Disney-Hulu Deal Is Ominous For YouTube 133
Hugh Pickens writes "Dow Jones reports that Hulu scored a big victory when Disney agreed to take a nearly 30% stake in Hulu and put full episodes of its ABC TV shows on the site, enabling users to see shows like Lost, Scrubs, Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives for free. Disney views the move as a way to reach a new audience that isn't coming to the network's own website. Although the ABC.com website has attracted regular viewers of its shows, Hulu offers the opportunity to tap into a new group of viewers. Now Google is under mounting pressure to add more professional content to YouTube in order to attract more advertisers. According to Dow Jones' Scott Morrisson, the equity structure of the Disney-Hulu deal suggests that content creators want greater involvement in online distribution than Google has offered with YouTube. 'Content providers don't want to give (YouTube) content because the advertisers aren't there yet,' said Edward Jones analyst Andy Miedler."
Thank you, ABC (Score:5, Informative)
It annoys me to no end that I have to get up and click a stupid button to continue EVERY TIME an ABC online show goes to commercial. At least Hulu understands that people wanting to watch TV on the Internet might actually want to do so on their TV. I'll never visit ABC's online site again once those shows are up on Hulu.
Re:Thank you, ABC (Score:3, Informative)
There is an option you can set to automatically continue after the commercial ends. To get to these settings you click on a "preferences" or "settings" button (I forget the details).
Hulu actually works (Score:4, Informative)
I like Hulu because it actually works. In particular, it works on Linux with no fussing (in my experience) whereas the players on other sites often don't work, or require onerous downloads and installs (which are usually Windows-only). Hulu just works fine on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
Hulu is also a "one stop watch" at this point. For a while, I experimented with keeping track of different shows via different official websites. It was painful because each site had a slightly different interface... but worse, each network's online streaming site seem to want to change their format every so often. This makes it even more annoying to to watch a few shows in a row, because your bookmarks have died (if their format was even bookmarkable!) and you have to search anew for what you want.
Hulu, instead, centralizes everything so that you only have to get used to the one (stable!) interface. And the accounts they offer make it easy to keep track of what shows you've watched... and you can even have your next subscription auto-play after you finish watching a show. It's the way TV "should" be: a channel that continually plays only shows you care about.
Despite the things Hulu has going for it, I worry about all this consolidation. Hulu is fast becoming the de-facto supplier for online streaming of TV shows. And this means that they will soon have a monopoly-like control, and will no doubt start abusing it. I really wish that competitors would spring up (and that the networks would license to multiple streaming-aggregator-sites).
And yeah, it does indeed suck that Hulu doesn't work outside the US. So much money (in targeted, country-specific advertising!) is being left on the table.
Re:Google Ads (Score:1, Informative)
They pop ads up at the bottom, seemingly based on the description/comments or possibly their speech recognition technology. I mean, I was just watching the latest Mr. Chi-City video [youtube.com], and up pops an advert for a tickets company.
Re:Professional Content (Score:3, Informative)
Why is Google supposed to change its business model because Disney has a different business model?
Because the current opinion is the youtube business model doesn't work. It is similar to a coffee shop trying to make money off of random local performances while the radio stations get contracted to play Britney Spears a certain percentage of the time.
I'm not saying that I know the solution, but it is inevitable for an internet video content provider to start partnering with the "professional" studios and move the from the broadcast TV service business model to the streaming online video business model. Investors will take a hard look at this and if Google either says "we still make money with youtube" or "we're not in that market", then the investors might be okay with that. But I'm certain a good portion of investors think that markets are similar and may change their investments based on this type of news.
Re:Thank you, ABC (Score:3, Informative)
They're last big "upgrade" to their player about a year ago killed off linux functionality. Fortunately, Hulu.com works great in linux. Maybe I'll actually start watching ABC shows again...