Hulu will not launch in the United Kingdom any time soon, now that Hulu and several British broadcasters were unable to form a distribution agreement.
The popular video streaming site backed by News Corp., Disney and NBC Universal negotiated with several different potential partners, but all talks have fallen through. For the past 12 months, Hulu officials were working with Channel 4, Five and ITV -- but no deals could be reached for very important reasons.
Both Channel 4 and Five didn't approve that Hulu wanted to provide its own advertising, while ITV has its own on-demand technology it hopes to promote to British broadcasters. British viewers will miss out on Hulu's on-demand, ad-supported TV and movie content.
"It (the UK Market) is much more consolidated, which means there are fewer online locations than in the US, which users need to visit to get access to their favorite content- therefore there is less need for aggregators," said Ben McOwen Wilson, ITV director of online content, explaining why Hulu has struggled in the UK.
It's not a surprise ITV is more interested in developing its own technology, though it's still disappointing they couldn't support Hulu in a short-term deal. Although this is an obvious setback for Hulu, the company could still try to find additional broadcasters to create new partnerships. However, I have a hard time believing Hulu will be able to get the broadcasters to budge, so it may be up to consumers to put pressure on content producers.
