Hulu does something - rumormill

TechCrunch set off a blogstorm of posts over the rumor that Hulu is buying Mojiti.

From TechCrunch:

"It is surprising that Hulu would use a third party platform for their service rather than build it themselves from the ground up. They’ve already missed their promised Summer 2007 launch date, however, and probably think the acquisition will get them to market faster."

Michael in the comments: "remember when they promised a mostly decentralized platform? no mention of that recently, and mojiti isn’t the right tech for that. I sense chaos and disorganization, not a smart strategic decision to buy v. build. And a new strategy to focus on a centralized, youtube-like site. And remember that Adobe already built all the hard parts of this and put it in the Flex platform. For some reason people are giving Hulu a lot of room before judging them. I prefer to judge them now."

From PaidContent:

"The exact role Mojiti will play technologically is unclear. NBBC’s technology was supposed to be the foundation for the distribution network—the distribution player will be skinned to match various destinations—but, in its previous incarnation, it hadn’t operated on the kind of scale Hulu requires. The destination portal will have its own video player, which is where what Feng and his team have been working on may best fit in.

Feng is just part of the shifting staff at Hulu, which started life with a team borrowed from NBCU and News Corp. Many of those involved at the senior level, including some whose managers expected to stay with the new venture, are in the midst of returning to their respective companies. The mantra I’ve heard: Kilar wants his own team."

Hulu: the hating game

NBCU gave everyone plenty of time to store up the hate for the newly named Hulu. So let the games begin.

From Techcrunch:

"Congratulations are in order to YouTube-competitor Hulu, which took just five months to come up with a name after announcing itself in March. CEO Jason Kilar says the name “captures the spirit of the service we’re building” in an open letter published today.

Just don’t translate that name to certain languages, because the name may capture significantly more of the spirit of the service than NBC and News Corp., the media giants behind Hulu, intended.

Given the litigious nature of online video, that is some serious irony. And you can bet that Hulu, and its parent companies NBC and News Corp., are going to be sending out one heck of a lot of cease and desist letters as soon as this thing launches."

From Silicon Valley Insider:

"For anyone keeping track, that means the venture now has a $100 million investment from Providence Equity, a $1 billion valuation, a CEO and a name. Great! Only a few more hurdles left! Hulu still has to deal with the fact that it:

• hasn't launched
• has 120 employees and a big burn rate (call it $10 million a year)
• has a deeply entrenched, globally dominant competitor
• is two years too late
• has been shunned by the other big dogs in the industry (CBS, Disney, Viacom)
• is a joint venture between two companies that hate each other."

From Terry Heaton:

"This portal has been so hyped as God’s gift to online video that any name they came up with would likely have bombed, especially with the tech community — which includes the people who’ve written the book on online video without the “help” of the networks or studios. Old media just doesn’t get that new media isn’t created in a board room with fancy consultants (oh shit, I’m a consultant!), because the results are usually just varnished horse crap. Hulu?

The problem is that the fuss over the stupid name casts a pall on what is really a smart move by NBC and Fox, namely creating a single portal for video instead of asking people to come to each branded site. Of course, it would be better if all networks were a part of this, and I think announcing the project without a name or a more complete partner list was a huge tactical error."

From Steve Sarfran: (Lost Remote)

"Three stages in newly named web product:

1. Everyone hates it, makes fun of it
2. People slowly adopt it, forget that they hated it
3. People start to use it either as a verb (”Google that”) or in comparison to inferior products (”It’s no flickr.”)"

Clown Co = Hulu

Fall is in the air (not really in Atlanta) and the branding exercise is over, NBCU and News Corp present Hulu.

From Techcrunch:

"This morning news broke about NBC Universal and News Corporation’s joint video venture, hitherto dubbed “Clown Co.”, after a press release was sent out by a Hulu.com representative claiming that “Hulu” was the new name for that venture.

Initially, I was a bit concerned that this could be merely a hoax, as no press releases were sent out by NBC or News Corp. themselves. However, after speaking with the Hulu representative, Christina Lee, and seeing the news spread across the circuit like vine, it does appear as though this announcement is authentic."

From Reuters:

"We just wanted a name that is short and easy to spell," Hulu spokeswoman Christina Lee said. "We like the idea that it rhymes with itself. We wanted a fun name."

