Valid Question on Google and Hulu

Rafat Ali asked why can’t Google make an investment of syndication deal with Hulu to address their concern of premium content?

In an excerpt:

if Sling can make a deal with Hulu to essentially create a competitor to Hulu, then why can’t Google (NSDQ: GOOG) make a deal with the News Corp-NBCU JV? With YouTube, Google will continue having a tough time doing mainstream full-episode TV deals. I think even YouTube realizes it, as its head of content partnerships Jordan Hoffner hinted in his speech at B&C’s OnScreen Media Summit this week: “If people want to see the last episode of Ugly Betty they know they can go to ABC.com, but on the other side, we can compete by getting into everyone’s old favorite [TV shows] and feature films … Given the audience and how big it is, do we essentially become the museum of broadcasting? Do you start doing deals for libraries?” Pretty boring, if you ask me.

The way YouTube is currently tooled and perceived, it will not be a lean-back experience for most users. Hoffner’s main message was: “YouTube is a great place for premium content … But we need to do a better job of creating areas where the user can go and know what they are going to get.” And that is the biggest dilemma for the company. Then Google has to deal with YouTube’s monetization head on, especially as the next year is going to be a tough slog for everyone.

Are we really sure that Google didn’t think or try to make a deal of such kind with Hulu? I’m pretty sure they made that as an option but Hoffner, given his position and expectations on the company would rather build that premium content and address functional areas of the site. From there, they could evaluate and start trying out more options.

You can read the story here.