Hulu paid nearly $200 million to get streaming rights for South Park

South Park will continue for another five years as a major cable presence and simultaneously as one of the biggest streaming properties with an extension of its Comedy Central deal together with a huge re-up of its Hulu deal. The streaming service will pay Viacom and the show’s creative team $192 million over five years, according to sources. The two pacts — adding three more years to the two remaining on the existing Comedy Central and Hulu contracts — marks a new symbiotic strategy between conventional and streaming television. For Comedy Central and its parent Viacom, its 50/50 split of the Hulu deal with the show’s creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, represents one of the first instances where digital monies will underwrite current production costs. For Hulu, the show targets a vital digital demographic and is a key element in building the streaming network’s competitive position against Netflix and Amazon.