At first, Hulu seemed like a great idea and many trumpeted it as a new way to watch TV programming. Now, Hulu is up for auction and looks to be in real trouble.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, bidders don’t seem to be coming out of the woodwork to buy the online network and the deadline for bidders has been extended to this Friday. At the moment, companies like Yahoo, Google and Amazon are among those looking closely at the online streaming video service owned by News Corp, Disney, Comcast and Providence Equity Partners.

However, that doesn’t mean any of those companies have actually decided to move forward with a bid. They haven’t. Still, with bids expected to be as high as $1.5 billion-$2 billion, things may not be over for Hulu just yet.

Although, even if one of the companied does bid and Hulu is sold, that doesn’t mean it wil continue in its present form. Given the current state of its business, chances are it probably won’t. In fact, I would be surprised to see Hulu in existence in another three years.

The online content streaming landscape just got a bit more interesting as Amazon announced late Thursday it has made a deal with NBCUniversal to provide 1,000 Universal Pictures movies to its streaming customers. The new content includes films such as Being John Malkovich, The Jetsons, Flipper, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Billy Elliott. Well, that’s quite a cross-section of content.

This new deal is in addition to the one Amazon recently made for it to offer CBS shows such as Star Trek and Cheers to its customers. All these deals for content make perfect sense if you think Amazon is about to release a tablet in the next few months.

It’s widely been speculated that said tablet would be coming out and give users access to the company’s Amazon Unbox, Amazon Mp3, Kindle, Cloud Music and Cloud Drive services. All of that and a well done tablet powered by Android could, potentially, take a bite out of Apple’s iPad dominance. We’ll see.

Check out the full press release after the jump.

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According to Bloomberg, struggling Internet-based film and TV streaming service Hulu is looking for a buyer. One of the companies supposedly in the running for the service and considering a purchase is Apple.

In case you’re not up on the current Hulu situation, in July the company announced that it had hired Morgan Stanley and Guggenheim Partners to assist with a the sale and rumor was that Yahoo! and, possibly Microsoft and Amazon, were interested.

However, it seems Apple may be the frontrunner now. Although, at this time, no company has made an actual bid for Hulu.

A Hulu purchase may seem like a good thing for Apple. They’ve already got iTunes but Hulu would allow them a better way to compete with streaming services like Netflix since, at the moment, you can only purchase or rent videos from within iTunes.

Something to keep in mind, though, is that Apple isn’t really know for acquiring companies. They are just as likely to take an idea and spin it and launch a new service of their own as an addition or enhancement of their existing service. Plus, Hulu only has about 1 million subscribers at the moment and that’s not really all that many.

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