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."
One Simple Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Give the IP holders the right to run their own commercials, and some API to make it possible for them to change commercials out easily without a full reupload. Commercial lengths will manage themselves. In order to get this particular interface you need to share the cost of the downloads, which the system will broker. (e.g. the actual cost, not any cost to the user, since there is none.)
However, I don't see it as that big an issue, either; Google is here to stay, so is YouTube, and if it became THE site for non-commercial content, I for one would still use it. I suspect others would, also.
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http://www.youtube.com/shows [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/movies [youtube.com]
Not a solution (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.youtube.com/shows [youtube.com] http://www.youtube.com/movies [youtube.com]
Youtube sucks just as much as Hulu sometimes:
This video is not available in your country
That was for "The Outer Limits", "Married with Children", "The Addams family", and "Terry Jones' Medieval Lives". There may be some shows available in my country, but I gave up trying at that point.
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While i agree that youtube is a completely different platform to hulu, i think youtube is going to run into problems if it doesn't change its ways soon. In looking to get commercial content providers on-bored they stopped protecting their users and will take down just about anything instantly, this is loosing them users, who either go elsewhere (dailymotion, etc) or just using online videosites much because they can't find what they want. By shutting down the accounts of high volume user that infringed copy
Re:One Simple Solution (Score:4, Insightful)
However, I don't see it as that big an issue, either; Google is here to stay, so is YouTube, and if it became THE site for non-commercial content, I for one would still use it. I suspect others would, also.
The problem is making money. Yes, Youtube is popular, but is it profitable yet? I don't know. Advertisers won't pay much on ad space until they can place their ads on premium content, and they won't be able to get premium content until they can show that advertisers are willing to pay a premium. It's a catch 22.
So content owners are saying they won't license their content for the Internet because the ad revenue isn't there. The advertisers are saying they won't pay much because the viewers aren't there. The viewers won't watch because content owners are busy pushing their products on broadcast channels while withholding them from the Internet. And around we go.
If things are going to change, someone has to make the leap, and it won't be the advertisers. It might be the content owners, but I'd bet on the viewers. Not so much a leap, but a gradual falling off-- people canceling their cable because they get enough shows on Hulu or iTunes to keep them content, and maybe they supplement those sources with some illegal stuff. So then advertisers and content owners will have to go online to get those viewers.
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Well, how long can Google keep the thing floating? They probably have a lot of time to work it out, and it's worth taking some time to be the leader in yet another space... if they can maintain their lead, anyway.
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Estimates vary, but most analysts put YouTube's loss to Google at between $250 million and $500 million per year, with the bulk of that being due to bandwidth costs. The big problem is almost no on
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Yes, but Google is trying to get the same sort of content that Hulu has, licensed by content owners, and ad-supported. For whatever reason, content owners aren't going for that, either.
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Ok let me let you in on a secret that isn't a secret in any way. Yes it's profitable. No youtube.com itself does not net a profit. The profit is on the analytics of that traffic. Google isn't a fly by night company who fails to monetize traffic. Reach (attaching contextual, demographic, behavioral, etc. information to a unique id of a visitor) is the primary way to increase hits in your ad server (versus a default ad being served because of a "
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Google is losing over a quarter of a billion dollars a year on YouTube just from bandwidth costs. How long are they going to be willing to keep that up?
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Bollocks (Score:2, Interesting)
Youtube's value is in the long tail - Hulu doesn't seem to be going down that path.
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Youtube's value is in the long tail.
And it's losing money at the rate of one Library of Congress. ($half-billion a year)
Available outside U.S. ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wake me up when Hulu is available outside the U.S.
Re:Available outside U.S. ? (Score:5, Insightful)
You Can't Pay: africa, latin america, east europe (Score:1)
I hate to break it to you, but if your countries' advertisement rates vs exorbitant bandwidth cost ratios do not make financial sense to web entertainment companies (such as facebook, hulu, youtube, veoh) in these tough times you are likely to be cut off, or about to be cut off from the spigot!
Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia users make up the huge percentage in many of these sites, but their nations' ad rates are very low! The NY Times has a piece [nytimes.com] on it. Relatedly, it amazes me that facebook cla
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Re:Available outside U.S. ? (Score:4, Funny)
You mean the cost of the Iraq War right? Wait am I trolling or being trolled?
Re: Trolling (Score:2)
You're playing InternetGo with him, and you can't decide whether his stonegroup or yours is the one that lives.
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Both. After all, 1d12 trolls can appear at one time, according to the 2nd edition Monster Manual.
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Wake me up when Hulu is available outside the U.S.
Can't do it. It's like exporting software - we, the USA, have to make sure certain technologies do not get exported out of the country. The US Congress, in their wisdom, put these export restrictions on software and other media because we all know that the USofA is the only country in the World that is capable of developing technology.
Why, just think of what could happen if the terrorists got a hold MS Excel or Hulu! They could bombard every city in the US with shitty TV programming and keep track of the d
Re:Available outside U.S. ? (Score:4, Funny)
There is an other provider. It's called Torrent and it's available everywhere. I wonder what Hulu-ABC will do if they hear about it. Change their business model or something?
Available outside Redmond? (Score:1, Interesting)
You get a funny , but remember your addiction is a win for American culture. Big media doesn't need to change it's business model when purveyors of what it has to offer can't "quit anytime it wants". Much like a certain other monopoly.
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Yeah yeah yeah - and maybe someday the BBC will allow streaming of Dr Who for US users too...
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That sucks. But can't non-Americans just route through a proxy or something?
I'd probably also blame this on your networks, since they syndicate many of these shows. It would probably violate the contracts to allow non-Americans to view the shows before your local neetwork has shown the program. The question is why is there often such a delay before the foreign network airs the show? If there isn't a delay than this is really stupid.
But really I often just don't understand Hollywood. They bitch that China
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While we're wishing, wake me up when all of YouTube is available in Europe.
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Wake me up when Hulu is available outside the U.S.
I agree 100%. I suppose I wouldn't mind the region-blocking if there was a local alternative, but there isn't. Why block SNL if there isn't an alternative place I can go watch a clip? Who are they protecting?
Or maybe... (Score:1)
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.
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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).
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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...
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Hulu also buffers continuously, rather than treating commercials and the show's segments like separate streams. For people like me with slow internet connections (mine is barely fast enough for 480p), that means no delay after a commercial, instead of 20 seconds of buffering.
And unlike Youtube, there's none of that random jerking. I have four computers in my house, and every single one of them jerks/jolts on the worst quality youtube vids.
Crysis doesn't jolt. Neither does Hulu. Youtube does. :/
But, but, but.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Now Google is under mounting pressure to add more professional content to YouTube...
But it's YOU-Tube, not THEM-Tube
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oh please. You-tube hasn't been "you"-tube for a long time. Half the content is clips of shows, full movies uploaded in 9000 parts for the 3 people on the planet who can't figure out torrents, and porn ads that you-tube won't take down.
Google Ads (Score:3, Interesting)
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Not enough ad revenue to offset the bandwidth charges?
Ding! Ding! Ding! You've won the jackpot. Google subsides IdiotTube from other sources of ad revenue. Google's business model is 99% based on ad revenue. Once that dries up, they're fraked.
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I don't see why google doesn't just put some basic google text ads on the right of youtube served up based on the description of the video and the content of the comments.
I can't wait to see targeted ads for "ur all fags!" or "this sux" or any of the other typical brilliance found in comments alongside my YouTube videos.
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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.
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The big problem is that advertisers don't want their ads to show up next to videos that will offend their customers. YouTube is full of truly disgusting content, and it is almost impossible to pick keywords that will hit the places you would like your ad to be without also hitting a lot of disgusting videos.
Digging their own graves? (Score:4, Interesting)
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If these companies have trouble monetizing this new approach, that won't exactly break my heart, though.
Would it though, if they had to cancel your favorite show because there just isn't enough money to justify making it?
I mean, your attitude is basically demanding that the show producers take a 90% cut in revenue or else you're not happy.
