Hulu secures “South Park” as the battle for streaming rights continues

While the likes of Amazon and Netflix continue to court major exclusives for their respective services, Hulu earned a big win of its own this weekend. At the Television Critics Association Press Tour yesterday, Trey Parker and Matt Stone announced that all 17 seasons of South Park will be available for streaming on Hulu Plus, with new episodes available for subscribers the day after broadcast. According to the New York Times, the deal for the series’ 240-plus episodes was worth more than $80 million, helping to ensure that the series will live on well beyond its 20th season. The news is also a boon for cord-cutting fans. Previously, viewers had to rely on Hulu, Netflix, or SouthParkStudios.com, but no service ever provided the complete catalog of episodes. That all changes with this announcement. Also, as part of the deal, viewers can watch every episode of the series for free up until the new season debuts on September 24th.

While the media moguls in Sun Valley, Idaho, jockeyed for parking spaces for their jets and hunted for safe havens in a consolidating content world, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the boy-men behind “South Park,” were in Los Angeles, proving again that if you make content people love — it’s harder than it looks — it doesn’t matter how many paradigms shift. Onstage with Hulu at the Television Critics Association’s twice-yearly convention on Saturday afternoon, Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker announced a three-year deal that gives the service exclusive rights to stream the huge back catalog of “South Park,” which now consists of more than 240 episodes, as well as the current season’s episodes immediately after they are broadcast on Comedy Central. (Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone will continue to stream 30 selected episodes on their own site and host new episodes there, too.) The deal, worth in excess of $80 million according to a person involved in the negotiations, means Kenny and the boys will continue to frolic for years to come. It also points to a couple of broader trends that the titans at the gathering in Sun Valley might want to put on their agendas. (The actual creators of content have rarely been a big part of the guest list.) First and foremost, high-quality content is only going to become more expensive as additional platforms open up. Content, we were told, wanted to be free. Turns out, it wants to be paid at every turn.