The 2012 Super Bowl has come and gone, while you’re left to clean up the beer cans, wash off that face paint, and get back to planning your next pivot. The game itself provided more than enough excitement, with the New York Football Giants eking out a win over the star-crossed Tom Bradys and Bill Belichicks. This year’s Big Game also marked the first time that a Super Bowl was streamed live, legally, and for free on the Interwebs. While online viewers met with a number of shortcomings, the streaming was — for the most part — a success. (Read our review here.) → Read More
Hulu is launching its first-ever original scripted series with its 13-episode order of Battleground, a political comedy following the campaign trail of a third-place candidate in Wisconsin angling for a seat in the Senate.
The show is kicking off Hulu’s foray into scripted programming, and will be followed by two other original shows: a second season of documentarian Morgan Spurlock’s A Day in the Life series, and Up to Speed, a travel show from Dazed and Confused director Richard Linklater. → Read More
Hulu CEO Jason Kilar just posted a recap of the online content business in 2011, and revealed that Hulu’s revenue grew 60% from 2010 to approximately $420 million. While the growth is a good sign, this is less that the $500 million expected for the year.
Kilar says that Hulu Plus now has more than 1.5 million paying subscribers and is attracting more than 2 times the number of subscribers each day when compared to this time last year. Hulu continues to expect that its subscription services will account for more than half of Hulu’s overall business later this year.
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Hulu does TV shows better than just about everyone. In fact, other than YouTube, Hulu attracts the highest level of engagement of any web video platform (with the average web viewer watching an average of 3.2 hours a month). That being said, Hulu has never done social particularly well. Sure, users interact on Hulu discussion boards, tweet clips to friends, and share shows on Facebook, but the platform has long been in need of a better way to find and share TV shows and movies.
So, today at F8, Hulu announced the launch of a brand new Facebook app, which endeavors to make the Hulu experience social. What does that mean? For Hulu users this means getting to watch the video platform’s content directly within Facebook. Now you no longer have to leave Facebook to watch Hulu. And judging by all the news out of F8 today, soon you’ll never have to leave Facebook, period. → Read More
Hulu Plus has found its way to a handful of Android devices these past few months, but today it makes its first official appearance on an Android tablet — just maybe not the one you were expecting. → Read More
A week ago, Fox changed its licensing rules so that non-paying users of Hulu would be unable to watch new episodes of their shows until eight days after their air date. Put on your analyst hat and think about what effect this might have on, say, piracy of those shows. Did you determine that it would increase piracy? Congratulations, you are a better judge of consequences than Fox. Because piracy of Fox shows went up by a huge amount during this last week.
Actually, it’s likely that Fox anticipated this increase in piracy and simply considered it worth the trade-off. With worse options for free users, more will watch the live broadcast, they suppose, and ad prices go up with these increased projections. Query: if these people could watch it on live TV, why would they be watching it on Hulu in the first place? → Read More
Premium video streaming site Hulu has just announced that it’s about to make its first international expansion: Japan.
Hulu is keeping mum on the details, but it sounds like it will only offer a premium subscription service (the US version of Hulu offers both premium and free content). The company now has an office in Tokyo and is working on preparing for launch “later this year” (again, no more details on that front).
From the blog post:
We are excited about entering Japan right now for a number of reasons. For one thing, Nihon wa subarashii kuni desu (“Japan is a wonderful country”).
While Yahoo! remains the best positioned digital media company around, Wall Street remains unconvinced.
Yahoo!’s revenues are not growing as fast as other online media companies (GOOG, AMZN, Facebook, etc). Moreover, between Facebook’s grip on display ad inventory and DSPs changing the way advertisers buy inventory, Yahoo’s core business (display, reach) is under threat → Read More
If you’re one of the Internet’s many denizens still shedding an oh-so-first-world-problem tear over Netflix’s business strategy overhaul pricing changes, you’re probably still looking for somewhere else to spend your two lattes worth of monthly fees in exchange for countless hours of entertainment. Hulu Plus, perhaps?
If you’re an Android user, chances are pretty decent that Hulu Plus just got a lot more useful for you; this morning, Hulu is announcing streaming support for four of the most popular Android devices around. → Read More
A new study by Yahoo (embedded below) shows that online video watching habits are shifting. People are watching longer videos and watching more at night during primetime. The chart above shows when people watch videos online. The blue line is today (2011) and the dotted line is two years ago (2009). The two lines show more than a 30 percent divergence during primetime.
So what changed? Peak online video viewing today is during prime time, between 6 PM and 9 PM. Only two years ago, prime time showed the biggest dip in online video viewing as people turned off their computers and turned on their TVs. But now, more people are streaming TV shows and movies from services like Netflix and Hulu, and they tend to watch those videos during the same time period they previously watched regular TV. While people may not yet be cord cutting, this data suggests that online watching does encroach upon regular cable and satellite TV watching. → Read More
Tired of not being able to get your on-the-go Modern Family fix from Hulu just because you’re rockin’ an Android phone rather than an iPhone? Fret no longer! Hulu Plus for Android has arrived. Sort of. → Read More
Interesting story breaking that Yahoo put an unsolicited bid in to acquire Hulu. For all I know it’s completely true. But I’ve just received an unsolicited message from a source close to Yahoo that says it’s completely untrue (probably because of all my digging the last week on this Yahoo story).