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Would it though, if they had to cancel your favorite show because there just isn't enough money to justify making it?
They already cancel the good shows.
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Would it though, if they had to cancel your favorite show because there just isn't enough money to justify making it?
I'd be okay with that, its not like TV is a necessity or anything. I could probably live my life just as well (if not better) without an idiot box. But then again I'm not very typical, since all I really watch on the damn thing is news and Dirty Jobs. One of which I can get on the internet with richer content, the other I really don't care too much about.
I can't even watch network TV anymo
Who cares? (Score:2, Troll)
Its rubbish, and I dont want to watch it. I don't care about the method of delivery, it is still pointless garbage.
I do download music and videos, but its not the stuff that the major networks produce. That is the advantage youtube has: it has stuff that has not had the hand of the major networks in it.
"On-Demand" for FREE (Score:5, Insightful)
On-demand from Comcast has commercials.
"On-demand" from Hulu has less commercials.
On-demand with Comcast costs me money.
"On-demand" from Hulu costs me nothing.
On-demand with Comcast has practically everything, but it costs money to watch.
"On-demand" from Hulu has practically everything but is free to watch.
I care, because finally I will be able to just pay for a connection to the internet.
Re:"On-Demand" for FREE (Score:5, Funny)
I care - here's why:
Maybe it's just me, but if I was an Ugly Betty fan and needed her on-demand, I'd probably post anonymously.
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You have commercials on the OnDemand channel?
I have TWC and we have no ads in the VOD library, just pure shows and nothing else.
They have hundreds of shows available and I don't have to watch an ad before watching the show and no commericals during the show.
Usually the triple pay packages are cheap enough now $100 for TV,phone,internet; but if you want to pay $33 for internet alone it might be a bargain.
I personally think the non major network shows are complete crap; give me my Heroes, 24 and Discovery cha
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It's COMCASTIC!
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It's COMCASTIC!
Get the Porn on demand and it's COMGASMIC!
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Right, because Youtube is that much better. Sure there's a lot of stuff, but if you want anything of value, that's few and far between. And good luck if you want any semblance of consistency. It's not that the major networks don't produce crap it's that you're not really meant to watch absolutely everything. As much as I hate most programming there are still shows here and there that are worth watching.
Despite you're animosity towards the networks, there's a huge number of programs that wouldn't be availabl
You're Just Too Cool (Score:2)
I do download music and videos, but its not the stuff that the major networks produce.
That's because you're young, and, consequently, have little money.
In 10 years your tastes will have ossified, the lead singer of your favorite goth-noise-emo-trance band will be hosting a gameshow on VH1, and you'll have disposable income. Then you'll be part of the desirable demographic all these broadband deals are being scripted to attract.
Enjoy your youth.
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Re:You're Just Too Cool (Score:4, Insightful)
Heh, it happens. You'll see, it's not cynicism at all... it's biological. The interests you are imprinted with in your youth stay with you for the rest of your life. Sure you will notice new things and check them out but when you want to feel youthful again - strangely enough you'll go listen to the band you listened to in high school. That's how memory imprinting works.
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You are wrong on that - I am over 60. I have all the music I want in my vast collection from before CDs were invented, and my eyes are not very good, so I don't like watching moving pictures much.
I have some interest in actual new content, but none at all in Hollywood movies,
We have Sky at home, and I do watch (I am watching now) an African movie channel (Movistar).
Save your money (Score:2)
If I wanted to watch Ugly Betty, etc, I could watch TV.
Or you could save yourself $50/month and watch them online instead. Why do people insist on paying for redundant services like it is "no big deal?"
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Professional Content (Score:2, Insightful)
If I wanted to see "professional" content I'd get a fuckin' TV.
Re:Professional Content (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm surprised that this AC's most insightful comment has not already been modded all the way up.
From the summary:
Why is that? Pardon me, but I go to youtube for everything from crazy mashups and ukulele instruction videos, vids of my friends in Alaska demonstrating their proficiency with the Chinese broadsword and other friends in Baltimore displaying their latest performance in the Brooklyn Battlefest. A guy playing the Super Mario theme on the balalaika. Some 8 year old kid in Japan shredding the hell out of a Jeff Beck tune.
