Hulu power trio: ABC, Fox, NBC
The Walt Disney Company is taking a 28 percent share of Hulu, meaning that three of the Big Four television networks are about to become partners in the influential and popular streaming video site.
ABC hits such as “Dancing With the Stars,” “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives” are headed for Hulu, reinforcing the site’s ad-supported fare from NBC Universal (NBC) and News Corp. (Fox). Disney owns ABC. Some Disney Channel shows will be shared with Hulu, but not its cash cows “Hannah Montana” and the “High School Musical” spinoffs.
ABC shows currently stream for free on abc.com, some in HD. That site does not appear in the top 10 online video rankings. Hulu will be the first free site to carry ABC shows. The deal also brings the alphabet network’s content to Hulu’s network of partner web sites such as AOL.
As part of the deal, ABC is giving Hulu $25 million in network ad tradeouts, the New York Times reports.
NBC Universal and News Corp. re-upped for another two years on Hulu as part of the new structure.
CBS, the lone wolf at this point, issued a statement saying it preferred to distribute its own shows on the Net. Its shows appear on several outside video sites.
“CBS has long employed open, non-exclusive content partnerships (allowing us to) control our distribution, sales and profit,” the company said Thursday. “Controlling our own rights for that content — in all media — preserves its value in a multi-platform business system.”
Talks for Disney to go exclusively with revenue-hungry YouTube fell apart over owner Google’s refusal to offer an equity stake in its video site, the Times said. YouTube could only manage a watery deal with Disney that brings clips from ESPN and ABC to the user-generated-content giant. Analysts say YouTube will have to come up with equity or big-time payments to woo premium-content providers.
Another company no doubt watching the developments with interest is Apple, which sells ABC episodes on its iTunes Store. Apple chieftain Steve Jobs is a major Disney shareholder. (MacWorld ponders the Disney-Hulu impact on iTunes.)
Google put out a statement Thursday bragging that “the average YouTube viewer spends nearly 150 minutes a month watching videos on YouTube,” and that the Disney-Hulu deal was good for the online video industry.
Regardless, the new Hulu most likely will swamp YouTube’s aspirations of becoming a premium content player, at least for the next two years.
Hulu is third in market share behind YouTube and Fox, soon to be a distant second. Viewer time spent on Hulu has been increasing impressively.
Meanwhile, Sony’s Crackle video site trumpeted the addition of dozens of guy-friendly movies such as “Spiderman 2,” “Stripes,” “Groundhog Day” and a heaping pile of Japanese “Godzilla” movies.
“These are the movies that matter for guys 18-34,” said Eric Berger of Sony Pictures Television’s digital unit. Crackle also rolled out Cinemactive, an interactive trivia game. Sony Pictures also has embraced trivia games in its Blu-ray BD Live features.
Crackle’s movie page features a scroll of “Assassins and Ass-Kickers,” leaving no doubt that Sony Classics fare won’t be coming soon.
Hulu’s iPhone app reportedly near
Hulu engineers reportedly are hard at work on an iPhone application that should arrive within a few months.
The influential blog Silicon Alley Insider sourced a “plugged in” industry executive as saying the Hulu app was “badass,” up to the standards of that slick online video site.
The move has long been speculated, but confirmation would be a big deal in that goldrush space where the mobile phone and online video worlds collide.
YouTube always has come preloaded with iPhones. TV.com and Joost also have iPhone conduits. The iTunes video offerings are there as well. But the addition of the content-rich Fox-NBC Universal stream brings another dimension to the mobile phone of choice. That’s yet another reason for wireless device shoppers to go with the iPhone.
The Hulu app for iPhones and iPod Touch will work with wi-fi and the AT&T 3G network, the Insider said. If the app doesn’t work on the slower Edge connection, that’ll leave out all the early adopters who haven’t upgraded, giving Apple another reason to be happy.
Soon, that iPhone-watching distracted driver barreling down the road toward you will be enjoying “The Office” instead of lesser crap. Fun!
Weird times: Chernin out, Comcast in
The folks at Hulu couldn’t be blamed for losing sleep over the exit of News Corp.’s president and COO, Peter Chernin.
The highly regarded exec basically made Hulu happen, and pushed for its relative independence from the entrenched old media interests at News Corp.
“You can’t protect old business models artificially,” Chernin said, famously, as he campaigned for embeddable video and Web-wide video search on Hulu.
In the past week or so, we’ve seen Hulu reluctantly shut down its feeds to TV.com (CBS) and the freebie Web-to-TV software Boxee, not a good sign for Hulu’s open creative model.
With 78-year-old Rupert Murdoch taking the reins of Fox new media, no one would be stunned to see Hulu become just another self-serving online video outlet, serving up leftovers from its corporate relatives. There are darker scenarios.
