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Hulu Ends Free Streaming Service, Moves Free Stuff To Yahoo View (hollywoodreporter.com)
Hulu has inked a deal with Yahoo to provide free, ad-supported episodes of a range of TV shows. But Hulu also said Monday it will end free streaming service on its own platform as it is moving that to an all-subscription model. As part of its expanded distribution deal with Yahoo, which is launching Yahoo View, a new ad-supported TV streaming site with five most recent episodes of shows from ABC, NBC, and Fox among other networks. From an article on The Hollywood Reporter:Most of Hulu's free content has been fairly limited, restricted to what's known as the "rolling five," or the five most recent episodes of a current show -- content that typically becomes available eight days after it airs and is usually also available for free on broadcast networks' websites. For example, recent episodes of shows like America's Got Talent, South Park and Brooklyn Nine-Nine are currently available for free, while Hulu's slate of originals and high-profile exclusives remain behind the paywall. [...] Yahoo is launching the TV site a half-year after shuttering Yahoo Screen, the video service that offered up ad-supported episodes of original TV shows like Community, live streaming concerts and other clips. With View, however, Yahoo is focusing specifically on providing a destination for television to its audience, many of whom are still driven to Yahoo products via its highly trafficked homepage.
Even more than the name Hulu did.
I suppose Verizon will learn this the hard way.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
The networks have been trying to get something to compete with Netflix for years and fortunately so far they have failed miserably. Amazon is doing well but they had to tie their service to their Prime subscription as an add-on to get the traction they now have. Even so I watch Netflix original shows 10 to 1 over Prime. If the RIAA/MPAA/Networks get a foothold you know they will do everything they can to close it off and jack up the price.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
I used to use it when it first started. It was easier and of course, I felt that I was "doing the right thing" as opposed to torrenting for TV shows. Then they went to the paid model. Wait a second, I have to pay... and watch commercials. When was that 2-3 years ago? Stopped watching Hulu. I used to 'make fun' of people at work who were paying for this. They want you to pay and watch commercials?! Hell, I can put an antenna on my TV and watch for "free." So yea, what does their user base (paying that is) really look like these days?
I was thinking of this in terms of news the other day. I am an admitted news junkie. And I've noticed that I don't even bother with the NYT or the WPost any more. I just jump over those bookmarks. Instead I use free sites where I can use adblocks. Not that I have an aversion to ads, just don't need all that crap running on my browser. I even paid for Sling for a couple of months so I could get CNN. But dropped it, after realizing I was paying 20 bucks a month for CNN, just wasn't worth it. Instead, I watch France24, DW and Sky News. Why, cause they don't charge me. So I don't watch the BIG news casters.
My real point? Not sure exactly.... But I drop the big casters trying to nickle and dime me, and get the free options. When it comes to TV shows, the point of Hulu (I would think) for the consumer, was to offer TV in a legal and easier to use fashion than torrenting. I'm back to the point where it's easier to pay for a proxy and torrent. What have the streamers learned, from what I can gather, not much.
Are they going to continue to show ads on their PAID SUBSCRIPTION service? Even the more expensive NO-ADS subscription service that still sells ads?
Yes, they will continue to have ads on their paid subscription service. It's all spelt out when you sign up.
Also, yes, they'll also have some commercials in programs that are required to have commercials under their no commercials service. This is a limitation from the content providers, not with Hulu deciding they want more ads to run. The shows that this affects are listed during signup for the no-commercial plan.
From their help: "In response to feedback from our viewers, we started offering a commercial free experience on Hulu. For a small number of shows, however, we have not obtained the rights to stream commercial free and they are not included in our No Commercials plan. You can still easily access these shows with a short commercial before and after each episode with no interruptions during the episode. Specific shows that still have commercials accessible through the No Commercials plan will be noted throughout the signup, switching and playback experience. While the list of shows may change, they are currently: Greyâ(TM)s Anatomy, Once Upon a Time, Marvelâ(TM)s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Scandal, Grimm, New Girl, and How To Get Away With Murder."
Bolded by me. The wording is not unclear and they don't pretend everything will have no commercials. What you're buying for $8 is Hulu Plus, the library they have with the ability to stream with commercials. Adding $4 to the plan to remove commercials gives you access to the entirety of the "No commercials" package, which does not included a whopping 7 shows.
What does watching those 7 shows give you in practice? Under Hulu+ you'll have a couple commercials prior to each show, with some in the middle of shows. Under Hulu+ and No Commercial plan you'll have one Commercial before the shows, none during and one after. Then when starting the next episode you'll have another before that one. If you click "Next episode" it counts as stopping watching that, so you'll skip the after commercial and just need to watch the before commercial.
TL;DR: I dropped cable and picked up Hulu+ No commercials and Netflix and haven't been happier with my TV Viewing in a long time. The only thing missing is sports, but there are subscriptions available for NFL now too if you're willing to not watch live.
Do you Gentoo!?
Sorry, bittorrent is still the best service going.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
My question is - did anyone actually know that Yahoo previously offered ad supported network shows? I literally have never heard any reference to it prior to this story.
I'm a recent convert, and pay the extra $4 for commercial free, and am thinking along the same lines. I will miss my DVR - we'd save up entire seasons of shows and binge watch when we had the time. But if you can watch any show any time, you don't really need a DVR... and especially if there are no commercials (the biggest benefit to DVR, IMO, is skipping commercials). The only problem is every show has this or that restrictions... only the most recent 5 being the most common, with the show not being available until the day after it aired (some shows we look forward to we wouldn't binge watch, we'd just watch shortly after it started). You need to keep track of which shows you can't let go too long without watching, or risk missing them. The other thing is that if I had to reduce what I watched to the five shows on TV that I liked the best, four of them would be on AMC, and none of them, as far as I can tell, on Hulu. But so far I'm OK with what we got (watched the last Preacher from the AMC app... but with commercials).
So there are definitely drawbacks.... but going from what I was paying to $12 is great. There's a few holes in the programming that I'm trying to work around, so I will end up paying more, but nothing like the nearly $140 I was paying for TV service before.... it's just TV, it's not worth that.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
They might have commercial free contracts with other vendors - typically pay services like Amazon (non-prime) and Apple. Although personally, the 30 second ads that run before/after hardly seem to make it worth paying extra for them, but it's probably just getting around wording in the contracts. I work in broadcast, and there are instances where we cannot give the same exact content we are showing on cable to streaming services, and it has to do with contracts we have with the cable companies. So, it really could be any number of things in various contracts. It sounds silly, but I will be willing to bet you'll see things change (for the better) as time goes on. Believe it or not, broadcasters know TV, as such, is a dying medium and we need to adapt to serving content the way the viewers want it, but you will see a lot of growing pains while existing contracts need time to die out, and you'll probably never get all you want from once service.
Stupid sexy Flanders.