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Yahoo submits bid for Hulu

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Re: Yahoo submits bid for Hulu

#11

Post by ljd »

swampthing wrote: post #4
ljd wrote: post #2

Out of all the names on that list William Morris Endeavor is the most surprising. The agency model in Hollywood will eventually fade away because middle men don't offer as much utility as they once did when information wasn't so readily available. It's surprising to see any of the major agencies waking up to this idea and acting on it. If WME wins the bid we could see some interesting changes in the entertainment ind…

In the case of WME, they are 1/3rd owned by Silver Lake, so some sophistication in this area isn't surprising: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/05/02/silver-lake-takes-sta... I don't know about WME, but CAA also has a small venture arm.

I used to work at CAA and there are a few agents aware of a bleak future for the agency model but to be honest no one wants to face the music over there. Their investment arm is for tech and entertainment startups, I doubt they would use it for Hulu. A Hulu acquisition would require their Silverlake equivalent, TPG. I'm all for it, but trust me when I tell you that I doubt CAA will put a bid in on this.

They are so far ahead #1 that they can't see it. It's a classic innovators dilemma problem.

Re: Yahoo submits bid for Hulu

#12

Post by arkitaip »

I think one potential positive outcome of all these acquisitions and rumours of acquisitions is that devs are once again seeing Yahoo as an interesting place to work. When you got so many in-shop startups working on interesting stuff, great things can happen beyond figuring out how all the individual acquisitions can fit together. Provided, of course, that Yahoo knows how to properly nurture the startups and their culture.

Re: Yahoo submits bid for Hulu

#14

Post by samwillis »

jaredsohn wrote: post #10
gcb0 wrote: post #5

whoever buys Hulu is going to regret when they find out all the content deals goes up in smoke when the company change hands.

Since some might not be aware and since you didn't explicitly state it, Hulu right now is owned by Disney (which owns ABC), Fox, and NBC Universal, which produce a majority of the content on the service. So while what you said may be true in general, it seems especially likely in this case.

Hulu is only as valuable as it's content deals. They will definitely be written into acquisition deal, no one in there right mind would by them without some assurance from the content owners that said content will continue to come. This is especially true when the content owners own the site!

Re: Yahoo submits bid for Hulu

#15

Post by smegel »

bernardom wrote: post #6

Holy cow. This is a big deal . There is no reason why TV networks need to exist the way they do. Hulu, Netflix and Amazon all produce original content and are perfectly positioned to disrupt them as their distribution volume increases. Even the current distribution channel is being disrupted by Aereo. Hulu is a a huge asset. If Yahoo gets in this game, they have a massive number of users, photos (flickr), blogposts (…

Think how google has sprinkled G+ across all their properties - I'm guessing Yahoo's next big announcement will be some kind of social layer bringing it all together. I would be most surprised if Yahoo did not already have 1000 monkeys coding away on some secret black ops social product that will launch in some form before the end of the year.

Re: Yahoo submits bid for Hulu

#16

Post by Terretta »

nolok wrote: post #8
bernardom wrote: post #6

Holy cow. This is a big deal . There is no reason why TV networks need to exist the way they do. Hulu, Netflix and Amazon all produce original content and are perfectly positioned to disrupt them as their distribution volume increases. Even the current distribution channel is being disrupted by Aereo. Hulu is a a huge asset. If Yahoo gets in this game, they have a massive number of users, photos (flickr), blogposts (…

They tried to buy a majority share from dailymotion from Orange a couple of weeks ago, but it was blocked by the french governement (a big shareholder in Orange). Yahoo really wants a video service. I guess they want to come back to having a modern set of active services.

From the article's third paragraph:

Yahoo had previously tried to buy a large stake in French video site DailyMotion, but that bid was stymied by the French government.

Re: Yahoo submits bid for Hulu

#17

Post by jcampbell1 »

gcb0 wrote: post #5

whoever buys Hulu is going to regret when they find out all the content deals goes up in smoke when the company change hands.

The content deals they currently have in place are so one-sided that there little to be gained by owning Hulu. Their contracts are basically, you get a license to the content, but 95% of any revenues you generate must be given to the content partners.

The whole point of Hulu was to stop piracy and return any cash generated to the content providers, not to be a profitable ongoing business. I don't even know what it means to buy a company that must funnel all revenues to content providers. It seems like Yahoo is bidding on something they won't actually control.

Re: Yahoo submits bid for Hulu

#18

Post by benwerd »

smegel wrote: post #15
bernardom wrote: post #6

Holy cow. This is a big deal . There is no reason why TV networks need to exist the way they do. Hulu, Netflix and Amazon all produce original content and are perfectly positioned to disrupt them as their distribution volume increases. Even the current distribution channel is being disrupted by Aereo. Hulu is a a huge asset. If Yahoo gets in this game, they have a massive number of users, photos (flickr), blogposts (…

Think how google has sprinkled G+ across all their properties - I'm guessing Yahoo's next big announcement will be some kind of social layer bringing it all together. I would be most surprised if Yahoo did not already have 1000 monkeys coding away on some secret black ops social product that will launch in some form before the end of the year.

They've already said it: they want their homepage to be all about you. Think about what that means in this wider context, where they operate as an alternative way to discover content across all kinds of different verticals. They want to take over the space currently occupied by traditional media. For better or for worse, they're the most "human" of Silicon Valley's big web companies, and I think they might actually succeed.

Re: Yahoo submits bid for Hulu

#19

Post by jfb »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #17
gcb0 wrote: post #5

whoever buys Hulu is going to regret when they find out all the content deals goes up in smoke when the company change hands.

The content deals they currently have in place are so one-sided that there little to be gained by owning Hulu. Their contracts are basically, you get a license to the content, but 95% of any revenues you generate must be given to the content partners. The whole point of Hulu was to stop piracy and return any cash generated to the content providers, not to be a profitable ongoing business. I don't even know what it me…

Yeah. Hulu is 100% a creature of the content owners. It's not a business. What would anybody be buying? The brand?

Re: Yahoo submits bid for Hulu

#20

Post by PLenz »

Ok - at this point I'm wondering just how much Yahoo thinks it can swallow as a company. Tumblr -by itself - is going to take months to integrate into the Yahoo ecosystem. And now they want Hulu? I'm really wondering if they are biting off more then they can chew.
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