Everybody quits. But in the world of corporate television and media, CEOs jump from one company to the other faster than people walking from Marshall Street to the Quad.

That’s what happened to Mike Hopkins, CEO of Hulu, who quit last week to join Sony Pictures Television as the chairman of the company.

While Sony is a behemoth in the field of music and movies, its TV division has not been able to live up to the hype of its competitors. Sony’s decision to jumpstart TV programming once again required someone who has been a significant player in making another streaming giant popular.

Step in Mike Hopkins.

Those who watch TV religiously can’t deny that Hulu is in the spotlight right now. The Hulu original “The Handmaid’s Tale” managed to defy expectations and seriously impress its audience. It has eight primetime Emmys to prove it.

This put the TV world’s focus on Hulu, and it hasn’t shifted since. With Anna Kendrick endorsing the streaming service, — trust me, it’s a big win — everyone is now expecting Hulu to conjure similar miracles with each and every one of its original shows.

But the question remains: Can Hulu continue to do so with Hopkins absent? The burden of not letting its fans down goes to Randy Freer, who is to be named the next CEO of the company. Freer is the former president and COO of Fox Network.

Hulu, along with HBO and Amazon, has been trying hard to reach the level of popularity that Netflix has scored. According to Variety, this also prompted The Walt Disney Company, one of Hulu’s parent companies, to announce the launch of its own streaming service.

Netflix’s success is unparalleled. The company has cracked the formula for the perfect original series and the ratio of those to shows from other production houses. The service did have some duds, like “Disjointed” and “Girlboss,” which promised great things but didn’t deliver.

But everyone forgot about these rare mistakes when Netflix followed up with greater things. Case in point: Stranger Things season 2. Hulu, on the other hand, can’t keep up.

One small mistake, and Hulu risks slipping off the pedestal it has been trying to climb. But let’s not ignore the streaming service’s accomplishments in the last few years.

Hulu went from practically no popular original content to some significantly better, although often underrated, shows. Mindy Kaling’s show, “The Mindy Project,” made a shift from Fox to Hulu, much like a number of executives have. With shows like “The Path” and “I Love You, America with Sarah Silverman,” Hulu has some good content under its belt.

The company, co-owned by The Walt Disney Company, 21st Century Fox, Comcast and Time Warner, may inadvertently suffer from too many cooks spoiling the broth, but it has come up with some great marketing technique.

One of Hulu’s biggest achievement this year, other than “The Handmaid’s Tale,” was partnering with Spotify to provide access to the streaming service with Spotify Premium’s student subscription. While I may not understand the math behind the profit/loss situation for Hulu after doing this, I do know that lazy college students such as myself will jump at opportunities like these.

Watch out, because we might have to start saying “Hulu and chill” soon.

Malvika Randive is a sophomore psychology and international relations major. Her TV column appears biweekly in Pulp. She can be reached at mnrandiv@syr.edu.

Published on November 1, 2017 at 10:11 pm