Yahoo Closes Down Yahoo Screen Hub
- by Wayne Friedman , January 5, 2016
Yahoo has closed down Yahoo Screen, its effort to compete with Netflix and Hulu. The service pulled in premium TV and video, with its most notable acquisition the revival of NBC comedy
“Community,” which had been cancelled by the network.
Overall, the 2-year-old service claimed more than 1,000 hours of programming as well as a partnership with Viacom and MTV when it started up in 2013. It also launched with eight short-form original series.
Yahoo made an aggressive investment to acquire content, including “Saturday Night Live” episodes and NFL video, as well as Katie Couric reports shown on the service.
Couric was hired as a Yahoo news anchor. Her daily news reports will remain available on Yahoo's main site.
In addition to “Community,” Yahoo had other original TV comedies, including “Sin City Saints” and “Other Space,” which can now be found in Yahoo’s TV section.
A Yahoo executive has said the company is constantly reviewing its products to create the best user experience -- and as a result, video content has been “transitioned from Yahoo Screen to our Digital Magazine properties.”
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It's usually a bad sign when the first time someone hears about something is in an article announcing its cancellation. And, unfortunately, this isn't the first service that Yahoo! has dumped after dismal numbers. One would think that a company with an exclamation point in its name might consider having their PR department make more noise when introducing and promoting a service.
Yahoo has a long history of losing stockholder money...way back when, Mark Cuban sold his worthless company Broadcast.com to Yahoo for 5 BILLION...they closed it down a year later... they thought Mark owned the rights to the sports that Broadcast.com radio stations were streaming... a big oops, but what the hell it was OPM, seems like nothing has changed at Yahoo except the boss is much better looking..