Speaking in Las Vegas at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference this week, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar positioned his NBC Universal/News Corp. venture as Hollywood's best hope against online piracy, using an unauthorized Felicity clip from YouTube to illustrate his point.
Initially, executives from both YouTube and Hulu were blowing off any talk of competition. Hulu would focus on longer, professionally made content while YouTube was built on short (10 minutes or less), user-generated clips.
Kilar's shot at YouTube breaks the de facto armistice. Instead, the message was TV and film companies should promote their (authorized) content at Hulu using high-quality video and allow fans to share it legally--rather than post videos on YouTube. Unauthorized clips don't make the content holders money, while Hulu offered a way for content owners to monetize their content while still enabling them to share it.
In order to be successful, Hulu needs to cut into You Tube's market share and its estimated one-third of 10 billion views of online video--in February alone.
YouTube isn't taking Hulu's comments laying down, saying they're happy to partner with any and all content creators to do whatever they wish with their stuff, by monetizing it, tracking it, or pulling it off the site.
For more:
- News.com blog coverage of Hulu CEO NAB speech