THR: How would you define an ideal Hulu show?
Forssell: We’ll look for content that’s beloved not beliked. The content that really pays off and punches above its weight in our ecosystem is a show that somebody’s going to see and then they want to go e-mail five of their friends or get on Facebook and post about it.
THR: Like Community, for which you recently struck a digital syndication deal?
Forssell: Exactly. In our world, we’d much rather have Community than Two and a Half Men, and I don’t mean that as a criticism of Two and a Half Men. It’s great for advertisers that want to use that show as a proxy to get to this big audience. But for us, we’re much more excited about Community because while it’s a smaller audience, it’s an audience that self-organizes online. They’ll not only tell their friends to go watch it, they’ll spend time convincing someone on a bus to watch it.
The only reason I didn’t say “Fuck you, have fun pimping your frauds!” is the Thoth class. No shop, no class. The test-run was awkward, but thank god for the geeky kids, who were all “MY BRAIN IS ON FIRE!” Because the universe has a sense of humor, my guinea pigs also include a 50-something dyslexic chick. I’m going to have to make her a cheat sheet, because the others are compulsive note-takers. Teaching Qabalah is hard. I didn’t give enough context, and garbled my way through a sloppy white-board lecture on the four worlds, throwing in the four suits as almost an afterthought. I need to explain my symbol system to these people, too. I probably need to make a hand-out of all of the glyphs we’ll be using. MY BRAIN IS ON FIRE.
