Chase Carey: News Corp. is Committed to Growing Hulu

NEW YORK: News Corporation will “do what’s necessary” to grow Hulu as a business, Chase Carey, the deputy chairman, president and COO of News Corp., told the crowd at the UBS investor conference.

“To have a franchise that has the reach and the brand and the audience that Hulu does is something most people dream of,” Carey said, noting the potential to continue to build and expand on those propositions. Of the decision to take Hulu off the auction block, Carey said that the value News Corp. sees in the service and the importance of having a leadership position in the digital space “dwarf the values that were being put on it.”

“I give enormous credit to the guys running Hulu,” Carey said. “They’ve done a great job of building a business that consumers love; it’s a great experience, it’s got a fabulous growth story.” As for how to maintain and build on it, Carey said it’s not simply an issue of investment and capital resources. “We’ll do what’s necessary to make it grow in the way we think it should grow, but we clearly look at it as a vehicle that can be a really important part of our growth story and a really important new dimension for our contents and brands as we navigate these digital arenas.”

Carey also acknowledged the value that digital will hold in the future of the industry. “The digital space is incredibly important and clearly is going to be. Over the next five years and beyond, it will be the number one issue we have to navigate.”

He said that Netflix and other online video distributors are “an exciting new dimension to the business” rather than a threat. He reiterated what Reed Hastings, Netflix’s CEO, said the day before at the conference about the service being more of a competitor to linear channels than it is to other streaming platforms like Hulu or Amazon. “I just don’t see it, in any shape or form, as an alternative for the broader video experience you get through the channels we offer,” Carey explained.

“Today these digital platforms are incremental and additive to the business that we built. We’re not going to chase a quick buck or a cheap buck. We weren’t the first one in; it’s not the goal to be the first one to do a deal with these guys, but to do smart deals that take advantage of things that we think are additive to our larger business.”