News Corp. And NBC’s Video Venture Is Named Hulu

You may remember my recent post about how the joint venture between News Corporation and NBC Universal had earned a valuation of $1 billion, even though it had yet to be named since it's March announcement.

Well, now a decision has been reached. In news that is well overdue, NBC and News Corp. have now announced an official name for their joint venture.

Hulu. It's four letters that took five months to create. It sounds a little funny, but I think that the goal was a short, easy-to-remember name.

Not, only does it have a name, but Hulu also now has a website, which is complete with the ability to sign up for an invite to the private beta (yes, they will be starting off Joost-style), a terms of use page and a privacy policy. The beta will now be launching in October, one month behind schedule.

"In the interest of delivering a great customer experience and making sure that we can address any feedback that comes along the way, we're going to start small and grow iteratively in terms of the volumes of people that we invite to participate in the beta," stated Hulu CEO, Jason Kilar.

Now that the "hard part" is out of the way, maybe there will be more to report about this project than the flaws that have been made so far, and the fact that they are well behind the competition.

Judging from the homepage (screenshot above), there will be a variety of shows available, both from FOX and NBC. Among these will be 24, Bones, Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?, Heroes, and many others. Also, Hulu plans to introduce programming through distribution partner sites such as AOL, Comcast (possibly through FanCast?), MSN, MySpace, and Yahoo.

As for the odd name, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar had this to say:

Why Hulu? Objectively, Hulu is short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and rhymes with itself. Subjectively, Hulu strikes us as an inherently fun name, one that captures the spirit of the service we're building. Our hope is that Hulu will embody our (admittedly ambitious) never-ending mission, which is to help you find and enjoy the world's premier content when, where and how you want it.

Maybe it just took some financial inspiration for these guys to get into gear and provide more than just promises. Whatever the deal is, I will be waiting until October to see if Hulu is any good.