By Kenneth Li
NEW YORK (Reuters) -
Hulu, the online video joint venture
of News Corp and General Electric's NBCUniversal, will make
its public debut on Wednesday with programming from Time Warner
Inc's Warner Bros Television Group, Lionsgate and from sports
leagues.
Missing from the list of providers are media mogul Sumner
Redstone-controlled companies Viacom Inc, which continues to
hold discussions, Viacom said recently, and CBS Corp, which has
said it was not averse to a licensing deal.
At launch, Hulu will offer full-length episodes of more
than 250 TV series from current hits such as "The Simpsons" as
well as older shows like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." It also
will offer 100 movies including "The Big Lebowski" and
"Mulholland Drive."
Hulu said it has signed licensing deals with the National
Basketball Association and the National Hockey League.
Hulu's launch is a big bet by big media companies that
consumers are as eager to spend long periods of time watching
TV shows and movies in front of their computers as they are in
front of their televisions.
Ahead of its test launch four months ago, the service,
dubbed by the press as a rival to Google Inc's YouTube video
sharing site, was skewered by the press and influential
technology blogs for attempting to compete with the Web's most
popular video destination.
Hulu has won over some of its harshest critics including
technology blog, Techcrunch, which has since praised the
venture for focus on professional content, clean, easy-to-use
design, and video quality. Its readers voted it as the best
video start-up of 2007.
With no marketing and a private test pool of users, Hulu
Chief Executive Jason Kilar said they have attracted over five
million viewers in the past month with its breadth of legally
available contemporary shows and clean design.
Some 80 percent of its entire video library is viewed every
seven days, a sign likely to be viewed favorably by programming
partners seeking ways to boost profits from vintage shows,
Kilar said.
Shows on Hulu also are distributed on AOL, Comcast Corp's
Fancast, Microsoft Corp's MSN, News Corp's MySpace and
Yahoo Inc.
AD FORMATS IMPRESS
Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey said he was most
impressed, not with its features, but with its range of options
for advertisers. "It's the part people overlook," he said.
Among the range of new advertising options, Hulu said that
Nissan, for example, can give Hulu viewers the option to choose
to watch any one of its several car ads.
Advertisers spend "billions of dollars getting the right ad
in front of the right person," McQuivey said of marketing to
traditional television viewers. Hulu's online advertising
permits "self-selected targeting."
McQuivey added, "From the advertisers perspective, it can't
get any better."
Hulu said most of the companies which signed up for the
test also are a part of the official launch, including Nissan,
Best Buy Co Inc, and Unilever PLC.
Hulu is available at http://www.hulu/ starting
Wednesday.
(Reporting by Kenneth Li; editing by Carol Bishopric)
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