Crunchyroll's Parent Company Bought By AT&T
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http://about.att.com/story/att_otter_media.html
AT&T* has acquired The Chernin Group’s controlling interest in Otter Media, the joint venture between the two companies. Otter Media, a leading subscription, advertising and content company, comprises wholly-owned subsidiaries Ellation, an online subscription video service provider, with offerings under the Crunchyroll and VRV brands, as well as a full-service digital media company, Fullscreen, and its Rooster Teeth brand. Otter also has ownership stakes in global content studio Gunpowder & Sky, as well as Hello Sunshine, a media company founded by Reese Witherspoon.
I'm hoping this doesn't affect anything service / cost wise (hope they keep the free streaming for nonsubscribers).
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@terrence Nope, I fully expect HD will be limited to AT&T premium subscribers by some point next year. Same for HBO.
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@seltzermx said in Crunchyroll's Parent Company Bought By AT&T:
@terrence Nope, I fully expect HD will be limited to AT&T premium subscribers by some point next year. Same for HBO.
I originally wrote "you think they'll raise premiums for those that aren't AT&T customers", but retracted it cause I wasn't sure if that was crazy or no to jump to as a conclusion. Your conclusion is both worse and maybe more likely.
Maybe they'll add subscription plans to split the content between Shounen, Seinen, Shoujo, and Josei; "only pay for the content you want"... God no! T_T
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I think it's been very obvious AT&T's been trying to collect a full vertical for awhile now, and whatever they do with it will not be good for us consumers.
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ok AT&T owns Crunchyroll (and VRV) (and cartoon network/adult swim)
Sony owns Funimation
IIRC Sentai, and "The Anime Network" are out of the streaming service business (but Hidive picked up a bunch of thier titles)
HiDive is the 'independent' anime focused streaming service ?then we have :
Hulu, netflix, amazon, tubi, yahoo, googleTV (and Youtube)I think that crunchyroll/AT&T has plenty of competition that should (hopefully) prevent shenanigans
now how long until Comcast buys somebody and mucks them up?
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HiDive is also apparently available through VRV, Crunchyroll's direct parent company's service.
I'm not entirely convinced that HiDive isn't basically part of the former-ADV hydra (Sentai, Section23, etc). Those ones also claimed to be independent when they were owned by the same people who owned ADV and bought all of ADV's assets.
HiDive is based in the same city as the former ADV companies.
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yea - that's why the quotes around "independent"
But it seems that Chrunchyroll and HIDIVE are not playing nice. Not everything from HIDIVE is on VRV, and (at least when using my ROKU app) the subtitles aren't the easiest to read. And I'm seeing a couple of titles that were only on HIDIVE are now on Crunchyroll (Domestic Girlfriend comes to mind)
Multinational conglomerates.... what are you going to do?
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@guspaz I still say ADV in conversations about Sentai licensed series sometimes and someone will have to point out to me that ADV is no longer around.
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I got some pricing survey from CR yesterday and from what i could gather from that - the prices are likely to go up. Only interesting thing is that it looks like they are considering adding simulpub of Light Novel chapters in addition to manga, which would be cool.
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@the-green-death said in Crunchyroll's Parent Company Bought By AT&T:
Only interesting thing is that it looks like they are considering adding simulpub of Light Novel chapters in addition to manga, which would be cool.
Maybe why the J-Novel deal fell through (the Super Fun Pack thing)?
I'd be curious to see what CR would do in that space. Would they license out from other pubs, or build their own collection?
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I'm a cynic, so I think they'd do whatever is least valuable to their customers, CR would offer something that is available elsewhere (cheaper), or web-novels that I've never heard of.
now if I were an optimist (but I' not) I'd say that they'd have a deal w/ Kadokawa+Yen Press to serialize releases of titles that would only be licenses as entire volumes otherwise (and tie in to whatever anime is popular)
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@the-green-death got the same survey. All I want is subbed anime at the lowest (reasonable) price, as close to simultaneous to airing as possible, from a site that doesn't crash once a week. Give me all that, with no extras like interviews or their BS "American" animation project, and I'll re-sub. I'll stick to JNC for my LN needs.
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If Crunchyroll manga is anything to go by we can assume that Crunchyroll doing their own Light novels will not be a very good thing (for the Light Novel community)
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Yeah, some removed CR Manga is still not available to purchase separately, right? ReLife? =[
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@seltzermx I’m with you. Right now I pay $50/year for an Annual Crunchy subscription and I don’t honestly foresee myself paying any more regardless of what “value-adding” crap they offer. If they take away that offer I don’t watch enough to make it worth it. I’ll just watch what’s on Netflix instead.
