The Hulu owners have been meeting with the executives from Time Warner Cable to finalize a partnership between their companies. If plans push through, it would definitely create a stiffer competition against Netflix.
It had been calculated that an agreement may be reached within two weeks from the start of the negotiation. Bloomberg reported that Time Warner Cable is seeking 25 percent of the stake offered at hand.
Owners of Hulu had pledged a commitment worth $750 million in the company’s move to attract more subscribers and overtake Netflix which boasts of 34 million customers. The said amount will help the company in its plans of making programming purchases, marketing its service, developing the technology, and attracting employees.
“We ultimately concluded that, even though we had some very compelling offers on the table, the future of Hulu is bright,” Robert Iger, chairman and chief operating officer of Disney, said at the Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, Idaho. “And if the future of Hulu is bright we should hold on to it.”
The huge investment of Hulu had somehow settled the issues that question its future. The Los Angeles-based service had to endure uncertainty and change in the management while its point of direction has sparked some debate.
Aside from Time Warner Cable, Hulu’s investment offer has also attracted other companies such as DirecTV and AT&T Inc. DirecTV is billed as the largest satellite TV service of the US. Time Warner Cable on the other hand is the second largest US cable system.
At present, Time Warner Cable has around 12 million customers. It’s highly likely that it will use Hulu Plus in promoting its high-speed broadband service. The company plans to come up with a bundled subscription that would be exclusively available to Hulu’s new Internet paying customers.
Meredith Kendall, a spokeswoman for Los Angeles-based Hulu, refused to comment about the talks as well as Maureen Huff of Time Warner Cable. News about the talks was first reported by Reuters on Friday.
