Hulu Looking To Be Bought

UPDATE (7:40pm, 6/22/11): THR is reporting that the company has hired a group of investment banks to help look at possible deals to be made.  This is a story that appears to be moving relatively rapidly, so definitely stay tuned, as we will bring you updates as soon as they happen.

Things may be changing on the Hulu front.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Hulu has not only received a buyout offer from a yet-to-be-named buyer, but they are very much interested in taking that offer on.

Now, things have been rocky with regards to Hulu and their financial side of things. The company depends on names like Disney, News Corp and NBCUniversal for the majority of their content, but as the FCC are forcing Comcast (owners of NBCUniversal) to not only give up their board seats, but keep giving the subscription company their content.

That said, apparently owners are interested in backing out of the financial bind created with the NBCU acquisition made by Comcast last January, and Hulu would play victim. Toss in a mixed vote on whether or not to take the company public, and you have names like Amazon, Google and News Corp being the likeliest of names to hunt down the rights to the company, with Yahoo apparently being the frontrunner, according to various reports.

Now, while I don’t know exactly what to think revolving around the Criterion Collection’s involvement with Hulu and their Hulu Plus service, I do think that it is definitely one of the most important factors, at least for this writer, in this news story.   It remains to be seen what this would ultimately do to the Criterion Collection Hulu Plus page, but hopefully it wouldn’t effect things too much, or in the best case scenario, at all.   That all said, the future is shaky at best over on the Hulu front, so this is one story we will continue to monitor.

Source: WSJ