Media groups abandon plans to sell Hulu Walt Disney and 21st Century Fox on Friday ditched plans to sell Hulu, the second time they have done so in the past two years. The media companies, along with Comcast's NBCUniversal, said in a joint statement on Friday that they would inject $750m of cash into the service which streams television content and movies to tech-savvy US consumers, some of whom pay a monthly fee for a premium version. The three companies each own about a 33 per cent stake in Hulu. However, Comcast, the cable operator, does not have management or voting rights because of its deal with regulators when it bought NBCUniversal. Disney and Fox evaluated a range of investment proposals from parties including DirecTV, the satellite television provider; AT&T, the telecoms company; and Time Warner Cable, the cable operator. Options included a direct sale, a new investment from an outside company, and for Disney or Fox to buy out each other's ownership stake, according to a person with knowledge of the talks. The decision by the media companies, which for years have squabbled over the future of Hulu, was not because of price - some bids came in at more than $1bn, one person said. Rather, it came down to the fact that Hulu's value lies in its content distribution rights, and that the media companies would stand to benefit by doublingtheir effort to build Hulu into the next-generation service for watching online video across a range of devices. Chase Carey, chief operating officer of 21st Century Fox, said: "We had meaningful conversations with a number of potential partners and buyers, each with impressive plans and offers to match. But with 21st Century Fox and Disney fully aligned in our collective vision and goals for the business, we decided to continue to empower the Hulu team to continue the incredible momentum they've built over the last few years. Analysts had cautioned against selling Hulu to a video distributor, such as DirecTV, thereby giving up a valuable new distribution channel the media companies had created, and at the same time losing a bargaining chip in negotiations with distributors over content deals. Launched in 2008, Hulu now attracts more than 30m unique monthly visitors and generated $690m in revenues in 2012. But it faces increased competition from the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple's iTunes, Google and other digital video services. The $750m investment will be used to buy more video programming, retain and attract talent, and possibly for original programming. Hulu's shareholders abandoned plans to sell the site in 2011 after attracting interest from parties including Amazon, Dish Network, Google and Yahoo.