Report: Hulu in danger of losing more content

From CNET News.com: Hulu's owners are bickering amongst themselves and the company's management over how much free content the online video service should offer, according to a published report.

The dispute is over how much Hulu's ad-supported service is competing with traditional TV broadcasts, according to The Wall Street Journal. Hulu is owned by three media conglomerates that operate their own broadcast network Disney (ABC), News Corp. (Fox) and NBC Universal.

Fox and ABC have considered pulling some of their content offered to Hulu users free of charge from the service, the WSJ reported, citing anonymous sources. In what may be good news for Netflix, Apple and other Web TV services, Hulu's backers may also offer the company's competitors more of their content, the Journal reported.

Hulu could try to transform itself into something that looks more like a cable company, according to the newspaper. "Hulu as an online cable operator would use the Web to send live TV channels and video-on-demand content to subscribers," the Journal wrote.

Friction between Hulu's owners and also between them and company managers over the direction of the service has been building for a long time. Reports surfaced over the past year that some Hulu partners were unhappy with the their returns from Hulu and there were disagreements about who would sell ads for the some of the content on the service.

View: Article @ Source Site