Owner Yahoo! Registration Optional Date launched September 2013 Type of site Video on demand | Commercial Yes Current status Active Parent organization Yahoo! | |
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Yahoo! View is a video on demand service operated by Yahoo!. In partnership with Hulu, it streams recent episodes of television series from the ABC, NBC, and Fox networks in the United States, as well as a moderate selection of archived programs from various distributors.
It was initially established as Yahoo! Video, a video hosting service. Later on, the ability to upload video was removed, and the website began operating as a portal for curated video content hosted by Yahoo's properties. In 2011, the service was re-launched as Yahoo! Screen, placing a larger focus on original content and web series. Yahoo! Screen also acquired the sitcom Community for an additional season, following its cancellation after the fifth season on NBC.
As of September 2013, the service had more than 1,000 hours of content. In January 2016, following a $42 million write-down on the poor performance of its original content, Yahoo! Screen was shut down. In August 2016, Yahoo! announced a partnership with subscription video-on-demand service Hulu to move its free video library to a de facto successor known as Yahoo! View.
History
Yahoo! View began originally as Yahoo! Video, a video sharing website on which users could upload and share videos. At launch, Yahoo! Video was an internet-wide video search engine. Yahoo added the ability to upload and share video clips in June 2006. A re-designed site was launched in February 2008 that changed the focus to Yahoo!-hosted video only.
On December 15, 2010, Yahoo! Video's functionality to upload video was removed for its relaunch as Yahoo! Screen the following year. All user-generated content was removed on March 15, 2011. The content that Yahoo! deleted was saved by the Archive Team. The Yahoo! Screen rebrand was launched October 2011, alongside eight original programs. Yahoo! Screen has streamed three seasons of its Emmy-nominated original series, Burning Love, which was syndicated for TV through E! in 2013.
On April 24, 2013, Yahoo! acquired rights to stream content from the NBC series Saturday Night Live, including archive clips from current and past seasons, behind the scenes footage, and other content. Yahoo! holds non-exclusive international rights to the archive content, and non-exclusive rights to clips from the current season.
In June 2014, Yahoo! announced that it had picked up former NBC sitcom Community for its sixth season, which premiered via Yahoo! Screen on March 17, 2015. Within a month of Community's season six premiere, Yahoo! had premiered full first seasons of two new original series, Sin City Saints and Other Space, but available only in the United States.
In June 2015, Yahoo! Screen won the worldwide rights to distribute the National Football League's International Series game between the Buffalo Bills and Jacksonville Jaguars, set to take place October 25. The one-off stream was the first NFL game to be broadcast almost exclusively through the Internet, with no television broadcast outside, Buffalo, Jacksonville and other international markets.
On January 4, 2016, following a $42 million write-down in the third quarter of 2015 as a result of the poor performance of its three original series, Yahoo! Screen as a portal was discontinued. Yahoo's original video content was re-located to relevant portals of the site; in particular, its original television series were moved to an "originals" section on the Yahoo! TV site.
On August 8, 2016, Hulu announced a partnership with Yahoo! to spin out its free video on demand streaming service, which features recent episodes of series from ABC, NBC, and Fox, into a new service known as Yahoo! View. It features the five most recent episodes of the networks' series; new episodes are added eight days after their original broadcast. It also integrates with Tumblr to provide access to fan content related to programs. Yahoo's digital rights to Saturday Night Live archives, as well as Community, will be integrated into the service.