Yahoo hasn’t had any meaningful conversations with Hulu about a buyout, says this source. The source added that Hulu is actively looking for a buyer and has hired Morgan Stanley to represent them.
Like I said, this is all I’ve got right now. The WSJ and the LA Times say they have sources confirming that Yahoo made an offer. With big acquisitions the press is a huge pawn in negotiating strategy. The one thing I’d like to know is who’s the source for the LA Times article. If that source is close to Hulu or Morgan Stanley, I’d be wary. Of course, my source has her own agenda, too. → Read More
Two weeks after Miramax announced a major content deal with Netflix, the studio this morning announced that it has also struck a multi-year agreement with Hulu to bring hundreds of films, including Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting, Scream and The English Patient to Hulu Plus subscribers. Hulu will offer select films via the advertising-supported Hulu.com service to boot.
Launching today, Hulu Plus subscribers will be able to watch Miramax movies in HD (when available), with no advertising interruption. → Read More
You’ve waited for it. You’ve prayed for it. You’ve spilled the blood of countless sacrificial chickens for it. And now it’s here: Hulu Plus for Xbox 360. The service is launching tomorrow and you’re basically getting the Hulu interface with which you’re familiar plus a few Kinect add-ons including voice control and gestures. With sufficient bandwidth you also get high-quality streaming on what Microsoft is calling the “biggest screen in your house.” The service will be available for free from April 29 – May 6 and will thereafter cost $7.99 a month. Click through for more info on the service, including some words about Kintect interaction. → Read More
By the end of this year, an estimated 2 million households in the U.S. will have abandoned TV for the Web, cutting the cord with their cable companies. This estimate comes from Convergence Consulting Group, a Toronto-based research firm with a new report on The Battle for the American Couch Potato. That 2 million is up from the 1.6 million it was estimating a year ago, but it is still rather small and the number of cord cutters may very well have peaked last year as cable companies begin to fight back with TV Everywhere offerings.
Nevertheless, the big beneficiaries of cord cutting are Netflix, Hulu, and Apple TV. They benefit even if people keep their cable but add Internet TV streaming or downloads to their viewing repertoire, as is much more common. According to Convergence , 18 percent of viewers in the U.S. watched free, full episodes of TV on the Web last year, and that is growing by a percentage point every year: → Read More
ComScore has just released data from its Video Metrix service, showing that 170 million Internet users in the United States watched online video content in February for an average of 13.6 hours per viewer.
According to the audience measurement giant, the total U.S. Internet audience engaged in more than 5 billion viewing sessions during the course of last month. Google Sites (read: YouTube) again ranked as the top online video content property in February, with an impressive 141.1 million unique viewers. → Read More
In a new report on digital trends in 2010
When it comes to premium video on the Web, Hulu still rules. In the fourth quarter, the U.S. online audience watched 19.4 billin minutes of video on Hulu, which was twice as much as the how much viewers watched on the websites of the five major TV networks combined. Viewers watched another 9.7 billion minutes of online video on the websites of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and the CW. The chart above comes from a new Digital Year in Review report from comScore.
While Hulu still dominates, the individual network sites are growing faster. They grew 82 percent in terms of time spent watching video online, compared to 17 percent growth for Hulu. Taken together, Hulu and the five top networks, saw 33 percent growth in minutes viewed. → Read More
I’ve witnessed the media frenzy that comes with the Super Bowl – and the commercials that air on TV before, during and after the event – from a distance (from Belgium, to be more precise) several times now, and still can’t be anything but baffled by its sheer ferociousness. TechCrunch also did its part by listing all tech-related Super Bowl ads.
Question is: did people dig them? Not really, says Hulu, which had its users cast votes on their favorite commercials across all 69 Super Bowl ads on its AdZone site. → Read More
Hulu has just struck a content partnership with Viacom to return “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” to the content platform.
The deal also includes other TV Shows from Viacom’s media networks, including Comedy Central, MTV, BET, VH1, Spike TV, and TV Land to the Hulu Plus subscription service. Viacom had previously pulled the two Comedy Central shows from Hulu last March. Financial terms of the new agreement were not disclosed. → Read More
Netflix is interesting because it is the first service to follow the disruptive arc of the iPad. Every time the iPad is analyzed, the projections are anywhere from just plain wrong to what amounts to a niche. Doesn’t run applications… now there’s an AppStore. Doesn’t run Flash… now there’s a Flash converter app. Apps don’t support a magazine subscription model… Tuesday they will. Won’t be accepted by IT… 80% penetration. Will be overwhelmed by Android tablets… Apple will Verizon them with iPad 2.
What is reminiscent of iPadnomics is the speed with which the disruption is underestimated, the naiveté with which the backlash is orchestrated, and the resultant vaulting of the service into a near-incumbent position before the deposed incumbents can retrench from the initial mistaken counterattack. Netflix is already at the stage where iTunes was when the music cartel tried to cap it. While Amazon may be a cheaper service without so-called DRM, there’s no device comparable to Apple TV at the end of the value chain. → Read More