Are you telling me that Disney will having videos like this?
Why is Google supposed to change its business model because Disney has a different business model?
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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.
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Because Google's business model is losing a quarter of a billion dollars a year on YouTube (that's the low end of published estimates)? Because Hulu will have higher advertising revenue this year than YouTube, on much lower traffic?
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I know, those stupid Google guys. They don't know how to do anything right. They don't have two nickels to rub together.
Wait..
Duh (Score:1)
Please excuse me for not being exactly thrilled by the news, as Hulu is not available outside the USA (and many other content providers). For all the rest of us mere mortals, the "news" is as useful as the information about the weather last week in Tahiti.
You wouldn't guess which popular video site I'd be watching then.
Most viewed debacle (Score:4, Interesting)
But I already watch them for free! (Score:2)
Oh, you meant on hulu. Meh.
Good for Hulu, Good For Consumers (Score:1)
Personally, I think this is great news. Competition is a good thing. If Youtube was the only destination for video, that type of monopoly would - eventually - prove to be bad for everyone. Even if it is "do no evil" Google.
Several months ago, I canceled my TV service. I use Hulu quite often to watch the shows I want to see. They are always there, commercial interruptions are minimal and video/audio quality is good. And that is just using VGA cable from my laptop to DLP HDTV @ 720p res and a headphone-to-RCA
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Spend an extra $200 bucks on a good antennae + receiver with HDMI and you'll feel even better about canceling cable (that is if you get good OTA HD reception). It's a one time cost and you get very high quality HD of network shows which may or may not make it to Hulu (Olympics was a good example).
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Hulu? What is that? (Score:1)
I'm from Europe..... As long as the Hulu world is limited to the US I will have to limit myself to a certain site in Sweden. Arrr mateys, set sail for some ISO island where the DVD bounty is hidden!!
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Likewise up here in Canadanistan.
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Hulu == Intrusiveness.No && OldBoxSupport. (Score:4, Interesting)
TNT is another loser who will eventually take their content to Hulu. on TNT.com the user is required to install some Microsoft DRM plugin crap.... those companies shoot themselves in the foot when they make their sites so picky! with Hulu, it just works! you only need a browser (ANY!) and the Flash plugin. it has never asked me to install anything! btw, YouTube and PBS have got some shows online as well....and they also just work!
the other thing i like about Hulu is their choice of Flash player. it exposes the QUALITY options (HIGH, MEDIUM and Low), which can be the difference between a choppy and a smooth playback. i hope they dont remove it (seems to be the trend)!
what's with that anyway? many websites are doing away with the QUALITY option and just imposing the (more resource-intensive) HIGH setting! geez, sometimes that setting makes Flash just plain unwatchable in my Athlon 3000. why are developers removing an option that is actually useful?!?! it was fine the way it was before when it defaulted to HIGH but let you change it. what's next? are they going to remove the FULLSCREEN option too?
and no, kid! i'm not gonna retire my perfectly functional Atlhon 3000.... or my Pentium 3 700MHz! now get off my lawn!
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I have a system nearly identical to yours - overclocked Athlon XP 2400+, running Win2k.
I've been following Hulu for a while, and they've actually been adding things over time. I sent in a few suggestions, and some made it in!
Stuff like Space for pausing, alt+enter for fullscreen toggling, and a buffering bar so you can see why it's stuttering.
I like how they did the buffering bit - it's even better than a regular bar.
I'd be very surprised if they axed features. It's clear they have some smart guys on their
Build it at... (Score:2)
Advertisers are like ants at a picnic, mosquitoes at the cottage, and lawyers at an accident scene. If people's attention is there, they will find some way of advertising on it.
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.
