4:59 p.m. | Updated Jason Kilar, the Web wizard who turned Hulu from a punchline into an extremely popular source of online video, said Friday that he would step down as the site’s founding chief executive in the next three months.
Mr. Kilar gave no indication about why he was moving on, or about what he might do next. “My decision to depart has been one of the toughest I’ve ever made,” he said in an email message to employees. He said his departure would take effect sometime in the first quarter of the year, and that he would work with the board of the company “to manage this transition.”
Mr. Kilar was a top candidate last year for the Yahoo chief executive job, but Hulu said he declined to be considered. The job later went to Marissa Mayer, a veteran of Google. Mr. Kilar, a former executive at Amazon, has in the past been mentioned for any number of high-profile jobs in Silicon Valley.
Hulu, which attracts 25 million unique visitors a month, is owned by The Walt Disney Company, the parent company of ABC; the News Corporation, the parent of Fox; and Comcast, the parent of NBC.
Rupert Murdoch, the chief executive of News Corporation, said in a statement on Friday: “Jason and his team have done a great job building Hulu into one of the leading online video services available today and it’s incredibly well positioned for the road ahead. We are grateful for Jason’s leadership and wish him the best on his next venture.”
Bob Iger, the chief executive of Disney, called Mr. Kilar an integral part of the Hulu story. “We are proud of his achievements, we appreciate what he’s built, and we share his confidence in his team’s ability to drive Hulu forward from here.”
Mr. Kilar’s announcement did not come as a complete surprise. At times during his tenure he has clashed with the owners on Hulu, exemplifying the divide between new, disruptive modes of distribution like the Internet and the more traditional operations at major media companies. As the owners pulled back on the amount of ABC, Fox and NBC programming it provided to Hulu, the Web site invested in original, made-for-the-Web programming to fill the gaps and attract attention. That investment effort continues, led by one of Mr. Kilar’s deputies, Andy Forssell, but many in the industry believe Hulu’s future remains uncertain.
Mr. Kilar’s message to his staff also said that Rich Tom, the site’s chief technology officer, will also depart sometime in the first quarter.
“Rich and I have been fortunate to build and innovate alongside each other these past 5-plus years and our plan is to do more of that on the road ahead,” Mr. Kilar wrote.
In 2007, when Internet television viewing began to take off in earnest, Hulu’s parents raced to create a legal TV-streaming service supported by advertising. Dismissed as a joke in the beginning, Hulu racked up tens of millions of users who craved easy, reliable access to episodes of TV shows like “The Office” and “Family Guy.”
“We have grown from a few hundred thousand in revenue in 2007 to generating almost $700 million in revenue in 2012 alone,” Mr. Kilar noted in his email message.
The Web site had a motivational effect on the media industry, widely credited with accelerating a trend toward on-demand television that forced networks and studios to figure out what to stream online, and what not to stream. But it also aggravated the networks and suffered some growing pains along the way.
Earlier this year the only independent owner of Hulu, Providence Equity Partners, sold off its 10 percent stake for a reported $200 million, valuing the company at $2 billion. Mr. Kilar and other employees with stakes in the company also sold them at that time.
Media Decoder Blog: Jason Kilar, Head of Hulu, Is Moving On
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Media Decoder Blog: Jason Kilar, Head of Hulu, Is Moving On
