Murdoch’s Streaming Ventures Didn’t Turn Out as Expected
Despite its current eponymous standing among the giants of streaming, Hulu’s humble origins began as a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp working with AOL, MSN, MySpace, and Yahoo! back in 2007.
The service could never really gain as much traction as its main competitors like Netflix, and bits and pieces of its business were kept or sold off until 2019 when Disney bought out 21st Century Fox. This resulted in the House of Mouse holding a majority stake in the service from 2019 onward, and Disney used that control as a sweetener for its own streaming service Disney+. Now the entertainment media conglomerate is planning to combine Disney+ and Hulu into one app, finally sparking the end of Murdoch’s nascent plan for streaming dominance.
Well, actually, there’s one more streaming offering that has seen some success. The Fox Corp-owned Tubi doesn’t spend much time in the limelight, but it’s become a small powerhouse of a streaming platform with a wide selection of shows, movies, and some live TV that other streamers don’t consider worth their time. Lachlan Murdoch reportedly turned down a $2 billion buyout of the free-to-watch service, according to Bloomberg, several times more than the $440 million Fox paid for it back in 2020.
