IP Democracy: NBC-U Exec: The Cynics are Silenced...For Now

(Boston, MA) I'm here at The New Video Summit in the joyous city of baseball domination and the conversations are fascinating. I'll blog more later, but one of our speakers early this morning was Peter Naylor, SVP of Digital Media Sales at NBC-Universal.

I asked Peter if NBC-U is elated about the surprisingly positive reactions to its online video joint venture with News Corp., Hulu.com, which debuted in beta testing mode this morning. Cynics of the venture, who believed that two Hollywood studios couldn't effectively collaborate to create a worthy video option, seemed to be silenced, I added.

"The cynics are silenced...for now," he said. Beta testers are going to be playing around with Hulu.com for the next few days and more detailed feedback will start flowing in, he added.

"Hulu is super-distribution," Peter said during his panel discussion, evoking a new term that seems destined to become a buzzword. Super-distribution refers to Hulu's goal of getting partners' video content distributed widely across the web. (As TechCrunch notes, Hulu-powered content is already openly available on AOL today despite the service's invitation-only beta status.)

This focus on wide distribution has prompted some smart observers to proclaim Hulu more a rival to video publishing providers such as Brightcove rather than a rival to YouTube. (Hulu was dubbed a "YouTube killer" when it was first announced last spring.)

Not so, Naylor said. Brightcove is focused less on the advertising aggregation business and more on providing infrastructure, Naylor contended. Hulu, on the other hand, is squarely focused on getting advertisers to support the new web video medium.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on October 29, 2007 11:42 AM to IP Democracy