Wins & Losses: Hulu Became a Major Player in 2017 With ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’

Disney-owned ABC, NBCUniversal-owned NBC, and 21st Century Fox-owned FOX started Hulu in 2007 as a next-day-streaming home for shows on those those networks. Over time, Hulu added full-season catalogs for many of those shows, started buying shows from other networks like Comedy Central, buying U.S. rights for international shows, and making its own original programming. In 2016, Time Warner bought a 10 percent stake in Hulu.

Disney’s impending acquisition of Fox’s entertainment assets would not change Hulu itself — Disney would simply own 60 percent instead of Disney and Fox owning 30 percent each — but the motivations would shift dramatically for every company involved. NBCUniversal and Time Warner would presumably want out rather than feed Disney’s content machine, and Disney — which has already announced plans to launch a flagship streaming service in 2018 — will be in the driver’s seat.

Whatever the outcome, Hulu will likely fetch many times the $5.2 billion valuation it had a year ago when Time Warner bought into it. Credit Suisse media analyst Omar Sheikh has valued Hulu at $25 billion.

In late October, Mike Hopkins left as CEO of on-the-rise, next-streaming-giant Hulu to become the chairman of old-media, mini-studio Sony Pictures Television. Hulu was fresh off its Emmy haul for The Handmaid’s Tale and the launch of its streaming-bundle tier; Sony was in executive turmoil after TV production co-chiefs Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht left in June to start a TV division at Apple.

The Hopkins departure left Hulu without a CEO only six weeks before the announcement of the Disney-Fox deal that — if completed in 2018 — would position the streamer as either (a) a content-stocked, legit challenger for Netflix or (b) a complicated partnership with baggage Disney doesn’t need as it prepares the launch of ESPN Plus in 2018 and a Disney service in 2019. Hopkins, who Hulu quickly replaced with Fox Networks COO Randy Freer, left Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood wondering whether all was well inside Hulu.

Wining the Emmy for Outstanding Drama was an important marker for Hulu as the first streaming service to do so, but The Handmaid’s Tale was a way bigger deal that a mere critical hit. The series — about viciously repressed women in a post-apocalyptic America — premiered in April and even before the premiere was becoming a totem for political expression for women in a country recently taken over by a Republican Party that is openly hostile to women.

The Handmaid’s Tale was a reference point in op-eds and on the covers of mainstream magazines. A scene in the series of a group of women defiantly refusing an order to stone one of their own to death became an important marker for the #Resist movement. The Outstanding Drama Emmy — one of eight Emmys the series won — in September was as much a political vindication as an industry award.

Hulu now finds itself one season into a potentially long-running drama that isn’t just popular but important.

Aside from The Handmaid’s Tale, Hulu had a solid but quiet year for originals. Cult-religion drama The Path, family dramedy Casual, and jerk-com Difficult People have continued to be among the best shows on TV, but none have ever generated much media attention. Casual is ending in 2018 after a short fourth season, Difficult People is not returning for a fourth season. The Mindy Project also ended this year.

Aside from imports, Hulu’s only significant new shows this year were action-com Future Man, Sarah Silverman late-nighter I Love You, America, and teen-superhero drama Marvel’s Runaways. Among the three, Marvel’s Runaways is the only zeitgeist hit.

Hulu has been making originals nearly as long as Netflix but has never gone on a green-light spree because it has primarily been a vehicle for streaming ABC, NBC and FOX shows. A Disney-controlled Hulu could become a streaming home for FX, or Disney could flip the service to content-rich NBCUniversal. If the streaming-bundle tier continues to grow, Hulu will be able to rely on that instead of expensive new originals. In none of those cases does Hulu need to load up on more originals.

Hulu launched a streaming-bundle option in May for $40 a month that gave subscribers live and VOD access to 50-plus broadcast and cable networks in additional to Hulu’s catalog of original and licensed shows. And it was a mess. Hulu had technical problems launching the service, the broadcast channels were not available in every market, and subscribers hated — hated — the new interface.

I wasn’t a fan of the interface at first, but Hulu fine-tuned the menus and I adjusted to the service’s emphasis on presenting VOD content over live content unless it’s news or sports that you actually want to watch live. With the radical redesign, Hulu positioned itself as an elegant VOD catalog with a layer of live programming instead of a cable grid with on-demand episodes hiding in there somewhere.

Scott Porch writes about the TV business for Decider, is a contributing writer for Playboy, and hosts a weekly podcast about new digital content called Consumed with Scott Porch. You can follow him on Twitter @ScottPorch.