CBS Interactive: "Well Within Our Rights To Stream Hulu Content"

We broke the story of Hulu pulling the content plug out of TV.com earlier this week, and two days ago we also reported that content owners forced Boxee to stop streaming Hulu content as well. Now the owners of TV.com, CBS Interactive, have responded with a message that sparked the Wall Street Journal to headline an article on the reaction “CBS Strikes Back at Hulu”.

What did CBS Interactive’s statement say?

“CBS Interactive is well within its rights to stream Hulu video content on TV.com under its agreement with Hulu. We are evaluating our next steps at this time.”

Sounds like war talk to me, yet neither side was willing to comment on whether there was still a possibility of Hulu videos appearing on TV.com. The distribution agreement between TV.com and Hulu was made prior to CBS’s acquisition TV.com’s parent company, CNET. CBS very recently relaunched TV.com recently with a redesign that almost exactly matched the look and feel of Hulu. TV.com is growing at a very fast rate, surpassing Hulu in traffic according to some.

To be continued, no doubt.

In related news, Comcast and Time Warner Cable are reportedly in talks with major cable television network owners about ways to give cable subscribers (and only them) access to much of the networks’ programming on the web.