Disney is reportedly taking a major stake in online video site Hulu, joining News Corp. and NBC in streaming its content for the masses. The competition for market share in the online video space has increased, with Hulu battling it out with YouTube, Fox Interactive Media, Microsoft and others.Disney will join News Corp., NBC Universal and Providence Equity Partners as
a joint venture partner and equity owner of Hulu, the streaming-video Website notable
for displaying new TV shows such as "24" and older movies. Hulu now
has three major networks and 150 other content providers streaming video on the
site.
Upon completion of the deal, Hulu will display current and archived Disney
and ABC programming, including
"Lost" and "Grey's Anatomy." Financial terms were not
disclosed, although a news release mentioned that Disney will now have three
seats on the Hulu board.
Competition in the world of streaming video has become fierce as of late.
Google's YouTube
Web site topped a list of most-watched online video sites in March, recently
issued by research company ComScore. According to that list, Google
had 40.9 percent of the online video market share, 99 percent of that through
YouTube, while Fox Interactive Media came in second with 3 percent and Hulu
came in third with 2.6 percent.
Coming in fourth, Yahoo
had 2.3 percent of the total online video market, followed by Microsoft
with 2.0 percent.
In sum, Americans watched around 14.5 billion online videos during March, an
11 percent increase over the previous month; each of those viewers watched an
average of 5.5 hours of online video, with an average of 97 videos per viewer.
The ComScore report added that roughly 77.8 percent of the total U.S. Internet
audience watches online video.
YouTube
has also been busy adding professionally made content to the site, thanks to
recent agreements with Sony, CBS and other media companies. Since April, the
site has been offering a catalog of vintage TV shows and movies, and promises
more to come.
During an April 16 earnings call, Google CEO
Eric Schmidt said the company had been making "very good progress"
getting studios on board to display YouTube content.
The
enterprise increasingly sees online video as a potentially useful tool,
with companies such as Omniture adding solutions for either monitoring the
spread of vital videos across the Internet, or else incorporating streaming
video into their most recent applications.