Hulu CEO Threatened to Leave Over Subscription Pricing Strategy

Updated

Hulu CEO Jason Kilar threatened to leave the online-video site late last year over a dispute about the company's subscription pricing, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

Kilar, who helped lead Amazon.com's (AMZN) digital-content efforts before joining Hulu in 2008, said last fall that he would exit the company when his contract expired if Hulu didn't cut the launch price of the Hulu Plus service to $4.99 a month from $9.99 a month, according to the Journal. The company cut the monthly subscription price to $7.99.

NBC Universal and News Corp. (NWS) launched Hulu, which airs television shows over the Internet, in 2008. Walt Disney (DIS) later took a stake in the company, which more than doubled its revenue last year to $260 million.

The company, which faces increasing competition from Netflix (NFLX), considered going public last year. But it scrapped the plan because of concerns over long-term content licensing agreements, according to the Journal.

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