Common Paradox Tech Blog

Hulu struck a deal to host content from The NFL Network in January, including eight shows and highlights from every team in the National Football League. The network has been adding new content to the site ever since, and this week Hulu has posted an impressive 400 hours of NFL-related videos.

Fierce Online Video reports that Hulu plans to add 600 more hours before the next football season starts.

Sports enthusiasts are seeing a big boom in web video coverage; the NCAA college basketball league just launched a website that streams shareable clips from countless March Madness plays.

Meanwhile, Hulu is likely hoping deals like this one will — in tandem with its own in-house reality show If I Can Dream — help make up for the loss of two of its most popular shows, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Hulu saw a slight dip in viewership in the month of January, but maybe this vast library of NFL content will help pull the numbers back up.

[via Business Insider]

Tags: football, hulu, News, nfl, nfl network, sports, video

comScore just posted its monthly report on online video viewership, and the total number of videos viewed in January slipped slightly as compared with December.

In December, 179 million people watched 33.2 billion videos. In January, it was 173 million people and 32.4 billion videos. It’s not a big decline, and we already saw in one of our monthly top webisode round-ups that special holiday content can boost viewership during December, so we know that this probably isn’t indicative of a downward trend.

In fact, the larger trend is very much up. YouTube — by far the web video viewership leader — had users watching an average of 93 videos in January. That’s 50% more than a year ago, even though it’s almost a 4% decline since December.

YouTube still dominates, though. “Google Sites” (mostly YouTube) accounted for 39.5% of web video views in January. The nearest competitor was Hulu with just 2.8%, followed by Microsoft sites with 1.5% and Yahoo sites with 1.3%.

The narrative we’re hearing here is that we’ve settled into something of a groove. There’s an upward trend, but the numbers are still dominated by almost exactly the same outlets. Are there any startups you believe will upset these stats in the future or is this going to be the lay of the land for the foreseeable future?

Tags: ComScore, Google, hulu, microsoft, News, web video, Yahoo, youtube

Before NBC heralds Jay Leno’s triumphant return to late night (the TV ratings are great) it might want to check out The Tonight Show’s Hulu tag pages. The show has garnered seven pages of astoundingly negative user-created tags — think “sellout,” “craptastic,” “vomit-inducing,” and “coco crybaby” — that speak to the sentiments of web denizens.

As you no doubt recall, the NBC late night debacle ended with Conan O’Brien leaving The Tonight Show and Jay Leno stepping back into his former role. Sides were taken and it became immediately clear that Conan won the hearts and minds of the Internet.

With Conan taking to Twitter (with his small army in tow), Leno is left to return The Tonight Show to its former glory. Despite strong ratings this week, Leno is still facing a backlash from those of us with a penchant for Conan’s style and resentment for how the situation was handled.

The overwhelming number of negative tags on Hulu are every indication that there’s a huge disconnect between television audiences and web users. It’s a rift that could have long-term effects on The Tonight Show’s success and Jay Leno’s approval ratings.

We’ll leave you with a few screenshots of those tags and a viral video spoof of the ad promoting Leno’s return.

[via True Slant]

Tags: celebrities, conan o’brien, jay leno, social media, the tonight show, tv

When Hulu first launched, it was supposed to be the media industry’s answer to YouTube: a place where shows and movies from TV would find an audience online and make advertising money directly for the media companies backing it instead of sharing any of that video ad money with YouTube. All that professional quality video from NBC, Fox, and Comedy Central brought in a huge audience, helping Hulu grow into the second largest video site online with more than 1 billion video views a month.

Well, that formula is great for Hulu, but it isn’t working for one of its biggest media partners. Yesterday, Viacom decided to pull two of the top shows from Hulu: Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report and The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. Viacom made the calculation that it can make more money by recentralizing distribution of its hit shows on its own sites than allowing them to be streamed on Hulu. Why should they split video ad revenues with Hulu when they can have it all themselves

Comedy Central’s parent company Viacom is apparently moving ahead with plans to remove popular shows like The Daily Show and the Colbert Report from Hulu. Neither side is crying foul, but this represents a major loss to Hulu. The Daily Show is listed as the third most watched show on the service.

Hulu and Viacom originally reached an agreement in 2008 that landed the programs on the streaming service. According to Hulu’s Andy Forssell in a blog post, “In the past 21 months, we’ve had very strong results for both Hulu and Comedy Central, in terms of the views and revenue we’ve generated.” It seems that Viacom simply wanted better terms to extend the streaming license, and Hulu wasn’t having it.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t stream The Daily Show or Colbert Report, but you’ll have to go to their respective websites. This is the sort of fracturing of the online video model that consumers don’t need. Many people expecting to see this content on Hulu might not know seek it out elsewhere. Those are eyeballs Viacom won’t get back. Hulu said users that have subscribed to the affected shows will be notified of their removal today. Maybe if that pay wall ever goes up, Hulu could spread around more cash to prevent defections.

Hulu’s first foray into original programming — a reality show called If I Can Dream — premiered today with a 25-minute pilot episode. We’ve embedded it below so you can watch it right here. The premiere was accompanied by a big roll-out of features that set the series apart from what you’ve seen on network television.

Live 24/7 video, social networking profiles, and lifestreams all play a part in engaging viewers in the cast members’ lives. It’s an impressive production, but we get the sense that it’s expensive enough that it won’t pay for itself unless it becomes a huge hit.

Given all its innovations and refinements on the past ten years of web show experimentation, though, it might actually pull through — especially since it’s available internationally. Time will tell, but until it does, we can at least dig deeper to find out how the If I Can Dream machine works.

How It’s Unique to the Web

The show’s tagline is “Welcome to the New Hollywood.” That refers to the show’s premise — it’s about a group of young artists seeking to become the next big stars in Los Angeles — but it’s also easy to read as a mission statement for the show’s presentation and model.

The house that the five cast members will live in is equipped with 50 cameras that will live stream to the web for free 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That’s accessible at ificandream.com, and it’s accompanied by a ticker at the bottom of the site that announces when and where interesting events will be happening along with the current weather and time in LA where the house is located.

The cast’s Twitter, Facebook and MySpace accounts are linked and chock full of content. The music they’re (supposedly) listening to will stream on iheart radio. Short clips will be posted on Hulu every day.

In an interview at the Hulu blog, executive producer Michael Herwick summarized the project this way:

It’s about creating sort of a 21st century platform for legitimate, up-and-coming talent. It’s such a broader form of entertainment, where you have the 24-hour live streams, you have the weekly episodes on Hulu, and you have all this video-on-demand content. It’s very interactive and it’s very much in tune with what young people are doing these days. They digest the internet, they’re socially interactive, and they’re shooting their own videos on YouTube and getting discovered. We’re just saying that’s where it’s at right now, and we’re creating a project around that.

How It’s Like Network TV

That web content is all in addition to the full episodes that will be posted to Hulu every Tuesday morning. The first two will focus on introducing the cast members as they travel the world to promote the show. The episodes are actually notable for how different they are from other made-for-web-video; their production values and presentation are similar to what you’d expect from a cable or network TV show.

That’s because the project is the brainchild of Simon Fuller, the reality TV producer who developed Pop Idol and American Idol. If I Can Dream is thematically similar to those shows in that its focus is on aspiring performers trying to make it in LA. Four of them are unknowns, but one of them — singer-songwriter Justin Gaston — is somewhat famous for having dated pop star Miley Cyrus and worked as an underwear model. He has over 100,000 followers on Twitter.

As with many other reality shows, though, auditions for future roles are ongoing. If you’re young, talented and beautiful, you can upload MySpace audition videos to try to become the next resident of the If I Can Dream House.

If I Can Dream is not the first reality show to offer live streams of the house; Big Brother did so several years ago. But If I Can Dream is doing it for free thanks to some clever ad deals. There are brief ads you have to watch when you start a stream and there are some sponsorships, too. For example, Justin will perform music at arranged times in a room called the Pepsi Blue Room.

Watch the Premiere

Here’s the premiere episode, “The Journey to Hollywood Special.” Enjoy, and let us know what you think of this (fairly) new approach to web TV in the comments.

Reviews: Facebook, Hulu, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube

Tags: 19 entertainment, hulu, If I Can Dream, justin gaston, live video, miley cyrus, reality tv, Simon Fuller, television, tv, twitter, web series

Viacom has decided to pull The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and other Comedy Central content from Hulu at 11:59 PST on March 9. It’s presumably doing so because the income it receives from the online venture isn’t good enough.

