For years, CBS has been the sole holdout when it comes to US broadcast networks and free online streaming service Hulu. Those days, however, may be over soon… and that change may be the result of Hulu’s unpopular decision to consider Pay TV subscription authentication in the future. So, at least something good has come out of the idea, perhaps.
CBS Corp. president and CEO Les Moonves told reporters on a conference call this afternoon that the Hulu proposal opens up the doors to a potential partnership between the two bodies. “We will take a look at it under the authentication model,” he said, adding that CBS was already “doing extremely well being non-exclusive with the Netflix and Amazon [deals] and, more importantly, with our CBS.com site, [where] we keep 100 percent, 100 cents on the dollar.”
CBS isn’t a complete stranger to Hulu; the broadcaster co-owns the CW network, which does stream content through the site, and Moonves said that “On the CW side, we are doing business with Hulu Plus right now. So we do talk to them, but right now, we are very happy with our strategy.”
That strategy may be wider than previously thought, however; on the same call, Moonves said that CBS was talking to “everyone” about creating a streaming digital service for CBS programming, specifically mentioning Comcast — which offers the streaming video service Streampix to its cable subscribers — and Intel, which has been rumored to be in discussion with various media companies about licensing content for a digital television service for some time, but has yet to officially announce any news. At this rate, surely that online archive of every single episode of Two and A Half Men is just around the corner.
