On Epix: Slightly more than two years after Viacom, Paramount, Lionsgate (NYSE: LGF) and MGM announced plans for a premium net, EpixHD is “right on plan,” says Dauman. From the outside, it looked like Verizon FiOS might be it while other distribution deals were stuck in the pipeline, but a spate of announcements including Cox, Charter (NSDQ: CHTR) and a national deal with Dish suggest the new multi-platform network is breaking through. That’s due in part to a flexible business model made possible by not being an incumbent. Dauman explains: “Certain distributors have movie tiers they want to drive, some more broadband subscriptions. Some of them will want to offer it as a traditional pay service. We offer great flexibility in how they use it.” The deals are all different. “We try to drive to a certain amount of revenue per subscriber. That can be achieved many different ways—so we may have some guaranteed revenue with upside and we’ll help them drive the upside.”

The service has been rolling out for the last few months. “Obviously, we’re in early stages but we are seeing that Epix subscribers are younger, they love the multi platform, they obviously love HD, and they like the social aspects.” Last weekend, Epix hosted a Black Eyed Peas concert in standard and HD on TV, VOD and EpixHD.com. The broadband experience included shared viewing by 1,000 at a time in the interactive EPIX Event Theatre. Epix is also building its own slate of originals, with seven shows in development. “Not all of them will work but as we get our full distribution we’ll able to do more. Given who the partners are, we have access to a lot of creators that might not otherwise be available to the middlemen.”

On Hulu: Dauman insists pulling The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report from Hulu “wasn’t a change,” that it was always a short-term deal. “We did it so that we could test the service. It got an inordinate amount of attention when we didn’t go beyond the short-term license agreement.” The result is a “lot more traffic” to the Comedy Central sites, he says, aided by Hulu’s search engine sending would-be viewers their way.

“If we air it on our own sites, we’re able to marry it more with our own programs, we get to choose the timing of them, we get to sell the advertising, we have more integrated ad sales.” The shows’ topicality puts them in a different category from scripted shows, which can delayed for airing longer than a day. “That’s what we’re all testing, experimenting with. We’ve learned a lot over the last few years through other services and on our own sites.” Dauman says Stewart and Colbert, who both recently re-upped through the 2012 presidential election, support the network’s digital distribution decisions.

As for Hulu, “We think it’s a good service from a consumer standpoint but it needs to work on a monetization model for programs. They’re working on a few different monetization services, a subscription model.” What the networks need, he added, citing Discovery’s David Zaslav from a panel the two were on, are revenue models that can be utilized to support production. “That’s the reality.”

On subscriptions: Like other programmers, Viacom is looking for subscription opportunities. For MTVN, Dauman suggests gaming may be one of the best entry points. Just as games can offer higher access levels as part of a subscription, he sees the potential for video content to become “more complex, more interactive” and have “some game elements, telescope more deeply in to that content, the after show.” The first show he mentions: Jersey Shore, lampoon for some, guilty pleasure for others. Dauman bristles ever so slightly at even an inadvertent put-down of the show. “We have a lot of stuff now from Jersey Shore, for example, online. They’re not paying for it today but, by the way, Jersey Shore uncensored, on demand—they would pay for that.”

Or so he thinks. “We have to discover what consumers are willing to pay for. They thought people would never pay for cable subscriptions. That was considered to be a wild idea at the time. Look at where we are today. We have to find the right model and make sure consumers feel they’re getting good value for it—great content, really high quality with a lot of additional features.”

It’s not just about Viacom’s experiments. “We’ll all watch each other and if something works for somebody, we’ll all imitate it. That’s the way it works.”