Successes (and Some Growing Pains) at Hulu

"“Aggregation works for consumers,” he said. “It makes it easier to find and discover and enjoy premium content, and it works for advertisers, because with that aggregation you get greater reach.” [...] To get permission to move content onto other platforms “takes a lot of wrangling,” [and is] “like trying to pass the health care bill.”"

I think a driver for consolidation into One Media Service To Rule Them All is that advertisers and content providers would get to see where else their viewers are going. One can imagine targeting different ads to viewers depending on their pattern of viewing -- oh look, they watch "Battlestar Galactica" on one network and they watch "This Old House" on another -- hm, home repair geek? Upsell the fancy cordless drill! Like the data mining credit card companies can do, except for content.

This benefit of cooperation goes beyond the 'greater reaach' argument in the article, and might help counter the pressures causing these companies to want to go it alone.