Video website Hulu gets five bids in selloff process

Hulu LLC, the video website put up for sale by its media company owners, has received as many as five first-round bids, including one from Dish Network Corp, a person with knowledge of the situation said. Each offer included terms for programming rights, the person, who sought anonymity because the talks are private, said on Friday. The person declined to discuss bid prices. Hulu's owners, Walt Disney, News Corp, Comcast Corp and Providence Equity Partners, will grant a successful buyer five years of rights to TV shows, including two years of exclusivity, people said on July 19. Google, Yahoo and Amazon.com were preparing offers for Los Angeles-based Hulu ahead of last weekend's deadline, a person said earlier. Jen Chiu, a Hulu spokeswoman, declined to comment, as did Marc Lumpkin, a spokesman for Englewood, Colorado-based Dish. Dish, the second largest US satellite-TV provider, is bidding on Hulu as the company separately plans to introduce a Blockbuster streaming-movie service to compete with Netflix next month, a person said yesterday. Dish has been negotiating for rights with studios since it acquired Blockbuster, which already had certain contracts in place. The offering is expected to include movies from Starz LLC, said the person. Starz said on Thursday it had halted talks with Netflix to renew an online-viewing deal for next year. Hulu's sale process is moving along on schedule, Chase Carey, chief operating officer of News Corp, said on August 10. It's uncertain a deal will be reached, he said. "We'll see where it ultimately ends up," Carey said. "For us it's still a decision to see what it looks like at the end, and does it make sense to pursue that path, or does it make sense for us to stay in an ownership position and continue to have it driven by content owners?" Bids were expected to range from $500 million to $2 billion (Dh1.8 billion to Dh7.35 billion), the Wall Street Journal reported on August 22. Hulu's owners hired Morgan Stanley and Guggenheim Partners in July to field interest for the site after the company received interest from a potential suitor. Subscription Hulu, which began offering its online TV service in Japan on Thursday, carries ABC, NBC and Fox TV shows after the programmes air on the networks. The site, which inserts advertisements into programmes, offers limited free episodes and more expansive access with a $7.99 a month Hulu Plus subscription. Hulu Plus is available on Apple's iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. It's also accessible through Microsoft's XBox video-game console, Sony's PlayStation 3 and on phones using Google's Android operating system, including the HTC Thunderbolt.