Most NFTs are part of the Ethereum blockchain, which is a cryptocurrency similar to bitcoin or dogecoin, but which also supports NFTs.

Typically the acquisition of NFTs involves gaining ownership rights to a digital asset, such as an image, gif or small video clip, on the blockchain (although original media owners mostly retain rights to use and distribute the asset, but cannot sell another NFT for it). Many NFT advocates have compared acquiring tokens to the purchase of artwork or collecting rare trading cards. In October, Mike Winkelmann – who creates digital art under the pseudonym “Beeple” – sold an NFT of his work for $69 million.

Introduced by Fox, The MaskVerse will allow crypto-fans to build their own collection of limited-edition digital masks for characters across all six seasons of The Masked Singer.  Players will be able to participate in a voting game to predict contestant eliminations in the TV show, giving them opportunities to buy Gold Mask packs, complete the full collection and win special prizes. Fans will create digital wallets through the Eluvio blockchain to function as a digital vault for their MaskVerse NFTs, and can purchase tokens via credit cards or cryptocurrency while still being able to transfer their NFTs to third-party wallets.

Aside from launching Blockchain Creative Labs (with a $100 million seed investment) and unveiling The MaskVerse, Fox has also demonstrated its interest in NFTs by teaming up with WWE to launch a marketplace for trading tokens based on the sports company’s catalogue of wrestling intellectual property.

The astonishing prices some NFTs have sold for seems to have attracted the attention of other entertainment mega-companies. ViacomCBS has partnered with the NFT company Recur, to develop and sell tokens based on its catalogue of films and TV shows. The companies will launch a platform in early 2022, selling digital assets from CBS, Nickelodeon, MTV, BET and other channels.

ViacomCBS’s Consumer Products President Pam Kaufman said, “Voracious collectors and first-time NFT buyers alike will find unique opportunities to own a piece of their favorite franchises.”

Similarly WarnerMedia-owned CNN will rollout its own NFTs through an offering called “Vault by CNN”, and Lionsgate has signed a partnership agreement with NFT company Autograph to bring tokens to market based on major franchises such as The Hunger Games, Mad Men and John Wick.

“NFTs present a tremendous opportunity for mixed-reality world building experiences, deepening user engagement and interaction and fostering a community for our hundreds of millions of global consumers to create one-of-a-kind digital collections and Autograph is the optimal destination for this discovery,” said Jenefer Brown, Executive VP & Head of Lionsgate Global Live.

This is according to IHS Markit research director, Ted Hall, who told attendees of the Videoscape Europe conference in London yesterday that the next generation of “streaming heavyweights” are tracking to increase US online video subscriptions by 15% above IHS’s baseline forecast.

“Although Netflix and Amazon will remain the single most popular online channels, the new entrants’ broader offerings will boost their overall market power,” said Hall.

“At Disney, if we stack up all of its online subscription services across Hulu, Hulu Live TV, ESPN+ and Disney+, its total subscriptions will actually, in this context, rival Netflix’s subscriptions total by 2023.”

Hall described Disney+ as “arguably the most highly-anticipated of the new direct-to-consumer services” and predicted that it has a “good chance” of achieving up to 20 million subscriptions by 2023.

Due to launch in November, Disney+ will draw from a strong catalogue of Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic and Fox content and at price of US$6.99 per-month will also undercut Netflix.

WarnerMedia’s forthcoming SVOD offering, on the other hand, was characterised as a service that “seems to be in the process of finding its identity,” with Hall pointing to recent executive comments suggesting it will be a single-tier offering that won’t undercut WarerMedia’s existing HBO Now service.

“We may be looking at a price-point for this service of somewhere between US$16 and US$18 per-month, so a fair bit above the services that we thought it would be competing with. There’s also talk that it’s leaning more towards having virtual pay TV ambitions,” said Hall.

He claimed that a “fatter bundle” approach makes sense for WarnerMedia’s parent company, AT&T, which has more to lose from pay TV’s decline than Disney does. However, it does also have a large mobile base that it could leverage as part of a future bundling strategy.

Apple TV+, which is due to launch this autumn but still hasn’t had pricing confirmed, is “trending towards our least aggressive forecast scenario,” said Hall. “Were it to be bundled with Apple Music, this would change the outlook significantly.”

“For Apple TV+ it will be brand equity and bankable talent that are the key weapons for attracting subscribers to its long-awaited TV content offering.”

Summing up, Hall predicted that varying levels of aggression will yield mixed results for these new streaming players in what is becoming an “exceptionally competitive online channels market”.

“High-quality content won’t be enough to guarantee success – the number of players that have it is increasing, forcing consumers to make tough choices. Bundling and hybrid models give the major players an edge, whether it’s aggregating online channels or aggregating a wider range of content and services.”

The deal leaves Hulu’s majority owner Disney and minority owner Comcast as the remaining shareholders in the US video business and values the company at US$15 billion.

The move comes as AT&T prepares to launch its own WarnerMedia subscription video-on-demand service in the fourth quarter of 2019.

However, Hulu CEO Randy Freer said in a statement: “WarnerMedia will remain a valued partner to Hulu for years to come as we offer customers the best of TV, live and on demand, all in one place.”

Yesterday’s Hulu transaction did not require any US governmental or third-party approvals and was signed and closed simultaneously.

Freer said: “We thank AT&T for their support and investment over the past two years and look forward to collaboration in the future.”

AT&T will use the proceeds from the Hulu deal, along with additional planned sales of non-core assets, to reduce its debt.

The company completed its blockbuster US$85 billion acquisition of Time Warner last June – a move that put it in control of media and entertainment businesses Warner Bros., HBO and Turner.

The forthcoming WarnerMedia SVOD service is due to include three levels of service: an entry-level movie-focused package; a premium service with original programming and movies; and a third service that bundles content from the first two with an extensive library of WarnerMedia and licensed content.

Disney is also gearing up for the launch later this year of its own Disney+ streaming service. This is due to launch in the US on November 12, 2019 and will feature content from the Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic brands.