Cash strapped Hulu ready for Disney deal
Streaming Live Internet TV streams are increasingly popular. According to Nielsen’s Online report for exhibit discharged on Monday. Internet video watching by US residents showed a 1.9% growth in viewer numbers.
overall streams watched grew by 8.7% and time watching a stream per viewer rose by 12.6% compared to February.
Then come the usual suspects in Yahoo, Fox, and Nickelodeon who are always kicking around those second tier of places showing 232 million, 207 million, and 196 million video views respectively.
This shows despite some gloom and doom merchants that online TV and video is increasing month on month, and that the penury for internet TV grows ever stronger. The real winner is still Hulu who grow in leaps and bounds showing a total of 8.8 million unique users who watched 40 video streams each.
We all know that internet TV is the hot ticket right now and that traditional TV is well, just Erm.. boring. But in a new report, Microsoft are claiming that within 4 years traditional TV could be dead and out of sight.
How much can be read into an internet based company predicting the death of TV and a move into internet based TV streams? Well there is no denying the facts that the course of study for higher Internet access has been happening for quite some time according to look for. Interestingly though, Microsoft are also predicting a 50 percent fall in Internet useage on standard computers within the next five years indicating a move away from watching tv on pc to Internet enabled TV sets.
Of wrangle traditional TV is being attacked from all sides including nomadic TV on phones and other portable devices which although only slowly catching on, is now a major growth market.
Hulu which started just over a year ago had $100M of finance put into its setup and operation. And when your ad receipts isnt covering your costs $100 mill doesnt last eternally. Hulu deny such claims, but then does any company running out of cash ever admit it?
Because of the massive size and growth of Hulu it is not a surprise that they have gone through the vast majority of their finance in the past few months. The investing made by NBC and FOX is unknown, but with Hulu’s advertising revenue still not covering the costs and their dealings growing at a massive rate, Hulu is using cash up like its going out of personal manner.
If Hulu truly is ruining low on cash alleged, then it puts Disney in prime position in their negotiations with Hulu and probably gives them more clout than they had a year ago. Was this the Disney plan from the beginning? who knows but it will be very interesting to hear more about the deal if and when it happens. And that deal is expected to be announced very soon.
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