Recent statements by Jason Kilar the CEO of Hulu are resulting in backlash by co-owners of the service who provide content but is he really wrong?
Wednesday, Mr Kilar said “traditional TV has too many ads” while Hulu’s advertising is “2-times as effective as traditional TV video advertising”.
This has heated Hulu co-owners such as News Corp which owns Fox TV & Movies, Comcast that now owns NBC and Disney that owns ABC.
Disney said that they do not share the views of Mr Kilar and reports say that one owner said “If I were given billions of dollars worth of programming, I too could probably build a business,”
However Comcast tried this with fancast.com and could never reach a profit that is why they purchased NBC Universal after valuing all other assets but Hulu as Zero Value. Basically they made the deal because they knew internet distribution not only for viewers in the USA but internationally was the next step in television distribution.
Additionally all the networks have tried some type of online offering. Most networks now offer the last 5 shows on their own site and co-owner members such as ABC actually feed their own site from hulu.com.
It is difficult to say what the future of distribution is but Mr Kilar who has shown hundreds of millions in profits in the last few years has seemed to have done more then YouTube which never turned a profit until well after Google purchased their site and their were little if any restrictions placed on YouTube content that is now placed on Hulu.
In reality this is all about money vs what will be the future of Hulu and until an IPO allows ownership to extend past the network provider group that is now in control we may never know. Even then it will be Users that decide whether to visit and stay at the site.
For this reason maybe market research should lead a good portion of the decisions on whether to flood viewers with commercials or target them with a few select ads.
As a personal note I have to say the mute button on my remote is about worn out from hitting it during commercials when I watch conventional television. I know ads pay for the shows I like to watch but you can’t convince me or anyone to watch them…. its just the way it is.
