Marketing Quote by Jason Kilar

Kilar’s line is a quiet declaration of independence from the old TV order: viewers don’t wake up craving a logo, they crave the next episode. It’s a deceptively simple framing that smuggles in a major power shift. If “the shows are the brands,” then the gatekeepers who once controlled distribution (networks, schedules, cable bundles) become middlemen, not monarchs. Hulu, in this worldview, isn’t a network at all; it’s a shelf, a search box, a habit.

The intent is strategic, not philosophical. By insisting that audiences attach loyalty to titles rather than channels, Kilar is arguing for a platform-first model where aggregation wins. That’s how you justify licensing deals, cross-network catalogs, and a user experience built around discovery instead of affiliation. It also subtly rebrands Hulu as aligned with the audience’s desires rather than the industry’s turf wars: we’re on your side, not theirs.

The subtext has teeth for networks: your brand equity is fragile if it can be unbundled into individual series. A hit show becomes a portable asset, capable of traveling to the best bidder or the best interface. In the early streaming era, that was a threat and an opportunity: threat to network identity, opportunity to monetize libraries and reach cord-cutters.

Context matters: this is the language of the transition period, when streaming was still negotiating with legacy TV rather than replacing it. Kilar is staking out the principle that later became obvious - and brutal: in the attention economy, the “channel” is increasingly an algorithm, and the real currency is the story you can’t stop watching.