• All Things Digital, Monday, December 27, 2010 11:41 PM

One of Washington's proposed conditions on the Comcast-NBC U deal will force the merged company to offer NBC's shows to any Web competitor. So what does that mean for Hulu, which has already locked up exclusive rights to NBC's Web video? A couple of possible answers: Perhaps Federal Communications Commission head Julius Genachowski is trying to put a fork in Hulu. Or maybe the conditions he wants to place on the merger are so toothless that they don't really matter.

Background: Each of Hulu's three partners/owners-GE's NBC, News Corp.'s Fox and Disney's ABC-has agreed to mutual exclusivity pacts. If you want to watch one of their shows for free online, you can see them on the networks' own sites, or via Hulu-either on the main site itself, or via other sites that are taking Hulu's feed. If the FCC is telling NBC that it has to offer its shows directly to other Web sites. That's potentially devastating news for Hulu. We won't really know what Genachowski intends until he goes public with his proposed rules.

Read the whole story at All Things Digital »