from the hollywood reporter
Hulu launches with bigger slate
Adds content by Warner Bros. TV Group, Lionsgate
By Alex Woodson
NEW YORK -- Hulu, the NBC Universal/News Corp. joint online video
venture, will publicly launch Wednesday with new partnerships with
Warner Bros. Television Group, Lionsgate and an expanded film slate.
The deal with WBTVG will bring full episodes of "Babylon 5," "Welcome
Back Kotter" and clips from "Friends." Lionsgate releases on the site
will include "Requiem for a Dream" and "Killing Zoe."
Hulu also recently signed content deals with Michael Eisner's
production studio Vuguru, which produced "Prom Queen"; the Onion News
Network; the NBA; and the NHL. The site also will showcase full-length
NCAA men's basketball tournament games from the past 25 years.
In addition to content from NBC and News Corp. and those networks'
cable properties, the site also has programming from Reveille,
Smithsonian Networks and World Wrestling Entertainment and full-length
movies from Sony, Fox, Universal and MGM. In all, the site has more
than 50 partners, full-length episodes of more than 250 series and
more than 100 feature-length movies.
The joint venture was first announced about a year ago by NBC Uni and
News Corp. executives and the site was launched in beta in October.
The company also announced $100 million in funding from Providence
Equity Partners at that time.
In addition to a standalone site, the company has distribution
channels on Time Warner's AOL, News Corp.'s MySpace, Yahoo, MSN and
Comcast's Fancast. Its player can also be embedded on blogs and other
sites.
Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, a former Amazon executive, said that since the
beta launch, Hulu's inventory has quadrupled and the content has been
seen by more than 5 million viewers across the Web. He would not
disclose how many users have logged on to Hulu.com, but he said the
site's player has been embedded over 50,000 times across 5,000 sites.
"If you make media truly easy and put the user at the center, they
will respond," Kilar said. "That's what we're dedicated to."
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