DISH Network and Google ranked as the highest bidders for Hulu, the video company offering television shows and other entertainment content over the Web, according to a report.
DISH Network, which recently announced a streaming video service through its Blockbuster subsidiary, had a bid of around $1.9 billion, exceeding bids by Amazon and Yahoo, sources told Business Insider.
Google bid about $4 billion, but sought special conditions including more content for a longer period of time, according to the report.
Hulu’s owners – NBCUniversal, News Corp., The Walt Disney Company, Providence Equity Partners and the Hulu management team – reportedly were hoping for a higher bid.
Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu, announced last week at an investor conference that his company has more than 1 million paying subscribers. While that pales in comparison to Netflix’s subscriber base, it’s good news for a company that didn’t anticipate reaching that milestone until closer to the end of the year. Over the summer, Kilar said Hulu was on pace to approach $500 million in 2011 revenues.
