Netflix and Hulu will have to wave goodbye to Friends, ER, and Seinfeld in the near future. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said his company would be pulling TV shows and movies from rivals for its own streaming service, which is slated to launch later this year.
AT&T “will be bringing a lot of these media rights, licensing rights back to ourselves to put on our own SVOD (subscription video-on-demand) product,” Stephenson said Tuesday morning at the JPMorgan Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference in Boston.
AT&T purchased Time Warner (now Warner Media) last year, putting them in control of a media conglomerate that includes the likes of HBO, TBS, and Warner TV.
AT&T’s new subscription video service is expected to launch in late 2019. It will be anchored by HBO TV shows and movies, along with content from Warner Bros. studios and Turner Networks. AT&T became the owner of the valuable entertainment library last June when it bought Time Warner in a deal valued at about $108.7 billion, including debt.