Interview: Jason Kilar, CEO, Hulu: ‘Distribution Business Already Works’

Hulu CEO Jason Kilar and I spoke Tuesday as he was heading into the home stretch towards the launch of portal hulu.com, with months of intense effort behind him and a different phase about to begin. The JV that many doubted would even get to an official status was announced by News Corp (NYSE: NWS) and NBCU almost exactly a year ago — March 22, to be exact. Now, sometime in the next few hours, the second phase is supposed to go live as a fully public service as long as you live in the U.S. (As I type, the site is closed to prepare for the switch.) Kilar joined the start-up in July, bringing in a mostly new team to take over from the joint task force and overhauling the technology with a focus on user experience and scalability. We talked about the distribution concerns raised in paidContent’s earlier story about the launch, advertising changes and more. Some excerpts after the jump:

Distribution network: Kilar responded to the comments here — not new to him — from an exec at one of Hulu’s distribution partners, who raised concerns about the proprietary player among other things: “I’ve received that feedback and I understand the feedback but I do think that in many ways, and even in your story you mentioned this, which we’re not the only company that feels strongly about the fact that it’s important that we serve the video and that we’re able to innovate quickly. Our whole technical team, almost the entire organization, is focused on innovating very, very fast and that’s the only way we’re able to get to where we are today.” Being served by Hulu means that “all of those environments inherit the improvements every day. What you don’t want to do is cut that connection. … Clearly we have those conversations