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I just use EZTV .. every day it lists shows that are airing that day.. and I pretty much have ones that I regularly download (torrents), which is based upon whether or not there are say 2 shows on at the same time, or are cable shows, since I don't have a DVR or cable.. It's also good, in that sometimes I find shows that I would probably otherwise ignore.. For example, I never watched Chuck.. but I was bored one day not long ago, and tested out the first episode, and eventually downloaded all the episodes,
defective by design (Score:4, Interesting)
I tried using Hulu. It was designed not to let me press the pause button and let the entire show download over my cheap DSL (my usual practice with any flash videos that are higher bandwidth than my internet). It would only buffer the next several seconds, I assume to prevent me from downloading the entire file. I never went back and had to go back to using other sources of television that exist online...
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Agreed. My Comcast broadband connection is not fast enough to play back a Hulu stream without freezing while it re-buffers every few minutes. I think they're shaping the traffic, or something.
But, yeah. I've used Hulu exactly twice. Once to see what it was like, and once to watch an episode of the Office my Tivo missed because I'd accidentally disconnected the power. Not being able to buffer up is a huge problem.
Hulu just got my respect (Score:2)
Hulu has "fake full screen". Not just Flash's full screen mode that turns off when you click away, but you can maximize an individual window for viewing. That means you can put it on your secondary monitor & use the first monitor just fine. I like that. If they stuff some commercials in, that's fine by me. That's more than acceptable for good video quality & being able to catch up on missed shows. And their commercials are funny.
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Linux users can now watch abc shows (Score:1)
Ugh (Score:2)
But YouTube was founded on providing any average Joe with a way of putting their own home videos and generated content up for anybody to stream. From day one YouTube has fought legal battles because of TV shows and full length movies finding their way onto YT.
Hulu, on the other hand, is a joint venture between major networks and exists for the sole purpose of legally streaming their shows (a
What advertisers? (Score:2)
YouTube is and always will be a place for user-generated content
But apart from America's Funniest Home Videos and similar shows, when has user-generated video attracted advertisers?
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Good idea on ABC's part (Score:2)
At least Hulu actually works.
Is it a good idea to put everything in one basket? (Score:2)
I like Hulu, but does everyone need to be on it? What if Hulu is slow, has problems, etc. I'd like multiple sites. It's fine for them to be on Hulu if they have their own video site too (fox.com vs. hulu.com for the same videos on different servers).
cbc.ca/fifth (Score:1)
The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corp) is a publicly owned operation and thus has a obligation to make content available to all Canadians via T.V (Air) Cable (free) or the Internet. However the site is a bit of a mosaic of formats they stream and what exactly is available.
However, if you go to cbc.com/fifth you will get an ideal example of how things should be. Last 5-10 seasons made available without commercials, but also each episode has an area to get more information on the story at hand as well as giving
Free? (Score:2)
Eh, people already get to watch those shows for free... Advertisers foot the bill when its on broadcast TV. Why should web viewing be any different? For now I'll just stick to Tivo and watch what I want when I want, assuming I get whatever channel it gets broadcast on. No worrying about all the crap that you have to go through to watch on Hulu or when ABC decides I should watch the show.
Hulu? Hu-cares? (Score:1)
This post is unavailable in your country (Score:2)
Can we please not get more this crap about Hulu? Most of internet users see "Sorry, currently our video library can only be streamed from within the United States", so please don't post such trash on /.
The well known fact is (Score:1)
ABC? Right. The one that killed Pushing Daisies (Score:2)
I find it remarkable, really, that ABC virtually doesn't exist for me. The un-channel of everything I would never watch and hadn't for years before Pushing Daisies and don't again after they canned that "loser" that was only nominated for something like 2-1/2 dozen awards.
So, YouTube killer? Not whatever demographic I'm in.
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Seriously, no one gives a shit. Just keep that free video flowing and keep this Idiocracy rollin' and no one will care whether they have to surf to youtube.com, hulu.com, goatse.cx, iamafaggotassbitch.com, or whatever. Free everything is the way of the future. Can't you all see that we're headed for a Star Trek economy, where money is obsolete? God bless Obongo!
John Lennon never did sing, "Imagine there is no money. Its easy if you do. No more long term debt above us. No more bitting off more than you can chew."