By: Valerie Milano – Pasadena, CA (Hollywood Today) 1/16/12

Andy Forssell, senior vice president of content for Hulu, met the Television Critics Association winter press tour attendees on the last day of the tour, and he explained why Hulu belongs at the event. “First of all, we are all, in the end, lovers of entertainment,” he said. “We love TV. We love great TV. We love films. We love storytelling and have a huge respect for that. And whether you’re in a content team at Hulu or whether you’re an accountant or software developer, there’s a common thread that people are there working on this because they love it, and that, I think, is critical to a lot of what we do.”  Forssell also described Hulu’s mission as follows: “Help people find and enjoy the world’s premium content, when, where and how they want to.” He also added that Hulu does more than a billion streams a month of content. “And keep in mind those are generally not clips,” he clarified. “They are 22- or 44-minute TV shows, so a lot of consumption.”

Forssell went on to describe the success of the Hulu Plus subscription service. “It took ten months to hit a million subscribers,” he said. “We’re past a 1.5 million, so it’s very early days. But tons of momentum that is continuing, accelerating, and this allows us to invest a lot more in content, which, of course, is what we’re here to talk about today.”

Continuing on to discuss Hulu’s viewers, Forssell said, “Our viewers make very active choices. They look at a screen with 40 shows on it, and they say, hmm, how do I want to spend the next 22 minutes of my life: How I do want to spend the next 40-some minutes of my life? And the answer has got to be for them to reach out and press play and make that choice, it’s got to be, something compelling. This is not like watching a two-minute clip that, yeah, you’ll give it a shot and see what happens. It’s 20, 30, 40 minutes of your life, if not more. And these users online are very discerning. The content has to speak to them.” Forssell added, “It’s got to be something that really connects with them. It’s got to be something that they love and that they not only love, but they’ll watch it and then they’ll go e-mail five of their friends or they’ll post on Facebook or they’ll tweet about it, and they’ll grab someone they know who they think is right for that show and shake them and say, ‘You’ve got to check this out.’ That’s what does well online. And I think that’s a great thing for everyone, because the bar goes up. It’s got to be better, and so we’ve spent a lot of time focusing on that.”

Looking ahead, Forssell described the future by stating, “And I think for us we look at the next five or ten years as a really rich period where we’ve built an ecosystem where, I think, that creativity has flourished, and those ideas somebody can say, ‘I’m just going to make a show. I’ve got to make this. This is such a compelling idea to me and I think people will connect it. We’re going to make this show.’ I think we’re giving them an outlet to do that, and we really look for to unleashing that creativity.”

However, Forssell did warn, “The challenge is it can’t be a student project.  So if somebody makes a show in this sort of indie spirit that I’m alluding to, it’s got to be good, and the bar is set high. And I think both that opportunity and that challenge are very good things for the industry, and good things for things to come.”