News Corp. and NBC Universal have named their online video joint venture Hulu.
The venture is designed to be the ad-supported home for Web videos from News Corp., NBC Universal and other content companies that want to participate. The venture has distribution deals with some of the biggest Web sites, including AOL, Comcast.net, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo.
“Objectively, Hulu is short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce and rhymes with itself,” Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu, said in a statement on the venture’s new Web site, hulu.com. “Subjectively, Hulu strikes us as an inherently fun name, one that captures the spirit of the service we’re building.
“Our hope is that Hulu will embody our (admittedly ambitious) never-ending mission, which is to help you find and enjoy the world’s premier content when, where and how you want it,” Mr. Kilar added.
Hulu plans to launch a beta site in October that will be available to a limited number of users. It will grow as the Hulu development team continues to scale the site and address user feedback, the companies said.
(Editor: Horowitz)