Walt Disney Co. has purchased a 30% stake in the popular video-distribution website Hulu.com, becoming the third of the four major U.S broadcasters to do so.
The deal will mean that TV shows such as “Lost”, “Greys Anatomy” among others to the Hulu service. Hulu now has ABC (Disney), Fox, and NBC in on the deal, with only CBS missing from the service. An inside source has reported that Disney will have a 30% stake in Hulu (which translates into 3 seats on the 12-seat board), which is equal to that of the other two networks.
Financial details have not been disclosed, as the agreement (which took months to negotiate) included a confidentiality agreement.
Don’t count CBS out of the deal however – Hulu and CBS are still busy negotiating a deal.
“We’d love to have them be a part of Hulu … ultimately it’s their decision,”
said Jason Kilar, Hulu Chief Executive, regarding CBS.
Hulu was founded in 2007 by NBC Universal and News Corp. and has grown so rapidly that it is now ranked as one of the top 3 video website in the U.S, with over 380 million views in March. Youtube still remains top dog, but Hulu is closing the gap.
One Response to “Disney Joins Hulu.com”
It strikes me two ways:
1: Awesome!
2: Well, if TinyURL was to go down, what do you think would happen to the links that it redirects? A huge bit of work would be lost forever (TinyURL knows this – once these services have enough of a market, they can kill the links, or the entire site itself, and then have a moment of complete control over the market – let alone I wonder how often they change the links to their own…) and what if the Web kills TV? Then what? Get them “locked in” (newest cool phrase to stupi-f*ck america) so that when they flip the switch and shut it all down and pretend it was an accident, we are owned.
That’s way out there, and they are the two extremes – I hope they bring the movies to the movie section, that’d be cool.