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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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...

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.