Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Somebody Wants to Buy Hulu

Hulu is in play, potentially, after the Hulu board received a bid from an unknown company to purchase the company.

Comcast Chief Executive Brian Roberts said the “jury is out” about whether Netflix (or other services including Hulu) will compel people to cut their cable service.

The danger might be rather small now, but will grow. I use my daughter and her fiancee as sounding boards from time to time. He works for Amazon and is leaving for Google. She owns a fashion company and has worked as a hedge fund attorney in Manhattan, for the biggest corporate law firm in the United States. Though some Millennials might skip multichannel TV services to save money, that is not the case here.

The bad news for video providers is that they have no need for cable, watch what Netflix streams, and that's it. Broadband is safe; wireless is safe. But to my knowledge neither have ever bought landline voice service or multichannel TV. They aren't cord cutters; they are "never nevers" (never bought either service, and never intend to).

So at least one more company out there thinks Hulu is worth owning, perhaps in part to provide services to customers who never have bought cable TV, and don't see a reason to do so.

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