Key figures: Jason Kilar (founding CEO, 2007–2013); NBC Universal and Fox Entertainment Group (founding owners); Peter Chernin (News Corp. president, whose networks co-founded the venture)
Summary
Hulu, a free ad-supported video streaming platform jointly owned by NBC Universal and Fox Entertainment Group, publicly launched on March 12, 2008. The service offered full episodes of current-season and back-catalog television programming, alongside a library of feature films, streamed directly in a web browser via Adobe Flash Player. At launch, content included NBC properties (The Office, 30 Rock, The Tonight Show, Saturday Night Live highlights) and Fox properties (The Simpsons, House, 24, Family Guy), with Disney/ABC content added through a later equity partnership formalized in April 2009, when Disney acquired a 27% stake.
Origins and Beta Phase
The service was conceived in 2006 as the broadcast networks’ response to YouTube’s rapid rise as the default online video destination. NBC and Fox executives recognized that YouTube’s user-generated-content model was eroding broadcast viewership without compensating rights holders; Hulu was designed to capture that audience with premium content backed by advertising sold by the networks directly.
The company was incorporated in 2007, with private-equity firm Providence Equity Partners taking a roughly 10% stake for $100 million alongside the two network parents. Jason Kilar, a former Amazon.com executive who had helped develop Amazon’s early e-commerce infrastructure, was hired as CEO. Hulu launched a private beta on October 29, 2007, making it available by invitation only while the technical infrastructure—particularly the Flash-based player and content delivery network (CDN) for streaming high-quality video at scale—was stress-tested.
The public launch on March 12, 2008 removed the invitation requirement, and viewership grew quickly. According to comScore, Hulu served roughly 145 million video streams in September 2008; over the following year it rose to a clear number-two position among US online video destinations, behind Google’s YouTube. The growth underscored how rapidly the American public was migrating from scheduled television toward on-demand internet viewing.
Technology and User Experience
Unlike YouTube, which emphasized short user-uploaded clips at low to standard definition, Hulu offered relatively high-quality, full-episode playback in a player designed for lean-back consumption. Content was delivered through partnerships with Akamai Technologies, Limelight Networks, and Level 3 Communications for CDN capacity. The player ran entirely in-browser via Adobe Flash, requiring no download or account registration for basic access.
The ad model placed short 30-second or 15-second advertisements within episodes at natural commercial break points—matching the experience of broadcast television rather than the pre-roll or overlay ads common on YouTube. Hulu marketed these limited, higher-value ad loads to advertisers as a way to reach a more engaged, longer-session audience.
Competition with Netflix
Hulu’s March 2008 public launch came roughly fourteen months after Netflix introduced its own streaming “Watch Now” feature in January 2007. Netflix streaming began as a companion to DVD-by-mail subscriptions—effectively free hours of streaming bundled with existing subscription plans—and was initially limited in catalog breadth and technical quality. By early 2008, however, Netflix had secured agreements with major studios including Warner Bros., Sony, MGM, and Lionsgate to stream back-catalog films.
The two services were thus differently positioned: Hulu offered free, advertising-supported access to current-season broadcast television episodes; Netflix offered subscription-based access to a growing library of films and older television, with no ads. The two platforms complemented as much as they competed. This distinction collapsed over the following five years as Netflix moved aggressively into original programming and Hulu launched its subscription tier — a trajectory paralleled by Netflix’s own 2008 expansion of streaming into the living room.
Broader Technology Context
Hulu’s launch was enabled by several concurrent technology trends in 2008:
- Browser improvements and Flash: Flash Player 9 and 10 enabled smooth in-browser video playback without dedicated media players or downloads. This was pre-HTML5 video (which wasn’t widely implemented until 2010–2011), making Flash the only viable high-quality streaming mechanism.
- Broadband penetration: By 2008, approximately 55% of American adults had home broadband internet access, crossing the threshold at which streaming video was practical for a mainstream audience.
- Search engine indexing: Unlike cable or broadcast content, Hulu’s episodes were searchable and linkable—a user could share a specific episode URL, enabling viral discovery that was structurally impossible on traditional TV.
The Apple App Store launch in July 2008 and the iPhone 3G launch enabled mobile video consumption, though Hulu itself would resist a native iPhone/iPad application until 2010, at the explicit request of network television affiliates who feared mobile on-demand viewing would cannibalize their advertising revenues.
Content Supply and the Writers Guild Strike
Hulu’s launch was also shaped by the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, which ran from November 5, 2007 to February 12, 2008. The strike interrupted production of scripted television, creating a supply gap that accelerated networks’ willingness to make back-catalog content available online—partly to fill schedules and partly to demonstrate the value of streaming rights (residuals from which were central to the WGA’s demands). The settlement of the strike included provisions addressing streaming residuals for the first time, with Hulu’s model cited directly in negotiations.
Significance
Hulu’s launch represented broadcast television’s explicit acknowledgment that linear, scheduled viewing was giving way to on-demand internet distribution. By 2010, Hulu had 30 million monthly unique visitors and launched Hulu Plus (now Hulu with Ads), a $7.99/month subscription tier that added mobile access, back-catalog depth, and eventually exclusive originals.
More broadly, Hulu’s success proved the advertising-supported streaming model viable and catalyzed the “streaming wars” of the 2010s. Every major media conglomerate eventually launched its own streaming service—Disney+ (2019), HBO Max (2020), Paramount+ (2021), Peacock (2020)—replicating the strategic logic Hulu had demonstrated in 2008: that studios could monetize their content libraries directly rather than through intermediaries.
By contrast, the Google Chrome browser launch in September 2008 and continued improvements in JavaScript performance would eventually undermine Flash’s dominance and enable the HTML5 video infrastructure on which modern streaming now depends.
Sources
- Wikipedia: Hulu — comprehensive history, ownership structure, and business model
- Wikipedia: Jason Kilar — CEO biography and Hulu founding context
- Wired: How Hulu Is Killing Network TV — detailed 2009 feature on Hulu’s first year and competitive strategy
- Ars Technica: Hulu goes public — contemporaneous technical coverage of the March 12, 2008 public launch