From Ad Week:

"When it does launch, the site will allow fans to stream episodes of NBC series such as The Office and Friday Night Lights, along with the soon-to-launch remake of The Bionic Woman.

Meanwhile, Fox is planning to offer on-demand episodes of staples like The Simpsons and Mad TV as well as premiering shows such as the New Orleans-set cop drama K-Ville. In addition to Hulu.com, the sweeping venture will see these series distributed across the biggest sites on the Web, including AOL, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo!.

"Why is Hulu the new venture's name? According to a note posted on the site by newly installed CEO Jason Kilar, it's meant to connote fun and simplicity. "Objectively, Hulu is short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce and rhymes with itself," he wrote.

"Subjectively, Hulu strikes us as an inherently fun name, one that captures the spirit of the service we're building. Our hope is that Hulu will embody our (admittedly ambitious) never-ending mission, which is to help you find and enjoy the world's premiere content when, where and how you want it."

Worldwide Biggies raises $9m round

These guys have been out for about a year and have just decided to raise a round.

From NewTeeVee:

"Albie Hecht, the former president of Nickelodeon, has raised $9 million and secured distribution deals for Worldwide Biggies, his young adult- and family-focused digital studio. Worldwide Biggies is not exclusively devoted to online productions, though web distribution is a part of all of its projects.

“We birth things online but make sure they have multi-platform DNA so they can be transported elsewhere,” said Hecht in an interview Monday. That means constraining itself a smaller budget — a.k.a. lots of green screens — and having the agility to quickly incorporate viewer feedback. “We can constantly be version 3 the day after version 2,” he said.

NBC Universal, Hearst Corp., Greycroft, Platform Equity, and PrismVentureWorks invested in the company, which already has a hit under its belt with The Naked Brothers Band TV series (accompanied by webisodes and podcasts) for Nickelodeon.

NBC plans to partner with and potentially invest in additional digital entertainment studios, with Worldwide Biggies being the first and additional deals in the works, said George Kliavkoff, chief digital officer at NBC Universal, in an interview Monday."

Clown Co, NBCU and Peacock Equity

NBC is out in front today with two stories. The first is a head to head about web video with Sab Kanaujia, vice president for digital product strategy at NBC Universal and Steven Starr, co-founder and chairman of Revver. The second is a somewhat strange interview with NBC Universal Chief Digital Officer George Kliavkoff.

From the WSJ:

Sab Kanaujia begins: Can independent creators make a living with Web video? I don't think they can in the short term. Current business models online are not attractive enough to make a living or leave your other day job.

Steven Starr responds: Well, it all depends how you define independent creators. Old school independent creators, used to Hollywood economics, should stay home. But successful independent online creators are seeing CPM and [cost-per-click] returns that can exceed $10,000 per month.

From Forbes:

"Will New Site be distributing any content through widgets?

New Site is working through that. It's certainly their right to do that, and there's no reason why they wouldn't want to do that.

NBC Universal and GE Commercial Finance launched a $250 million Peacock Equity Fund in April to invest in media and technology companies that are developing products of relevance to NBC. How does the fund fit with your overall strategy?

This is a way for us to seed digital businesses and to have an equity stake. Most of the time, we take an equity stake, we have an operating relationship as well. So it's a great way for us to play the field. We've announced three investments so far; we've made five. We think we're well on pace to distribute that $250 million over the two- to three-year life span that we expect it to last.

In January, NBC signed up with Qualcomm's MediaFlo platform to provide two channels of programming. Mobile video doesn't seem to drawing much in the way of traffic yet. What has to happen for that to change?

I generally think that underlying that is a larger issue with the way video content is distributed on cellphones in the United States. Today, it's a broken business model. If you look across most of the platforms on which premium content owners distribute their content, on almost every platform, the total gross dollars for the consumption of that content is shared in a way where the content owners, on the aggregate, get more than 50% of the gross dollars.

In this country, if you look at the gross revenue of content distribution on mobile phones, 9% of the gross revenue goes to content owners, 70% stays with the carriers and 21% goes to content aggregators and other middlemen. We think over time that that'll get fixed. I believe the carriers are like us, long-term greedy, not short-term greedy. There are two ways to get that fixed: either we do that in partnership with the carriers or we figure out ways to go around the carriers. We'd much prefer to do it in partnership with the carriers."