Russian broadcasters to launch local Hulu

Russian broadcasters CTC, Ren TV and Channel 5 have teamed together to launch an online video service, dubbed the Russian Hulu.

The broadcasters have reached an agreement that will see a raft of content from all of the channels launch on the site.

The new service will use the CTC Media’s Videomore platform that it launched in December 2010.

Viacheslav Sinadski, CTC Media’s chief strategy officer, said: “CTC Media has traditionally been ahead of the game when it comes to trends and industry changes, striving to adapt to the evolving market as quickly as possible.  We have come to the conclusion that our future success depends on three factors: the availability of high-quality new content, the ability to advertise on television, as well as the overall scale. The first two criteria have always been at our disposal, but we can significantly expand the scale of our business only by attracting new strategic partners including media holdings, TV channels and copyright holders.”