Process Starting on Comcast's Hulu Share Sale: Roberts

Disney and Comcast agreed to accelerate the time frame by which Comcast can exercise its right to sell its third of Hulu, with that process starting Sept. 30, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said Wednesday at a Goldman Sachs investor conference. Hulu is "way more valuable" today than a few years ago when values of $27.5 billion were bandied about, he said. Asked about Charter Communications' carriage fight with Disney and Charter's proposed linear/streaming hybrid video model (see 2309010013), Roberts said both those companies are trying to deal with a changing video marketplace "and you're going to see some tension." Mobile is a product strategy today for Comcast and becoming a network strategy, he said. He said if the company's testing in Philadelphia of its ability to offload some of its mobile traffic onto its own spectrum is successful, it can look at expanding that effort to other markets.