Fox buys the henhouse

The cord-cutter’s box is now owned by cable’s ghost.

I’ve used Roku since 2014, when a friend explained why this weird little purple box was the best way to escape cable. He was right. Now Fox is buying it.

Roku works because it is boring in the best possible way. It sat between you and the streaming mess, handled Netflix, YouTube, and whatever else you subscribed to. I paired it with Plex and made a personal media library feel normal on a television. Apple TV was fine. Amazon’s interface felt like shopping in a shouting mall. Native smart-TV software was, and remains, a punishment. Roku was the cord-cutter’s neutral ground.

The Fox and Roku brands will also be kept separate after the two companies are combined to “continue to serve their viewers in the way they do now,” Murdoch said as Fox will remain neutral about distributing third party content across its platforms.

Wood added the audiences for Roku and Fox are different because content is delivered on different platforms and technologies, and he pointed to “Fox’s commitment to letting Roku continue to do what it does,” and with additional growth capital.

“I would expect that we can grow our viewership in the U.S. with a combination of Roku technology, the Roku platform and tremendous content that’s on the Roku channel, and the content that Fox brings to it as well,” Murdoch said.

Hollywood Reporter

Fox says it will let Roku be Roku, which is what every buyer says before the meetings begin. Nobody spends $22 billion because they love restraint. Roku spent more than a decade becoming the friendly little escape hatch from cable. Fox, controlled by the Murdochs and already running Tubi, is buying that escape hatch because the old cable glory days are gone, and the next best thing is owning the screen where cord-cutters start looking for something to watch.

The cord-cutter’s box is now owned by cable’s ghost.