Hulu Says Number of Paid Subscribers Has Doubled

Hulu, the online video Web site that has both free and paid services, said Tuesday that it had doubled its number of paying subscribers in the last year, to four million.

The announcement comes at an uncertain time for Hulu, as two of its owners, the Walt Disney Company and News Corporation, weigh whether to sell the company. Last month, the founding chief executive of Hulu, Jason Kilar, stepped down; one of his top lieutenants, Andy Forssell, is now the acting chief executive.

Hulu was not expected to say anything new about its ownership structure at a Tuesday morning event for advertisers in New York. The event, part of the Digital Content NewFronts this week, was set up to promote several original series that will premiere on Hulu this year.

Among the shows that will be distributed exclusively by Hulu are “Quick Draw,'’ a comedic Western set in 1870s Kansas, and “The Awesomes,” an animated series about superheroes from the minds of the “Saturday Night Live” star Seth Meyers and the “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” producer Michael Shoemaker. They are the third wave of original shows for the service, and the most ambitious to date. The first wave, in 2011, was led by the Morgan Spurlock documentary series “A Day In The Life;” the second, in 2012, included a political sitcom called “Battleground” and a travelogue by Richard Linklater called “Up to Speed.”

That said, Hulu’s most popular shows remain those that it licenses from their owners and from other media companies. Hulu says it has more than 470 such partners and more than 70,000 full television episodes on its free and paid services combined.

Content costs are rising as the online television marketplace becomes more competitive; last week, Yahoo snapped up the exclusive rights to old clips from “Saturday Night Live,” something that Hulu used to feature on its own site.

In this crowded environment, commissioning shows is one way to stand out. Hulu has been in the news this week because it is one of only two places to watch “All My Children” and “One Life to Live,” the canceled ABC soap operas that were resurrected online by a production company, Prospect Park. The other outlet for the shows is Apple’s iTunes store.

Along with “The Awesomes” and “Quick Draw,” Hulu’s other two original series this year are “Behind the Mask,” a documentary series about sports mascots, and “The Wrong Mans,” a drama about two innocent men tied up in a criminal conspiracy. “The Wrong Mans” is a coproduction of the BBC and Hulu.

At the advertiser event on Tuesday, Hulu will also promote a number of shows that have been televised in other countries, but are exclusive to Hulu in the United States. They include an animated series from Canada called “Mother Up!” as well as “Prisoners of War,” an Israeli drama that inspired Showtime’s “Homeland.”

The company will also describe several ideas for original shows that are “brand contingent,” meaning they will be made only if advertisers sign up to support them. One of these ideas involves the chef Mario Batali in conversation with celebrities; another is a performance series to be hosted by Carson Daly.

In addition to announcing that its paid service, Hulu Plus, had topped four million subscribers for the first time, up from two million in the previous year, Hulu said it had reached a new revenue record in the first quarter, but did not specify what that record was. In 2012, according to the company, it earned $695 million in revenue, up from approximately $420 million in 2011.

Political Memo: Political Pollsters Struggle to Get the Right Cell Number

So it sounds odd that some pollsters have decided to hang up on more voters.

Yet that is one way survey researchers have adapted to the communications revolution that has upended old methods of measuring which political party is ahead. In the polarized battle between President Obama and Mitt Romney, arcane shifts in polling techniques can have important consequences for the results — and public perceptions of the contest.

Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster, and Peter Hart, his Democratic counterpart, who conduct the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, proved the point in their latest poll, conducted July 18-22, when they increased the proportion of respondents who rely exclusively on cellphones to 30 percent from 25 percent. To home in on them, the pollsters ended calls answered on cellphones if the respondents said they also had land lines.

Their findings affirmed arguments that “cell only” Americans have significantly different, and more Democratic, political views than those with land lines. Over all, the poll showed Mr. Obama leading Mr. Romney by 49 percent to 43 percent — providing a confidence-boosting talking point for Democrats and provoking sharp criticism from Republicans.

Scott Rasmussen, who owns an independent polling firm, approaches the “cell only” problem differently, as he must by law. His Rasmussen Reports conducts surveys through automated dialing, which under Federal Communications Commission rules is permitted for land lines but not cellphones.

So in Mr. Rasmussen’s polls, online interviews account for 15 percent to 20 percent of each survey, which he figures helps him reach the same kinds of voters, especially younger ones, in the “cell only” category. The result he reported the morning of July 25, a few hours after the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll was released, was strikingly different: Mr. Romney had 47 percent, and Mr. Obama 44 percent.

“Nobody has the answers,” Mr. Rasmussen said of different approaches to the issue. “We’re all experimenting with the same thing. How do you reach people in a way they communicate?”

Political pollsters have long struggled to keep pace with changes in how Americans communicate with one another — or don’t. One of their central challenges is the decline in “response rates” among voters.

Another is ensuring that their means of reaching people produce accurate reflections of voter sentiment. The rapid rise of cellphones as the sole means of telephone communication for many Americans — now about one-third of the population, government researchers say — has produced a distinct subgroup within the electorate.

That group is not only younger but also “attitudinally different from other people” of all ages, said Mark S. Mellman, a pollster for Democratic candidates. Among their characteristics: they are disproportionally urban, African-American, on either the high or low end of the economic ladder — and Democratic.

“It used to be if you got the number of young people right, you got the poll right,” Mr. Mellman said. “That’s no longer true.”

But accounting for those “cell only” voters is not so easy. Regulations limit how pollsters can dial cellphone numbers, making those calls roughly twice as expensive as land line calls — a cost some pollsters and their customers are not willing to bear.

Moreover, there is no consensus on the right method for handling such polling. The ABC News/Washington Post polls, like the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, terminate calls if cellphone respondents say they also have land lines.

The New York Times/CBS News Poll, like the Gallup Organization and Pew Research Center, does not. Instead, Times/CBS pollsters complete interviews with all willing cellphone respondents and “weight” the views of those without land lines to make them reflect one-third of the survey’s results.

Others remain skeptical that one-third is even the right target for “cell only” voters.