Yahoo Kills Streaming Video Service You Probably Hadn’t Heard Of

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Unless you were, like some of us here at Consumerist HQ, such an ardent fan of Community that you followed the sitcom when it made the leap from network TV to streaming video, you are probably only vaguely aware that something called Yahoo Screen even existed. Well it did. Notice the use of the past tense.

Mashable has confirmed that the streaming service — which lost millions of dollars on original programming like the revived Community and Sin City Saints (apparently a show about a basketball team) — has gone kaput.

“At Yahoo, we’re constantly reviewing and iterating on our products as we strive to create the best user experience,” a rep for the company, which is currently looking to sell off its Internet business and live off its investment in alibaba.com. “With that in mind, video content from Yahoo as well as our partners has been transitioned from Yahoo Screen to our Digital Magazine properties so users can discover complementary content in one place.”

Mashable notes that going to Screen.yahoo.com just redirects to the Yahoo homepage, and that the service’s Twitter now states that “We’re merging content to create a simpler viewing experience!” and tells people to check out the Yahoo Twitter feed instead.

We still have the Screen iOS app on an iPad here in the Consumerist Cave, so we fired it up (for the first time since we binge-watched all the new Community episodes sometime last year) and found that there is still content on the app:

Yahoo Screen’s failure comes as numerous other major content and telecom companies are branching out into streaming services intended to compete with or complement longstanding market leaders like Netflix and YouTube.

Streaming video is undoubtedly going to dominate the TV marketplace in the years to come, but the high cost of content acquisition makes it a risky proposition for a company like Yahoo that can’t afford to lose millions while building up an audience base.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist