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Hulu puts itself up for sale

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Re: Hulu puts itself up for sale

#2
Really throws the future of Hulu in doubt. If the big three media companies are no longer part owners, and they already see Hulu as undermining and upsetting their traditional partners, what incentive do they have to continue providing free content?

If anything at this point Hulu will be a talent acquisition.

Re: Hulu puts itself up for sale

#3
Hulu with no content licenses is still valuable. The brand is established, they have significant traffic, the technology seems to be pretty well put together.

Maybe even valuable enough to recoup their $100 million investment.

Re: Hulu puts itself up for sale

#5
post #4

Who'd want it, unless someone is looking to launch an inferior Netflix competitor.

Why wouldnt netflix want it? Other than Adrian is pretty damn smart in saying that netflix will only be a cloud consumer - so if Hulu is heavily reliant on their own HW infrastructure for their current delivery - then I can see netflix stating its not a good fit for their model.

Re: Hulu puts itself up for sale

#6
post #5
post #4

Who'd want it, unless someone is looking to launch an inferior Netflix competitor.

Why wouldnt netflix want it? Other than Adrian is pretty damn smart in saying that netflix will only be a cloud consumer - so if Hulu is heavily reliant on their own HW infrastructure for their current delivery - then I can see netflix stating its not a good fit for their model.

'Why wouldnt netflix want it?"

I'm pretty sure the correct question is "Why would Netflix want it?" (companies don't generally acquire other companies "because why not?", at least not ones that hang around long), and I can't say I see a good answer to that. The only thing that Netflix could win with would be licensing deals, except Hulu doesn't actually have them, as they are all short term deals. If Netflix and NBC want to get together, or not get together, Netflix's possession of Hulu isn't going to affect anything either way in that case.

It isn't even worth buying them to squash them; they're doing a very good job of that on their own, and the list of buyers who stands a realistic chance of reversing that is very short.

Re: Hulu puts itself up for sale

#7
post #2

Really throws the future of Hulu in doubt. If the big three media companies are no longer part owners, and they already see Hulu as undermining and upsetting their traditional partners, what incentive do they have to continue providing free content? If anything at this point Hulu will be a talent acquisition.

i love Hulu and really dont like Netflix... if Hulu dies I'm going to be firing up Utorrent for the first time in a long time.

Re: Hulu puts itself up for sale

#8
For context, last years IPO was expected to raise $300MM on a $2 billion valuation[1]. However, it was also reported that even with $240MM in revenue, a lack of long-term content licenses sidelined the whole affair[2].

What really boggles the mind is the stated reason for a sale: "concerns that the site's success is undermining the traditional television business". If Netflix can hold-on and capture enough quality content, these old-school players will eventually go the way of the big record labels. Hulu's existence actually indicated that they might have learned from the music industry's mistakes.

[1] http://venturebeat.com/2010/10/08/hulu-ipo-report/

[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/hulu-ipo-knocked-off-track-by...

Re: Hulu puts itself up for sale

#10
The popular online television site, which has been the cause of much consternation in Hollywood

I don't get it -- why would it cause consternation? It was a joint venture between NBC, Fox and Disney as a means to make available their own content.

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