As many had expected, Hulu owners at News Corporation, Providence Equity Partners, and Walt Disney have decided to scrap their sale of the platform. "Since Hulu holds a unique and compelling strategic value to each of its owners, we have terminated the sale process and look forward to working together to continue mapping out its path to even greater success," says a blog post. "Our focus now rests solely on ensuring that our efforts as owners contribute in a meaningful way to the exciting future that lies ahead for Hulu."

Owners had wanted more than $2 billion for the platform, but weren't willing to ensure that the one thing that makes Hulu valuable -- programming agreements with major networks -- would remain intact. Google had been rumored to have bid up to $4 billion, but wanted these agreements to remain in place for a longer period of time.

As we've discussed many times, Hulu hasn't been particularly disruptive to the traditional cable ecosystem because the company's owners, most of them in broadcasting and cable, didn't want it to be.

In this case they wanted their cake and eat it too. They wanted to get paid a bundle for Hulu up front with the ability to then immediately jack up licensing costs, and they wanted to ensure Hulu would never be a serious video threat.

As a result Hulu will continue down the same path it's on -- which is essentially a glorified and only marginally-interesting advertisement for traditional cable television.