While recently in Los Angeles, I paid another visit on Jason Kilar, who has been quietly making the Hulu premium online video service one of the brightest spots in the Web 2.0 space. The joint venture between News Corp. and General Electric media unit NBC Universal has shown an astonishing growth since its launch in late 2007. Yesterday, for example, comScore reported that it had risen to No. 6 in online video market share in October, after big players like Google’s YouTube, Microsoft and Yahoo and in front of Disney and AOL. Here’s my latest video interview with Kilar about it all.

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Another week, another nonpick for the still-outstanding position to lead Microsoft’s digital business.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has cast about for more than three months, both internally and externally, for the person who will turbocharge Microsoft’s Web efforts, but no one has emerged a favorite.

Nonetheless, new prospects include former Cisco exec and current Joost CEO Mike Volpi, sources said.

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Well, here’s a good reason not to write off Joost quite yet:

When it officially debuts its new Web-based service in mid-October, the London-based company will have some pretty hot content with its half-dozen seasons of the former NBC hit, “Friends.”

Also, there will finally be no more irksome plug-ins.

There will also be cooler social-networking elements.

While all this is not going to make up for the lost time the online video service has wasted with its annoying P2P-based desktop client download, going to a Web-based, all-Flash service with more robust content is certainly the right way to stop rival service Hulu from continuing to clean Joost’s clock.

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Today comes news that jumping-on-prone California Attorney General Jerry Brown is thinking of climbing onto the federal government bandwagon heading right for the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif., to stop the search giant’s online ad deal with Yahoo.

Brown joins big advertisers, newspapers and whatever mudslingers Microsoft can gather (and, let it be said, Microsoft can sling a lot of slimy mud).

While Google would by no means control a lot of Yahoo’s search ads, the fact that the pair together have an 80 percent share of the search market apparently frightens ordinary mortals.

Maybe it should.

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Sorry for the delay, but we’ll finally start posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May in their entirety.

Kicking off the proceedings will be what most of the attendees at the conference told us they considered their favorite interview, which Walt Mossberg and I did with News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch.

Here’s Part 3 of 6 of the Murdoch interview.

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Recently, while I was at a conference in Los Angeles, I caught up with Veoh Founder Dmitry Shapiro.

BoomTown will be focusing a lot on online video this year and Veoh is one of the several online video sharing sites–a group of smaller players that includes sites like Joost, Hulu, Dailymotion, Vimeo and others that I like to call not-YouTube.

Still, it is making progress.

Today, the Los Angeles-based Veoh announced that the ABC television network would put full episodes of its hot primetime shows–such as “Ugly Betty” (love it) and “Desperate Housewives” (not so much)–up on the site.

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While in Los Angeles, BoomTown visited the offices of Hulu, the online video service that has been an unexpected bright spot for two Hollywood behemoths–NBC Universal and News Corp. (owner of this site)–who launched the premium online video service as a joint venture last year.

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Here’s BoomTown’s longer interview with the deceptively sharp Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, which I did while I was visiting the start-up recently.
In it, we discuss a wide range of topics about the premium online video service, which is a joint venture of NBC Universal (GE) and News Corp. (NWS) (owner of this site).
In it, [...]

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After a few months of private beta, Hulu will open itself to the public tomorrow with a full-court press of publicity.
Hulu kind of deserves at least a little more attention, despite efforts by some to look for warts in the online video service, which is a joint venture between NBC Universal (GE) and News Corp. [...]

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Here’s a video I did on the panel I moderated focused on online video at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday, called “Webolution!–Hollywood Adapts to the Web.”
Tech is getting a lot of attention in Hollywood, so talking about online video is a key area for the independent filmmakers who are here this year.
Topics on [...]

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I just got to Park City, Utah, for my annual visit (well, this will be my third year here) to the famous film festival that takes place in this lovely mountain resort.
While I like a good movie as much as the next person, I am no film aficionado, nor do I have a screenplay stuffed [...]

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It seems the media industry across the pond is taking its cue from Hulu, the fledgling U.S. online video effort from NBC Universal and News Corp., at offering consumers TV content online in better and more flexible ways.

Three of the main British TV networks–the BBC, ITV and Channel 4–are planning a joint on-demand service, so [...]

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In case you missed them, check out these stories from last week:
Kara Visits VC Peter Thiel: A video interview with the first investor in Facebook, who also sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion. Thiel’s take: Web 2.0 is underhyped! Writers’ Strike!: The battle is on in Hollywood, as writers and studios fight over DVD fees split, but there is also wrangling over potential profits from new media efforts.

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Just as NBC Universal’s Hulu online video-sharing site debuted yesterday to decent reviews, including by BoomTown here, its CEO Jeff Zucker managed to fall all over himself to diss the digital media business.

Hooray for Hollywood!
In an interview with writer (and BoomTown friend!) Ken Auletta at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School, the voluble Zucker (pictured here) [...]

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OK, I will admit, I was busy sharpening up the knives at BoomTown HQ to prepare for the debut of Hulu this week.

Let’s just say that I have been dubious that two lumbering media companies–in this case, News Corp. (owner of this site!) and NBC Universal–could make more than a mishmash of premium video, especially given Hollywood’s glacial and cloddish approach to the Web.

Not so with regard to Hulu, whose name is still arguably as goofy as ever.

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