Weekly Wrap: WarnerMedia Gets Hulu'd
This week saw a rare smart move by AT&T with the hiring of Jason Kilar to head up WarnerMedia.
It was smart not only because Kilar is a capable executive but because he seems to thrive in thankless jobs.
I first met Kilar when he was with Amazon, running its VHS and DVD business. When he was later picked to be head up the nascent Hulu I went on record to declare the job un-doable. But Kilar proved me wrong.
Not only did Hulu turn out to be a well-designed and well-constructed service, but Kilar managed to successfully navigate around an ungainly board of directors that included representatives from the three competing major studios that owned the joint venture at the time: Universal, Disney and Fox.
There were constant frictions over the strategic direction for the company, with Kilar wanting to chase the streaming future while its studio owners were really trying to hold back the streaming tide to protect their then still-lucrative DVD business.
The creation of Hulu, in fact, was driven in no small measure by the studios’ frustration with YouTube over the explosion of TV and movie content being uploaded to the platform. Before being christened Hulu, it was known jokingly in the industry as “Screw Tube,” “Me-too Tube” and “Fuck you Tube,” among other sobriquets.
Kilar also had to manage a persistent channel conflict between Hulu’s internal advertising sales team and those of the networks’ whose programming it was streaming, who shared sales duties (and sometimes clients).
He’s likely to find much that is familiar at WarnerMedia.
Though his hiring is a signal that AT&T is serious about WarnerMedia’s digital future, where Kilar had tried to steer Hulu, he will again be riding herd over multiple and not-always harmonious power centers, including Warner Bros. studio, under Ann Sarnoff, WarnerMedia Entertainment, under Robert Greenblatt, and WarnerMedia News and Sports under Jeff Zucker, all of whom have far more experience than Kilar in movie and TV production and distribution.
As I’ve written here before, AT&T/WarnerMedia is also an awkward amalgam of content and pipes, an arrangement that, for all the hype about “synergy” and scale, has historically destroyed more value than it has created.
Kilar has also been charged with launching AT&T’s big digital play HBO Max, on which it’s betting much of the company’s future, into the teeth of a catastrophic public health emergency and perhaps the steepest economic downturn since the Great Depression.
Meanwhile, his new parent company’s shares are getting downgraded, its balance sheet is heavily leveraged, and its pay-TV business is bleeding out.
Welcome to Hollywood, Mr. Kilar.
RightsTech Roundtable
This week’s RightsTech Roundtable featured a discussion of how industries based on rights and licensing and coping with the cancellation and postponement of rights fairs and festivals that fill the annual calendar.
Final Cuts
China rolls film (for now)
China’s film and television shows are back in production after a month’s long shutdown due to the coronavirus outbreak. Of course, China began re-opening movie theaters two weeks ago after a month’s long shutdown, only to shutter them again a week later. We’ll see how long this one lasts.
Movie madness
Movie theaters may be shuttered, and summer blockbusters are going straight to digital, but according to a new poll by analytics company EDO Americans are keen to get back to the bijou. Some 70% of respondents said they are “likely” to return to theaters once they’re re-opened, with a substantial 45% saying they are “highly likely” to go back.
Artificial evidence
The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office this week finally posted the public comments it collected as part of its inquiry into the intellectual property implications of works created in whole or in part by artificial intelligence systems. Comments cover copyright issues as well as patents and trademarks.