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With the increasing health concerns with smoking in the U.S., traditional tobacco farmers sell their crop to growing markets outside the country. Slideshow
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DirecTV, two others bid over $1 billion for Hulu: source
(Reuters) - Satellite operator DirecTV and two other bidders have offered more than $1 billion apiece to buy Hulu, a source with knowledge of the bidding process said on Friday, increasing the likelihood that owners News Corp and Walt Disney Co will be able to shed the video streaming service they failed to sell in 2011.
Hulu board members, who are being advised by Guggenheim Partners on the auction, fielded at least seven buyout offers last week, the source said.
That number will be whittled down in the next two or three weeks, the source told Reuters on condition of anonymity because the process was private.
It was unclear which two other bidders offered $1 billion for Hulu. The service has more than 4 million subscribers and generates revenue of about $700 million through subscriptions and a free ad-supported service.
The proposed price tag heightens the likelihood that News Corp and Disney will find an acceptable offer price, which was the sticking point of the 2011 round of buyout negotiations.
DirecTV spokesman Darris Gringeri declined to comment, as did Meredith Kendall, a spokeswoman for Hulu. Bloomberg first reported the news on Friday.
Sources have said the other bidders are Yahoo, former News Corp president Peter Chernin, private equity firm KKR, cable operator Time Warner Cable, Guggenheim Digital, and Silver Lake Management and talent agency William Morris Endeavor Entertainment in a joint bid.
Cable company Comcast is the third owner of Hulu alongside News Corp and Disney, but is precluded from an operational role as a condition imposed on it upon its acquisition of NBC Universal in 2011.
(Reporting By Ronald Grover and Liana B. Baker; Editing by Toni Reinhold)
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i also resented viacom/directv for using hulu as a pawn in their spat against each other. when viacom cut off programs on the directv network, directv spammed the crap out of its subscribers via the airwaves on how horrible viacom was, and encouraged people to seek out services such as hulu to watch the shows that were canceled from their lineups. then viacom pulled the shows from hulu to show it has monopoly power and to discredit directv and reinforce its price fixing. was an ugly moment and forever poisoned the well for cable/satellite tv providers imho. was one of the final straws (on top of abominable customer service and numerous price hikes) that has pushed me into the direction of web-based entertainment alternatives.
overall, hulu plus in its current form sucks. netflix has proved to be a worthwhile investment, and with amazon prime, make up for the numerous letdowns from hulu. if directv ends up to the buyer (the cable service i’m trying to get away from), that will further alienate hulu in my book for good…




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