WSJ: Disney to Buy 30% of Hulu, Put Full ABC Episodes on Site

For all the obvious reasons, Hulu has been fun to watch since the beginning. Over the last few years I’ve kept a good eye on the titans of the professionally produced content world come to grips with the reality of digital distribution. The music industry went face first without really knowing until it was too late, despite all the warning signs. The broadcast networks, despite knowing better, keep hanging on tighter and tighter, yet hedging a few small bets. Even though they are making earnest efforts to provide a digital solution, nobody seems to be able to get it right and make it profitable on a scale they’ve been accustomed. And as competition for distribution gets even more frantic, everyone seems to be saying that this is the year that the broadcast networks need to assume the crash position.

Someone will always have a death grip on the rights to professionally produced content and will do everything possible to protect it and profit from it. Yet if it really was only a combined $100M investment from NBC Universal and News Corp. to get Hulu off the ground (along with other minor partners), and the scratch that Disney had to kick-in to get into the game, it seems like a relatively small ante for the best thing going right now.

I imagine that no matter what part you play in this game that there is no grand unified theory. Only a fractured market, niche players, clueless incumbents, smart startups, bad content, charlatans and the teeming masses looking a better experience. Seems like a lot of opportunity and an a great time to get involved. That is why it is going to be fun to watch Hulu for now.

Postscript: Can someone please explain to me what this last sentence means?

The addition of Disney to Hulu leaves only one major broadcast network, CBS Corp., distributing its shows independently online. CBS puts its shows on a wide array of sites but without offering them to any exclusively.

CBS issued a statement reiterating its strategy and its reasoning. It said the company “believes that controlling our own rights for that content–in all media–preserves its value in a multi-platform business system.”