What the Hell is Going on at Hulu? ⇒

Great bit of journalism from Andrew Wallenstein at Variety. In short, Variety got ahold of an internal memo from Hulu, detailing what to do if the company’s CEO, Jason Kilar, decides to cash out to the tune of $100 million.

The memo outlines amendments including:

• No more exclusivity for current-season content once restricted to Hulu and the networks’ respective websites. Now Disney and News Corp. can turn around and license programming to another third-party, i.e. YouTube, which could dilute Hulu’s competitive advantage in the marketplace.

• No more content parity. ABC.com and Fox.com will be able to hold back certain content to differentiate their own sites from Hulu, which was once entitled to everything on the networks’ sites.

• Exclusive “super-distribution” rights Hulu once retained to syndicate content to third-party sites like Yahoo and AOL would revert back to Disney and News Corp.

• Fox wants to increase to four ads per commercial pod on Hulu.com.

Fucking idiots.

I don’t always agree with Kilar, but I’ve also never envied the position he is in. Going by the list of changes the rest of the suits want to implemnent, I truly hope he sticks around. Hulu without him sounds like a lost cause.