Newsletter
Hulu is shaking things up, having ousted its Content Chief as well as a couple of other senior vice presidents this past week. Hulu’s CEO, Randy Freer has lost its chief content officer in Joel Stillerman, as well as its senior VP of partnerships Tim Connolly and its senior VP of experience, Ben Smith. According to the company, its content teams will now be moved into two groups. With one group focusing on live TV and subscription video on demand content licensing, as well as acquisition and business functions. While the second group will be focusing on original programming – which is going to be led by senior VP of content, Craig Erwich.
Stillerman, who was head of content over at Hulu, had a pretty short stint at the company. Leaving just a year after coming on-board from AMC Networks. Hulu did note that it is looking for a new executive to head the new content partnerships group, and will be eliminating the chief content officer role, entirely. So that could be the reason why Stillerman has left. That’s not the end of the shakeup though, Hulu is also combining its technology and product organizations, under the leadership of newly appointed chief technology officer, Dan Phillips. Hulu has also appointed Jaya Kolhatkar as the new chief data officer. This is the first major move that Freer has made since being named CEO of Hulu back in October, and it’s clear that Freer means business here.
Hulu, while not particularly in trouble financially yet, is having a tough time competing with the many other streaming services out there, particularly Netflix. Hulu used to be pretty popular for those that really only binge-watched TV shows, as it was cheaper than paying for cable, but with many cable companies lowering prices to keep their customers, it’s become tougher for Hulu. It also launched Live TV last year, which puts it in another industry that is very competitive, with the likes of DIRECTV NOW, Sling TV, PlayStation VUE and YouTube TV.