Tubi is the best free streaming service there is, and I try to share that fact with everyone I can as often as possible. I’ve watched many wonderful masterpieces through the service such as Schlock and Conquest and I would be a worse person without it. It brings me great sadness and misery, then, to announce that Fox Corp has bought the little streamer that could for $440 million dollars. It might be free, but now we’re all paying in shame.
Your first question might be “Isn’t Fox dead?” and the answer is yes. That Fox is dead. The one that made Logan, Alien, and a metric ton of classic films throughout the relatively young life of the medium has been purchased, skinned, and cremated without ceremony by Disney. That name no longer exists. Disney did not, however, purchase all of Fox in that landmark deal. No, Fox Corp continued to exist consisting almost exclusively of Fox News. That’s the corporation that bought Tubi.
Fox is making this purchase after selling its minority stake in Roku and says that this purchase underscores its “long-term strategic initiatives to broaden and enhance direct-to-consumer digital reach and engagement.” Whatever the hell that means.
They have gained a service that skews much younger than Fox News with Tubi and a user base that spends more than 160 million hours a month watching the streamer’s content. That certainly is a lot of engagement.
Does this mean that a good chunk of Tubi’s content going forward will be right-wing garbage? Probably not, at least at first, but it is a bit scary to think of what Fox Corp might do with the service down the road. From now on, though, every time you watch a movie on that platform you’ll be throwing those ad dollars directly into Ruper Murdoch’s pockets, and that’s a shitty enough feeling all on its own.
Fox Buying Tubi For $440 Million, Using Cash From Sale Of Roku Stake [Deadline]
