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Hulu For Sale: Is There Good News For Users?
itwbennett writes "The LA Times reports that Hulu, which is jointly owned by Comcast, News Corp., Disney, and Providence Equity, has retained investment banks Guggenheim Partners and Morgan Stanley to help them find a buyer. Yahoo is said to have expressed an interest, but not made a firm offer. But what might this sale mean for users? GigaOm says we can expect to see more ads. But there are also 'indications that free Hulu users will have to be a cable subscriber in order to watch shows the day after they air,' says blogger Peter Smith."
I don't know how Hulu would be profitable if sold off by its current owners. Part of the reason it has been profitable is because its owners are also the owners of the shows that are streamed on Hulu. If it's no longer in the hands of Comcast, News Corp and Disney, how could it survive if it also has to pay licensing fees to the IP owners? Hulu being sold can only be bad for their users, I think. Either the range of shows must be cut to avoid the licensing fees, or more ads, or bigger paywalls/subscriptions or any multitude of things to balance out the suddenly appearing higher cost of obtaining the shows.
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And me. I don't complain they won't let me stream full shows, I have other ways to do that. I do get really pissed off when various TV and movie news sites have previews and interviews and all I can see is a big FUCK OFF FOREIGN LEECH message from Hulu, and I have to search to see if it's been copied by someone to YouTube. If Hulu becomes even more limited then news sites wouldn't use it by default.