• by Wayne Friedman , October 10, 2018

Looking to compete with other planned TV/movie studio direct-to-consumer streaming platforms, AT&T’s WarnerMedia will be launching a new streaming service in 2019.

Other studio-based media companies, such as Walt Disney, has long been planning a big OTT Disney-branded streaming direct-to-consumer business to also begin in 2019.

According to a new AT&T 8-K filing, the company outlined some of its intentions -- now that its merger with Time Warner is complete.

In the October 10 filing, the company said: “We announced plans to launch a new direct-to-consumer (D2C) streaming service in the fourth quarter of 2019 ... that will serve as a complement to our existing businesses and help us to expand our reach by offering a new choice for entertainment with the WarnerMedia collection of films, television series, libraries, documentaries and animation.”

AT&T says the new business will be financed by "a combination of incremental efficiencies within the WarnerMedia operations, consolidating resources from sub-scale D2C [direct-to-consumer] efforts, fallow library content, and technology reuse."

It also says it expects to defer some licensing revenues to later periods, in the form of increased customer subscription revenues.

Walt Disney’s service, which the company has positioned to compete with Netflix, will initially be backed by 7,000 to 8,000 episodes of TV shows from the Disney-ABC TV Group’s library, along with new, exclusive programming.