Cuz they see me in the hood, poppin wheelies on my Kawasaki
The Wall Street Journal says Apple is thinking of making a bid for Hulu and Seattlepi.com says Microsoft’s is no longer interested, which leaves Amazon, Apple, Google, Yahoo, and any unnamed parties. I can’t think of any unnamed parties, by the way, so I’m guessing one of these will walk with Hulu, which went into play a couple weeks ago following an unsolicited (and still unidentified) bid.
Of course the three big network owners of Hulu will guarantee five years of continued program access with the first two years exclusive. That’s because they have no money in Hulu and each stands to walk with $600+ million from the sale, but only if there is a sale. Without such an exclusivity period there will be no sale and no $600+ million. None of these networks can buy out the others for antitrust reasons so the “networks might balk” story is just to sell newspapers (or electrons). Hulu will be sold.
