Agency Spy

Hulu (What. A. Dumb. Name.) isn’t like its rival at all, so let’s just stop calling it a YouTube killer, yeah? It’s more of what the tv networks are already doing - screening their products online, on demand and rife with advertisements. Right now, you can see ‘CSI’ on CBS online. Hulu, the NBC backed site, is just taking that approach one step further by attempting to create a community, as well as a singular destination for “professional” programs.

The new site will select episodes from some 90 television shows, including new and old programs (“The Office,” “The A-Team”, “24,” “The Simpsons”). Since these are the big boys, smaller broadcasters such as USA and distributors like Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer have gotten on board, too. Viacom and Disney have decided not to participate. Hulu will also host a small collection of films like “Master and Commander” and “Sideways,” which will come with commercial breaks. Ads appear and remain above the video player with a handful of first round advertisers including Cisco, Toyota, Nissan, General Motors and Intel. The site will also use the much hated overlays. What is cool is that “an easy editing tool lets users isolate a select clip of any length from a program and e-mail that clip to a friend or post it on a blog.” However, that’s the only feature that we can see that might be considered “fresh.” We’ll know more when the site goes live and we’ve had a chance to beta test it.

Such a rich media, high quality site costs big bucks to maintain. The server space required is massive. Add to that the advertising revenue is split with the content producer and you’ve got to wonder how long it will take for this site to be profitable. Meh… again, these are the big boys of media. They’ve got very deep pockets. We give them an ‘A’ for effort. If broadcasters don’t attempt to get a handle on this whole internet thing, they’re going to be very, very sorry indeed.

Hulu’s management team has also been announced:
- Tom Fuelling, CFO. He’s worked all over the place including ARTISTdirect and Sega Gameworks.
- Jean-Paul Colaco, SVP of advertising. His last job was at Walt Disney as the SVP-business development.
- Chadwick Ho, General Counsel
- Eric Feng is CTO and SVP-audience.
- Andy Forssell, SVP of content acquisition and distribution.