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Hulu CEO welcomes back The Daily Show & more from Viacom, lays out a battle plan for the future
The news spinning around Hulu hasn't been positive lately, with increasing competition and rumors of a change in business model, but CEO Jason Kilar's latest blog post tells a different side of the story. First, after popular choices like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report were unceremoniously yanked back in April it has a new deal with Viacom that's bringing those shows back to Hulu and Hulu Plus starting today, with episodes of current shows like Jersey Shore and Tosh.0 showing up 21 days after they air. Strictly for the pay subscribers, library episodes of The Chappelle Show and others will show up on Hulu Plus. As for the future of the business, he sees Hulu as able to serve trends giving customers more convenient video access with less ads and more social media presence -- a goal we can get behind, but that may leave content providers wondering how they'll get paid in this shiny new world. To that end he's touting the growth of Hulu's ad revenue as seen in the chart after the break and the rising number of Hulu Plus subscribers with a promise to hit 1 million this year. While that's well behind Netflix's most recent count, he's taking a new shot at the throne by claiming Hulu can afford to pay more for content and that studios should start signing deals on per-user, per-month basis instead of the flat rates Netflix has negotiated so far. Give the full thing a read to get a better idea of where Jason's head is at (when he's not planning a GTL run, check the pr after the break for more details on that), we'll be busy watching Jon Stewart's interview with Michael Steele. Update: Peter Kafka over All Things Digital has word that the deal cost Hulu somewhere between $40m and $50m -- and that sum could increase depending upon the shows' performance.
