Disney-Hulu Deal Is Ominous For YouTube

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."

Comments

One Simple Solution

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re:One Simple Solution

[nine-times]

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.

Available outside U.S. ?

[javacowboy]

Wake me up when Hulu is available outside the U.S.

Re:Available outside U.S. ?

[robzon]

Exactly! It really pisses me off that I'm locked out just because I don't live in the states anymore. No wonder torrent sites flourish.

Re:Available outside U.S. ?

[patro]

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?

Re:Available outside U.S. ?

[foniksonik]

You mean the cost of the Iraq War right? Wait am I trolling or being trolled?

Thank you, ABC

[hal2814]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

Digging their own graves?

[mister_playboy]

I am eager to see the old cable subscription model fail, so we can actually have some decent internet speeds here in the US. If these companies have trouble monetizing this new approach, that won't exactly break my heart, though.

Most viewed debacle

[computerMechanic]

The major downside to this deal IMHO is the disappearance of the most viewed categories from both youtube and google video. Now we have the Most Popular categorie which consists of fred, disney, american idol and the like. I miss being able to look up a list of most viewed, by country and date.

"On-Demand" for FREE

[I'm not really here]

I care - here's why:

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

[value_added]

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.

Hulu == Intrusiveness.No && OldBoxSupport.

[N!NJA]

i never watched videos at ABC.com because the site always required more than i was willing to install (or mess) in my PC. i just decided to give them another try and see what their current requirements for streaming videos are.... and guess what? surprisingly -- they changed it! however -- not surprisingly -- the new requirements are still too restrictive. currently, their videos wont play (and, given their nature, that really isnt any loss) just because i'm a happy user of Win2000.... O.o

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!

Re:Professional Content

[PopeRatzo]

I'm surprised that this AC's most insightful comment has not already been modded all the way up.

From the summary:

Now Google is under mounting pressure to add more professional content to YouTube in order to attract more advertisers.

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?

Hulu actually works

[JustinOpinion]

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.

defective by design

[kingduct]

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...

Re:You're Just Too Cool

[foniksonik]

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.

Not a solution

[AliasMarlowe]

http://www.youtube.com/shows http://www.youtube.com/movies

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.