Hulu Loses Daily Show, Colbert

NEW YORK: The Daily Show and The Colbert Report will be removed from Hulu next week, after the video site was unable to clinch a new deal with Viacom-owned Comedy Central.

The two series, among the most popular offerings on Hulu, will be removed March 9, alongside some other library Comedy Central programming, Andy Forssell, senior VP of content and distribution at Hulu, said in a blog post yesterday. "The team at Comedy Central have been great partners for us, and our users have been extremely vocal and passionate about how much they love what the Comedy Central folks are doing," the blog stated. "In the past 21 months, we’ve had very strong results for both Hulu and Comedy Central, in terms of the views and revenue we’ve generated, thanks to a couple of key trends. First, more and more of our viewers have voted with their time by making these shows a regular part of their day. And second, we’ve driven steadily increasing revenue per view as advertisers voted with their budgets to take advantage of innovative ad formats and very strong advertising effectiveness. After a series of discussions with the team at Comedy Central, though, we ultimately were unable to secure the rights to extend these shows for a much longer period of time."

In the post, Forssell noted that viewers can continue to watch both series on their respective website, TheDailyShow.com and ColbertNation.com. "In the meantime, we are continuing to talk to the Comedy Central folks about a number of opportunities. They’re a great team and I’m confident that we’ll be working with them in multiple ways in the future…so stay tuned and know that we are scouring the earth for more great content for you."