The hullabaloo over Hulu

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Speaking this week at the National Association of Broadcasters' annual event in Las Vegas, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar strongly hinted the ad-supported video-on-demand website is poised to enter the mobile market, suggesting handsets are "ripe for the Hulu experience." Broadcasting & Cable reports that while Kilar declined to discuss specifics, he added "It may not be identical [on every platform], but anything connected to the Internet would be a good fit for Hulu." Kilar even indirectly addressed the biggest challenge still hampering mobile multimedia's growth, citing the paramount importance of the user experience on Hulu's success or failure. "My mother has to be able to figure out the service in 15 seconds or less," he said, arguing that simplicity is so vital because entertainment is a luxury, not a necessity. "Media is not like oxygen, food or shelter--you don't need it. This is an impulse business. You need to make it easy."

If you're unfamiliar with Hulu, co-founded by NBC Universal and News Corp. last year and formally launched last month, its content holdings currently span some 400 different TV shows, among them classics like The Bob Newhart Show, WKRP in Cincinnati and St. Elsewhere as well as latter-day masterpieces including The Office, Arrested Development and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. No less important, Hulu features a wealth of content sans commercial or critical cachet--stuff few if any viewers demand to see revived on DVD or without the requisite number of episodes to enter the syndication cycle, a programming roster that runs the gamut from the short-lived Andy Richter detective spoof Andy Barker P.I. to recent National Hockey League playoff matchups to the Tori Spelling reality vehicle Tori and Dean: Inn Love. Without the digital platform, these types of broadcasts would languish in archival purgatory, or else turn up on YouTube or in bootleg editions. Now viewers who missed them the first time around or want to see them again have their chance thanks to Hulu, and even though the audience may be microscopic, content providers can at least control distribution and earn a few advertising dollars in the process. And something is always better than nothing.

It's not just that mobile is a good fit for Hulu--if anything, it's a better fit than the web. Not only does Hulu's abundance of half-hour sitcoms, sketch-comedy clips and sports highlight reels dovetail perfectly with the mobile content snacking paradigm, but its advertiser-supported revenue model is already entrenched on the mobile platform. Consider a report issued this week by market analysis firm Juniper Research, which forecasts mobile ad spending will this year exceed $1 billion for the first time and reach nearly $7.6 billion by 2013…thanks largely to increasingly lucrative channels like mobile streamed and broadcast TV services. According to Juniper, while SMS campaigns presently dominate mobile adspend, mobile TV spending will rise from $335 million in 2008 to more than $2.5 billion in 2013. Hulu needs only to supply the content--mobile will take care of the rest. You can't make it easier than that. - Jason