“Very few shows in the history of television will have made it to 23 seasons,” ~Lisa Holme, Hulu’s VP of content acquisition.
Hulu paid $192 million to Viacom for the rights to South Park. That is a crazy amount of money for one show. With Netflix dominating the streaming space it clear other services will do what it takes to be relevant. Obtaining exclusive content is not hard. Obtaining good exclusive content is a lot harder. That could explain why Hulu will be handing over a check for an incredible $192 million to Viacom for the exclusive streaming rights to South Park. That sum is only gives Hulu South Park for 3 years. The series however will continue to air on Comedy Central for the next five years.
The show has been on for 23 seasons and thanks to this deal it will be one for 5 more seasons. This is how every one of the few times that a digital streaming service has underwritten current production costs of a current on air show. The Hulu, South Park deal dwarfs other recent deals. It paid $160 million for Seinfeld and had another deal for 300 episodes of CSI.
Hulu had no choice but to drop billions on South Park because it does not have its own good original content like HBO and Netflix so exclusive content is the only way to it could go.