By working together, Hulu’s network parents hoped to establish it as the go-to Web site for TV — a parallel in some ways to Apple’s iTunes, but controlled by the networks, rather than by an outside company, like Apple, that wanted more content so it could sell more iPods. It was both an alternative to Apple and a shield against the emerging threat of online TV piracy....
The contracts are designed to protect the core businesses, like cable subscriptions and syndication revenue. But they have suppressed the availability of shows on Hulu and have also slowed the implementation of “TV Everywhere,” the industrywide plan for anytime, anywhere viewing....
Would-be buyers [of Hulu] have been assured that Hulu would continue to have exclusive access to network shows for some period of years. But the spigot on free streaming appears to be tightening. The new deals that Hulu signed with ABC and Fox this summer are said to allow for more ads and longer periods between when episodes debut on TV and when they debut online.
July 24, 2011
Hulu must be the future of TV, right?
But the companies that produce the expensive new shows have some conflicting interests.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
19 comments:
Sports lives. Bullshit doesn't survive.
In the very old days of TV they plucked their talent from vaudeville.
TV made life look easy. Vaudeville was anything but easy!
Besides, Wall Street lost its ability to attract "easy money" ... profits ... and commissions.
So, you can look. But don't buy it! This will not be uncurling well in the future.
Not progress, really
One would presume the broadcast nets would merely expand their web sites (or the official sites of the individual shows)to offer this function after, perhaps, rerun season was over.
Why would anyone need Hulu (and Alec Baldwin)?
Without Hulu I wouldn't get my LOUIE fix. All hail Hulu!
I use Hulu some since I don't have cable. There are one or two shows I watch if I miss them when they come on during the week. I refuse to pay for it though. I rarely buy anything off the Internet anymore.
Libraries are great places to get DVDs.
It may be. Between Hulu and Netflix I only pay 1/3 of what I did for cable. I am happy with this arrangement until something better comes along.
When cable TV first appeared, at the tail end of the last ice age, it was commercial free, and that was a big part of it's appeal. It was also about $15/month. Online TV had few commercials too at the beginning, but now also has too many commercials.
They want to run as many as possible with out pushing you away. In other words, you will get as many ads as you can stand without leaving. Doesn't that sound like an inviting viewing experience?
It's nice to get stuff for free, but now that time is getting so precious for me, I would definitely pay a subscription to get ad free.
Is there anything in our lives as ubiquitous and invasive as advertising? And the more you get the less you pay attention which means they need to send you more. It's insidious.
If I didn't have hulu, I wouldn't understand how incredibly annoying Alex is on The Glee Project (I think Sam or Marissa will win)
It's worth reviewing Michele Boldrin on what's wrong with intellectual property in the first place
link.
Get at the actual problem.
I'm a hulu+ subscriber. During the spring TV season, I enjoyed it. It was great not having to DVR shows. Well some shows, because many top reality shows aren't available (eventhough they are shown on Fox or ABC).
Over the summer, I've hardly used my hulu account. I much prefer Netflix, which is almost caught up, but has programming without commercials. I don't mind the few short commercials that hulu puts in, but seeing the same ad 4 to 5 times in an hour is boring. If I can go without it, I will.
As I write this, watching original Star Trek episode on Netflix.
The stance of USA network toward Hulu is puzzling. When I had a DVR, I'd record my shows and skip the commercials. They now have a chance to lock me into the commercials, but resist and insist that the shows (like In Plain Sight) only show under a long series of conditions, including not being able to stream it to my TV.
TV executives have the same non-vision as book publishers. It's no surprise that a medium that demands creativity has executives with none.
What are the factors that make movies and TV shows so expensive to produce?
Equipment is getting cheaper all the time. Special effects and fancy sets are expensive, but you don't need those to make something like The Office.
Distribution via the Internet is cheap and you can do it for free via Youtube and Vimeo, though they take a chunk of the ad revenue.
What's left? Fat salaries for the suits, the talent and the union crews.