Silicon Alley Insider offers five reasons the Chernin exit puts Hulu in danger, with two or three of them making total sense.
Download Movies 101 has long argued that true “new media” won’t emerge in effective and macro-synergistic models until the Boomer executive corps begins to fade in Hollywood and NYC.
Chernin was an exception proving the rule: In my decades of slinging news about the entertainment industry, he was one of the few veteran Hollywood suits who managed not to sputter and drool while discussing the Web and its potentials.
Speaking of old media, Comcast is making noises about offering its cable TV subscribers access to network programs off the Internet.
Yes, the same Comcast that declared cold war on BitTorrent users and was sanctioned by the FCC for secretly capping broadband. The same Comcast that went on to institutionalize its 250-gigabyte cap on monthly bandwidth use.
Safe to assume the cabler likes free-spirited Hulu about as much as P2P networking sites.
Comcast reportedly is in talks with Time Warner Cable and DirecTV about setting subscriber-only viewing sites. Among the content providers in the mix: NBC Universal, the other half of the Hulu ownership.
Jeff Gaspin, president of NBC’s Universal Television Group, told the AP that, “There’s pressure on all of (the TV networks). We get paid quite a bit of money from cable operators. … It’s important we find ways to do business that protects that business model.”
This could be a good thing, if we trust the cablers and satellite companies to participate in the online video party, instead of calling the cops. Maybe. Maybe not.
Much of the free access to TV network video online could, in paranoid theory, be gone within a year if distributors put up enough of a fuss — and enough money to dwarf gains from the shaky online ad model. Remember the bad old days when you couldn’t watch cable TV network programs without paying someone? Not that long ago. …
And so the media empires strike back. You have to wonder what took them so long.
Hulu takes the fall for ‘Sunny’ blackout
“We screwed up royally,” Hulu CEO Jason Kilar has told site users in a major exhibition of transparency.
The trouble started when the upscale video site suddenly pulled nearly three seasons of the FX channel hit “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”
Kilar wrote on the blog, “We gave effectively no notice to our users that these ‘Sunny’ episodes would be coming off the service. We handled this in precisely the opposite way that we should have.”
The series was yanked at the request of the content owner, FX Networks. Noting that the matter was out of Hulu’s hands, Kilar praised the cable network for agreeing to temporarily return the episodes, in response to a flood of complaints. That’s two more weeks to keep up with Kaitlin Olson (pictured) and company.
The affair remains a bit curious, however, since FX is owned by News Corp., a co-founder of Hulu along with NBC Universal. (At one point the cabler was known as “FX: Fox Gone Cable.”) So a News Corp. company removed its content from a News Corp. site, and then not surprisingly agreed to mitigate the damage. But the series is coming down irrespective of what’s going on behind the scenes.
One explanation could be the launch last summer of the FX web site, which carries 45 episodes of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” The site is underwhelming and the “Sunny” video seems not to work at times — as is almost never the case at Hulu. That’s one way to compete when you can’t.
But other FX shows such as “Nip/Tuck” and “Sons of Anarchy” remain on Hulu, where presumably a lot of folks who are among the millions who don’t get FX go to see them.
Back to Kilar and the mea culpa: The CEO vowed to provide Hulu users with “the decency of a reasonable warning before the content is taken down.” The Hulu blog entry was titled: “Customer Trust Is Hard Won, Easily Lost.” Props to him.
Hulu would do well to point to off-site presentations of content it has to remove. That’s the same spirit of the web that brings us that buzz term “transparency.” Hard to imagine a content provider would have a problem with links, assuming the venue is legit. And, of course, anyone can clink anywhere on non-firewalled sites.
FX, meanwhile, should do something about its watery web site before eliminating content on a much-better streaming video outlet.
Of course, many people will simply head over to the BitTorrent side of the street, without apology.
tv.com does a rerun on Hulu design
You know, that brand-new redesign for CBS Interactive’s tv.com looks a bit familiar. Make that a lot familiar. Hmmmm.
Apparently, Hulu’s influence on the online video industry doesn’t end with its business model and format for streaming content — now it’s the wide-open design as well. Man, that’s bold of CBS. Almost note for note. At least they added an ugly ad.
One detail lingers, however. Why … it’s the rest of the web site! The tv.com home page has the new look, but that’s about it. Perhaps we’re looking at a working beta, who knows.
Copy-cat busting aside, the tv.com home page looks great. The comments off to the side of the top module work pretty well, photos are dynamic with lots of impact, and the list and chart are clean and easy to read.
Oh, and that gray-screen text block from Hulu looks just as good on the left side of the main photo as it does on the right. Way to innovate, guys.
Hat tip to Tech Crunch.
