Variety is reporting that there are some big changes coming to Hulu, changes that will affect not just who’s sitting in the executive offices but what kind of stuff we can watch on our TVs as well. That’s right: this has to do with our ability to watch our stories. Our precious, precious stories. Variety says it has a confidential memo dated July of this year that discusses plans to get a new CEO up to speed. Hulu presently has a CEO, Jason Kilar, but there’s been talk of him leaving for one place or another for quite some time. It’s unclear whether he’s about to leave but it is clear that the financial group Providence is set to end its relationship with the company, which could lead to all sorts of complex situations involving executives getting piles of money.
Variety says there will be some content changes too:
• 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.
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