Both the Justice Department and the FCC have approved Comcast’s monumental purchase of NBC Universal this morning. A cursory wade through the multiple press releases shows that the deal is full of conditions, as the FCC itself acknowledged that the merger could create threats to “to the development of innovative online video distribution services.” Yikes.
Of course this leaves people on all sides wondering what will happen to online video content site Hulu? → Read More
A cryptic Tweet from Boxee points to a new firmware version rolling out in the next few hours, one that probably promises Vudu and Hulu content on what Matt calls “his favorite box.” Matt here: Nevermind John. He meant to say Netflix, not Hulu. → Read More
Hulu CEO Jason Kilar made an appearance at the Samsung press event at CES today, where he announced that a Hulu Plus app will be coming to Android 2.2+ in the coming months. He demoed the app on a Samsung Galaxy S running Android 2.2. Unfortunately, there was no mention of the price of the app, nor if it will net you an extra subscription fee. I guess time will tell. [via Mobile Burn] → Read More
And there it is: Americans now spend as much time on the Internet as they do watching TV. So says a new study released by Forrester Research, which says that people now spend 121 percent more time online than they did only five years ago. What’s probably most significant is that these stats now include people in the 30+ age group; it’s not just college student insomniacs who spend their time online these days. → Read More
Roku has released firmware update 2.9 which includes 1080p support in their XR devices. There are a few other bug fixes in the release including Hulu optimization for all devices. You can download it manually (“To do so please select “Settings” option from the homepage, then navigate to “Player Info” and finally choose “Check For Updates”. Your box will then prompt you with the latest version install. “) or let your box grab it automatically next time you turn it on. → Read More
Shares of Chinese video site Youku soared on its IPO today, closing at $33.44, which is 160 percent above its offering price of $12.80. Since Youku’s 15.8 million shares of American Depository Receipts (ADRs) represent 16 percent of the total shares, the closing price gives Beijing-based $Youku a market cap of roughly $3.3 billion. In other words, it is worth more than $AOL (owner of TechCrunch), which has a market cap of $2.7 billion.
Earlier today, I referred to Youku as the YouTube of China, but it is more like the Hulu of China. About two thirds of the videos on YouKu are syndicated from traditional media companies in China. The company was founded in November, 2005 and the site launched in December, 2006. YouKu never really relied on user-generated content because it took longer to develop as a phenomenon in China than the U.S. “Unlike the US, we are still in the development phase for user generated content so we didn’t rely on that,” CEO Victor Koo tells me. → Read More
ESPN has just released a study that sheds some light on people’s cord cutting habits—or lack thereof. Using Nielsen data, ESPN has determined that a paltry 0.11 percent of U.S. households have dropped cable and/or satellite TV over the past three months. That rounds down to essentially nobody in my estimation. Even more interesting is exactly who these cord-cutters are, and they’re not who you’d most likely suspect. → Read More
Almighty Giz has two exciting maps that offer an alternative explanation for the decline in cable and satellite subscriptions in the past year. If you look at the maps, you’ll find that the areas that saw the biggest drops in subscriptions are also, generally, the areas hardest hit by foreclosures. The theory goes, these areas have been hard hit by the recession, and subsequent unemployment, so they’d be first to drop superfluous things like $100+ cable TV bills. → Read More
Cord cutting: it’s real. That’s what a new SNL Kagan study suggests, and you have to figure that TV executives are freaking out. The numbers: 119,000 people “cut the cord” (read: dropped their cable or satellite TV) in the third quarter of this year. Meanwhile, in the third quarter of 2009, 360,000 people added cable or satellite TV service. Bottom line is, it would certainly appear that people, led by you guys, the tech élite, are walking away from TV and walking toward online services like Hulu and Netflix. → Read More
Today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and Peter Chernin sat down with New York Magazine’s John Heilemann to talk about the state of the video content business. A question from the audience asked Hastings about the news today that Hulu was cutting their prices.
Hastings noted that Hulu was still mainly an advertising play. And he said that Netflix has actually long been an advertiser on Hulu. “Hulu Plus may grow into a competitor over time, but that’s probably healthy for us,” he said. Notice he’s saying that he doesn’t consider them an actual competitor just yet. → Read More
Hulu has formally launched its premium online video subscription service Hulu Plus after a preview period.
Pleasant surprise for those who are interested: the monthly subscription fee has dropped from $9.99 to $7.99, a 20 percent price cut.
Pleasant surprise for those who already signed up for Hulu Plus: early adopters will get a credit for the difference from the $9.99 preview price to be applied automatically to their next billing cycle. Starting today, all new subscribers to Hulu Plus will also receive a 1-week free trial. → Read More
comScore’s monthly video data is out for October and it looks like Hulu saw a significant uptick in video ad impressions. Hulu saw 1.1 billion video ad impressions in October, compared to 793 million video ad impressions in September. This rapid growth in ad views is probably attributed an increase in viewership on Hulu thanks to the start of the Fall TV show season.
