I Love Hulu
I truly love Hulu. For those who don’t know, Hulu was a venture by NBC and FOX to bring their television shows onto a streaming site where they control the advertising. The interface was created by Avenue A | Razorfish and it’s clean and easy to use. Every episode from NBC and Fox isn’t on Hulu but they have a nice selection of shows and the content is updated within a couple days of the show’s airing. The service just works REALLY well. I watch the shows that I want, when I want. There are a few ads during the shows at the time when commercial would show up, but they’re short and unobtrusive.
Techcrunch just reported that Hulu has broken into the Top 10 video sites online knocking Google Video off the list.
Hulu users are streaming over 63 million videos and, on average, are watching over two hours of video per month each.
Wow! So I guess I’m not alone in loving Hulu. Why can’t TV studios understand? We’re happy to watch ads if you give us the content we want when we want it. You can’t beat piracy. People will always try to circumvent the established system. But if you can give us what we want, most of us won’t use Bittorrent ever again…maybe.
You say you “can’t beat piracy,” but I think that by offering streaming content – even with ads – TV studios could effectively end piracy. Oh, sure, there’ll be some anti-establishment people that’ll continue to pirate to “stick it to the man,” but for the most part, it’d vanish.
I love watching my TV shows online. I love that ABC offers most of their shows online. I hate that Comedy Central (for example) doesn’t let me watch old episodes of South Park online, and so I’m forced to obtain them using other methods.
It’s a sticky situation, though. Obviously, networks want to make as much money as they can, and if they can make it off of DVD sales, so much the better. If you keep an archive of “all shows” ever broadcast, I’d think you might cut into DVD revenue.
All in all, I’m really not sure. I do believe that the future lies in digital delivery of ALL content. I’m a HUGE proponent of digital delivery in general. It’s actually a topic I plan to write about fairly soon.
I still stand by my words that you can’t beat piracy. You can minimize it, but it will never truly go away. What TV studios could do is stop wasting money on lawsuits and other anti-piracy measures. Leave the pirates alone and focus on reinventing their business model.
Within a couple years, we’ll all have some sort of set-top box that brings internet content directly onto our TV. At that point, TV studios will have to compete with every other producer that can create a video. Dateline might have to compete in a time slot with LonelyGirl. The distribution monopoly that studios have will soon come to an end (maybe not so soon, but eventually).
I don’t blame TV studios to try and hold onto their profits. But I see them falling into the same trap that the music industry did. They’re not listening to their customers (well, they’re starting with Hulu and other online show availability). What the studios lose in advertising revenue from TV, they need to make up in volume on the web.
Actually…I think this rant deserves a new post. Thanks for getting me started.
Oh, and check out http://www.southparkstudios.com. They’ve got all the old South Parks courtesy of South park creator Matt Stone and Trey Parker.
I agree with Ely on everything he’s written in the post and comment. Except “The service just works REALLY well.”
I would say “The service MOSTLY works well.” A number of times a video halts and I get a “Buffering” message. This is typically an indication the server cannot send the information you requested because of other requests: a load dependency issue.
Load dependency issues indicate capacity planning issues. When you start a service like Hulu you install the hardware and software you believe will handle all of your viewers needs now and for sometime into the future.
You don’t know the viewer response. You guess. Guess too low and you get load dependency issues. Guess to high and you have enough unused capacity to waste money which could have been used elsewhere.
The success of Hulu is obvious. Plenty of folks have told others and Hulu has become a hit! A couple of months ago I watched w/o “Buffering” issues. Now Hulu doesn’t have the capacity to avoid such issues.
One of the things we like about Hulu is few and short commercials. An hour TV show from the 1970s yields 50+ minutes of show time. An hour show from the 2000s yields 40+ minutes. Will this happen with Hulu?
Hmmm…