NBC Universal and News Corp appoints former Amazon executive Jason Kilar as CEO of the still unnamed online video venture that is said to join the growing battalion of YouTube rivals.
Kilar, 36 years old, joins NBC and News Corp starting July 9 after nearly a decade of being a key executive at Amazon.
“Jason’s product and consumer expertise in the world of e-commerce is arguably unrivaled in this business and gives him a great insight into what it takes to create a superior user interface,” Peter Chernin, President and COO of News Corp. “We already have access to world-class content and near ubiquitous distribution, and the next step is marrying it with the features and tools that will help define the ideal user experience for video content on the web. We think Jason is the ideal person to lead that effort.”
Meanwhile, this online video venture to be headed by Kilar debuts later this year and is said to surprise us with thousands of hours of full-length programming, movies and clips from various networks and film studios. Partnering with Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, MySpace, CNet, Comcast, among others, they are said to have access to about 98% of the monthly unique users on the Internet in US alone.
Originally posted on June 29, 2007 @ 12:59 am