Tremor Media Video Network ranked second overall (and highest among video ad networks) with 533 million ad views, followed by ADAP.TV (435 million) and BrightRoll Video Network (374 million). Video ads reached 45 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 34 times during the month. Whereas Hulu served the highest frequency of ads to its viewers in September (an average of 27.5 over the course of the month); CWTV.com took the top spot in October. CWTV served an average of 50.8 in October. → Read More
Here at the NewTeeVee conference in San Francisco, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar just dropped some interesting and some perviously unreported Hulu stats, including the fact that the ad and subscription supported service now has 30 million users monthly and estimates it will rake in $240 million dollars in 2010, up from a $108 million dollars in 2009.
Kilar also revealed that the service has 260 million content streams, 800 million ad streams and 235 content partners. → Read More
Editor’s note: Mark Suster is a venture capitalist based in Los Angeles at GRP Partners. He blogs at BothSidesoftheTable.
The formation of Hulu was defensive – designed to stop another YouTube or Napster from emerging and causing disruption to the TV industry. The idea was that if you could put up a consumer site that was seen as the best place to consume content then people wouldn’t go to lower-quality or free sites to get it. The founders felt that having a legitimate site for content would discourage Silicon Valley VC’s from funding entrepreneurs to create the next big TV killer. → Read More
Sorry, folks. Someone clearly couldn’t keep their mouth shut and let it slip that Fancast.com was Google TV‘s backdoor to Hulu. The majority of the content no longer streams to Google TV units like it did just last week. NBC, ABC, Fox — it’s all blocked. Only Viacom’s content still works, but that’s too be expected considering the partnership between Google and the media conglomerate.
This is getting a bit frustrating. It’s like buying a fancy speed boat, only to discover when you get home the local wildlife nuts convinced the authorities to impose strict speed limits. It’s no fun even if it does save an endangered species and doesn’t seem like the restrictions will be lifted anytime soon. → Read More
Heads up to you PS3 owners who didn’t want to pony up for PlayStation Plus. Hulu—yes, the subject of entirely too many word already today—will be soon available in Plus form (Hulu Plus, yes) to you. Dance in the streets, and so on. → Read More
Batten down the hatches, netizens! At a streaming media conference yesterday, Dish Network Vice-President of Online Content Development and Strategy, Bruce Eisen, said that sites like Hulu, which allow Internet users to watch certain television programming (and sometimes for free), may well destroy the television industry as we know it. That’s a bad thing if you’re Dish Network, but what if you’re the average person? → Read More
“People like stumbling videos more than webpages,” StumbleUpon founder Garrett Camp tells us in explaining why the service has decided to revamp their video offering, which they’re doing tonight. While you’ve been able to stumble through videos for a couple of years now, they’re finally making the experience more social. And they’re adding two big names to the arsenal: TED and Hulu.
Previously, StumbleUpon was simply using trending data to find hot videos to take your through. But now they’ve integrated their social recommendation engine into the mix to make the entire experience more personalized. In other words, you’ll now be taken to videos liked by people you’re connected with on the service. → Read More
Yes, you heard this before. The Death of Cable TV. Yet, it hasn’t happened. But now, so many disruptions are happening in the video space, cable tv is really stepping towards the cliff. Don’t expect the cable industry to just give up.
We’ll get some new insights next week when the largest U.S. cable operator (23 million cable customers), Comcast, reports its Q3 earnings and subscriber count. Comcast cable customers dropped nearly 3% in Q2 compared to last year. In Q2 for the industry overall, a record 711,000 subscribers abandoned cable tv, and six of eight operators suffered their worst quarterly subscriber losses ever.
Just this month, a lot has happened. → Read More
The title of this post is both a very old idea and a very new one. With the prevalence of fiber connectivity and pervasive broadband speeds, this year has been a hot one for bringing together the home computer and the living room TV. While companies like Apple and Google battle over share of TV viewers, they have left open and promoted the web for content distributors to control their own experience through HTML (and, especially, HTML5).
To that end, it looks like Apple has one-upped Google by opting to privately pre-arrange distribution deals with traditional studio networks beginning with ABC and FOX, while Google has no deals in place at all, hoping the networks will just “allow” consumers to watch Web videos on their TVs. But Google TV is getting a slap in the face from several networks who pulled the plug, right on the big release day. Just as reviews were rolling out in favor of Google’s new living room effort, ABC, CBS and NBC are exiting stage left.
As for the rest of the world, you can’t stop us. Developers of Web video distribution platforms forge ahead. Apple is offering to lure them in with partnerships, Google is giving them the opportunity to figure it out for free. Neither Apple nor Google, nor anyone else is waiting any longer. The time is now. You can feel it. The rest of the video world marches on, bringing the internet and the TV closer together. → Read More
