Hulu tops 40 million monthly users in 2009

Hulu, the online video service jointly operated by NBC Universal, Fox and Disney, attracted 43 million monthly users last year, according to CEO Jason Kilar.

In a post on the company’s blog, Kilar said monthly streams grew to 924 million in 2009, a 307% increase from this time last year. Hulu’s content library doubled in 2009 and now offers over 14,000 hours of premium content, up from 5,600 hours this time last year. The company also signed 70 new content partners during the last 12 month to a total of over 200.

Kilar said the five most popular shows on the service in 2009 were Saturday Night Live, Family Guy, The Office, The Simpsons and Naruto Shippuden. “As a business, we were extremely fortunate in 2009,” he said, adding that the company recognises “that what we are aspiring to do is extremely ambitious and filled with considerable risk.” A European launch of Hulu is rumoured to be imminent.