When Hulu Went Dark

Not only did Fox go dark (and as of this moment, still is) during the Newscorp./Cablevision carriage agreement battle but, briefly, so did Fox content on Hulu and Fox.com.

To us it came as a surprise, though in our book Television Everywhere, we speculated on how Hulu might react when subjected to conflicting forces:

The “true” relationship between Hulu and its shareholders remains, externally at least, a mystery.

While very much an independent consumer brand, its current CEO strives to position Hulu within the industry as an entrepreneurial “start up.” This is certainly politic vis-à-vis Hollywood’s relationship with the cable industry.

GigaOm’s Janko Roettgers pointed out:

The whole episode was clearly meant as a show of force — a warning shot, if you will. But this wasn’t just about getting a few extra bucks from Cablevision.

Fox had to know that blocking access to Hulu would raise more than a few eyebrows at the FCC, and cause public interest groups to ring the alarm bells about possible consequences of media concentration. Which is actually quite convenient when one of your biggest competitors is about to enter a huge merger.

In any event, the Hulu incident laid bare the power of its shareholders.