Edutcher, the network streaming experience is usually quite crappy compared to Netflix or hulu. Additionally, its much easier for the customer to find the shows they're interested in when they're aggregated at one site. The networks don't want to acknowledge that streaming and syndication are the future. To be fair, it is counter to their business model, but they're going to have to adapt if they want to survive.
Almost all of my television watching is done on Hulu.
I haven't signed up for Hulu+ and I get annoyed that it will show me previews of shows that I can't watch. Plus, something got changed, either by them or in my settings, so I can't search genres for new shows the way I used to do. I used to have only two clicks to see any particular genre with newly posted shows on the top. Now I go through menus and end up with alphabetical listings. It's an annoying mess.
I also missed the first half of Justified season 2 because it never once went on the front page and by the time I realized that it was on Hulu after all the beginning of the season had aged off.
Also, is it USA morons who have decided on a 30 day delay between airing and having a show on Hulu? Idiots! What has happened was that the summer mini-season started, I watched a number of pilots that seemed interesting and then... nothing. Who thought this was a good idea? Most of the shows are so off my radar by now that I either don't care enough anymore to bother or forgot them entirely.
I watched Hawaii 5-O on the network site and it was a mess. I could never tell which shows I'd seen before because they weren't numbered and all the show titles were Hawaiian. Once I lost track of where I was I didn't bother to go back and struggle to figure it out.
I'm very happy with streaming from NetFlix. I can't stream the entire NetFlix catalog, but I can get a lot of stuff that I want, and a surprising number of recent releases are available for streaming. (For instance, I was really surprised that Toy Story 3 was available pretty much the same time the DVD was available. And in HD!)
I subscribed to Hulu+ for one program, and have found that almost nothing else I'm interested in can be streamed to my XBox (which is attached to my very nice HDTV). And I would have expected fewer commercials, since I'm paying for the content. Nope. Same as plain old Hulu.
Hulu is obviously being run by lamestream media. Gonna cancel my Hulu+ subscription and just watch the one show I care about on my PC. (Which has a 20" monitor, so it's not bad, just not as nice.)
What's left? Fat salaries for the suits, the talent and the union crews.
Bingo.
---
As for streaming: Roku, on Amazon. Cheap annual fee, and really, you're paying for the shipping perks anyways (the video-on-demand stuff is just added incentive). More stuff than I'm even going to watch anyways.
I can deal with some of Netflix's crap. When they made it so I can't sign up for DVDs from my PS3 or Wii, I took it. When they increased the price 20% I took it smiling. When they increased it another 60% (splitting services in two parts) I accepted it, knowing I'd probably pay double that too.
But dammit, the second I see a commercial on Netflix is the last second I see anything on Netflix.
I simply cannot stand hearing commercials. They have become so loud. They are so jarring. They invade my home. A commercial hasn't played inside my home in months.
I don't need TV for news (I have the internet for that). It's just entertainment, and I'll switch to DVDs and video games if I need to. Netflix taught me about the beauty of no commercials, and I'm afraid I'm addicted to that.
And btw, the Netflix experience is really awesome. Surround sound, slick interface, plenty of great content. If you're not a die hard fan of the latest shows (which almost always are lame), it's very nice.
Tried to watch a SciFi show on Hulu the other night and the streaming messed up. Went to the SciFi website and watched it and I swear there were a couple of segment that weren't even 4 minutes long before they broke for commercial. Once in mid-sentence.
The Hulu delay by a week broke me from watching House. If I missed the broadcast, I'd go watch it on Hulu. When I couldn't catch the last episode before the next one aired, I found I wasn't much interested.
Then when I caved and decided I did want to watch Grey's Anatomy, it was only available for a week or two before the episodes became strictly Hulu + and had to be paid for.
From someone who spent a lot of time watching Hulu, I almost never go there any more. Netflix streaming and On Demand.
Except a couple of weeks ago I began a rewatch of Babylon 5. About the time I made it to episode 8, Netflix had pulled the series from the streaming queue.
Post a Comment