Jumping through hoops
The Telegraph is reporting that US video streaming site Hulu, which had been planning to replicate its model of aggregating content from a number of rights-holders in the UK, has decided to call it a day after failing to come to agreements with any of ITV, Channel 4 and Five.
ITV apparently wants to focus on its own online service - ITV Player - and the other two want to sell advertising against their own content, rather than allow Hulu to do so.
Hulu get content from most of the major US TV companies and was founded by NBC and News Corp, with Disney buying-in subsequently. The Telegraph, which apparently has a source within Hulu, reported almost a year ago that Hulu was getting set to launch in the UK. It has presumably been in negotiations since then to no avail, with advertising flagged-up as an issue from the start.
Another factor scuppering Hulu's UK plans, we assume, will be the evolution of Project Canvas - a BBC plan to create an open standard for IPTV, joined by the other terrestrial broadcasters. While Project Canvas isn't an aggregator in itself, the fact that they all have their own online catch-up services and are already collaborating may have made them consider Hulu's offering superfluous.
The Telegraph piece quoted a source as saying that Hulu hasn't totally ruled-out having a UK presence at some point, but that the broadcasters will need to be more flexible with their business models for this to happen.
