Hulu, Screw You.
August 30, 2007 by Mike Abundo
Filed under Computers, Television
\r\n\r\nBig Media conglomerates NBC and Fox just don\’t understand that the key to success in online video is niche media, not Even Bigger Media. That\’s why it\’s a bad idea for them to enter a joint venture for their video site, when each of them is technically capable of hosting and superdistributing their own content. They even gave their joint venture a stupid name: Hulu.\r\n\r\nSix years ago, two Big Media conglomerates in my country had the same idea. They thought the key to online success was Even Bigger Media. They formed an online joint venture, hoping to create a top-down online media monolith from On High. Do you know what happened to that joint venture? It fell apart. Violently. The same fate awaits Hulu.\r\n\r\nYouTube succeeds because it serves all niches. Wallstrip succeeds because it serves a particular niche. By contrast, Hulu wants to help you \”find and enjoy the world’s premier content.\” That mission statement implies that NBC and Fox content, tuned for a mass audience, are \”the world\’s premier content.\” That sort of presumption and preselection is useless in a search-powered video world where people can find exactly what they want to watch, not what some company wants them to watch.\r\n\r\nMedia joint ventures made a lot of sense before the Internet, when such ventures increased physical collaboration and distribution capabilities. On the Internet, media joint ventures are pointless because physical collaboration and distribution are non-issues. Two old media titans pulling together will simply pull each other down with convoluted ownership issues and decision-making debacles.\r\n\r\nHulu is a bunch of executives doing what works inside offline video and hoping it\’ll work inside online video, without recognizing the most basic differences between the two media. Hulu, screw you.
I’m just looking for a place to complain about hulu. I’m an American, living in Canada (just across a river from the US). When surfing the net, there are several links to things that interest me, that have been on tv. But, hulu owns them and will not allow them to be shown outside of the US. Occasionally. the same show is broadcast in Canada, and I have to go to the Canadian site to view the clip. I am so fed up with this nonsense! So much for the internet bringing the world together and sharing information.
Thanks for listening.
Kathy