Hulu has announced that Mike Hopkins, a board member at Hulu and president of Fox Networks Group, is the company’s new CEO. Hopkins had previously been reported as the likely candidate for the role.
It’s been a bumpy year for the online TV site. Then-CEO Jason Kilar left in March and was replaced by acting CEO Andy Forssell who now, according to Hulu, is leaving the company.
Then there were rumors that the media companies that own Hulu (21st Century Fox, The Walt Disney Company, and NBC Universal) were looking to sell, though they eventually invested another $750 million instead.
In an email to the company, which was also posted on the Hulu blog, Hopkins acknowledged that things have been rough, but he wrote:
The fact is, through all the recent uncertainty not only have you kept this business together, but you’ve continued to deliver on every key performance metric. In fact, you are delivering one of the strongest years Hulu has ever seen: We expect revenues to be close to a billion dollars this year, and Hulu Plus subscribers continue to climb.
With the foundation you have built, the significant capital infusion of three quarters of a billion dollars, and our partners aligned and fully supportive of what we need to get it done, the sky is the limit for Hulu. I am looking forward to working with you all.
What does Hulu need to “get it done,” and what will it mean for Hulu users? It’s hard to say at this point, but when I brought this up with TechCrunch’s Ryan Lawler, he pointed out that Fox programming on Hulu, such as American Dad, requires a subscription to, say, DISH Network (or another supported pay-TV service) access — otherwise you wait a week. So perhaps we’ll see Hulu adopting this policy with other content providers.