The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are two of the most popular shows on Hulu, so it’s a big loss for both Hulu — which just posted about the “farewell” on its blog — and for consumers of web video, thousands of whom have daily turned to Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert at Hulu for a bit of entertainment and news during their cubicle lunch breaks.

This is arguably Hulu’s first big programming setback, though other online entertainment services like Netflix Watch Instantly and GameTap have lost important content deals in the past.

Viacom says both shows will still be available at their respective websites (thedailyshow.com and colbernation.com) and at Comedy Central’s website, but many viewers prefer the clean TV experience they get at Hulu, so they won’t be thrilled with that. Of course, the shows will still air on Comedy Central’s cable TV channel each night.

Maybe Viacom is hoping that viewership on its own air and websites will improve if the shows aren’t available elsewhere. We’re not so sure it will, but we’ll be observing to find out. We’re also not sure exactly what caused the arrangement between Viacom and Hulu to end. Hulu simply said it was unable to secure the rights. Viacom might have asked for a financial deal the site was unable to agree to.

Reviews: Hulu

Tags: Comedy Central, hulu, television, The Colbert Report, the daily show, tv, viacom

Hulu investor Providence Equity Partners is pumping $50 million into a new online video company set up by Chinese Internet search giant Baidu.

The news comes roughly 7 weeks after Baidu confirmed plans to established a new independent company to provide licensed, advertising-supported online video content to Chinese Internet users.

MediaMemo is hearing from “multiple people familiar with the company” that the networks behind Hulu, NBC, FOX, and ABC, are still contemplating a version of Hulu for Apple’s iPad — but as a subscription service.

The problem is figuring out a way to keep the existing site free while adding new bells and whistles [...]

Want Hulu on Your iPad… as a Subscription Service? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb – The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

When the iPad was announced a few weeks ago, the lack of support for Adobe Flash prompted outcries from would-be users — largely because of what impact that would have on streaming video services. Today, AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka is reporting that Hulu for the iPad is indeed likely, but you might have to pay for it.

Last year, the web went into hysterics when a representative from Fox (one of Hulu’s three owners — alongside Disney and NBC Universal/Comcast) announced that he wanted to start charging for Hulu. Whether that would be part of some sort of subscription service for more premium content or include access to other types of devices hasn’t been formally discussed, but according to AllThingsD, the iPad would be part of this strategy.

Right now it sounds like Hulu’s management is trying to figure out how to keep the main site free, while charging for other access options.

AllThingsD describes this:

“One idea the company and its backers like: Turning Hulu from a ‘one screen’ service — one you’re only supposed to watch on your computer — to a “three screen” offering, by adding support for TVs and mobile devices.

‘Just three screens alone is pretty enticing,’ for consumers, says an executive at one of Hulu’s parent companies.”

Hulu has gone to great lengths to position itself as a “computer-only” service (even when it offers programs like Hulu Desktop that are clearly designed for use with a remote control from a sofa or chair), trying to prevent services like Boxee from making it easy to view the web content on a larger screen. Whether or not this strategy would include teaming up with hardware partners a la Netflix, is still unclear.

The Definition of a Mobile Device

AllThingsD and Gizmodo both touched on what is probably the biggest hurdle for Hulu and the iPad: the definition of device type. One of the reasons that Hulu has not come to mobile phones is because there are additional rights involved with getting shows licensed to view on a mobile phone. Hulu doesn’t own those rights. And while it’s likely it could get them, that process won’t be fast (and it almost certainly won’t be a free option — especially for newer shows that have mobile royalty rates written into the contracts of the creatives and talent).

How the iPad’s device-type will be defined is still unknown — it could be argued that when used via Wi-Fi, the device is not mobile, but when used over 3G, it is. Still, this seems to be a larger logistical hurdle than just creating an application wrapper to service the Hulu video content.

Flash Wouldn’t Erase This Problem

Although having Flash support would prevent Hulu from having to write either an iPad-optimized website (or separate application) to serve content, it wouldn’t solve the dilemmas over what constitutes a mobile device and on what types of screens Hulu wants to serve content.

As the Boxee kerfuffle has proven, Hulu is not afraid to try to block requests from certain browser types (which is why Boxee uses a user agent string that matches Mozilla in almost every way). Blocking access coming from devices that identify themselves as an iPad wouldn’t take any effort. I’m not saying Hulu would do this — but the technical fact is, it wouldn’t be difficult to do.

If the big issue is how to charge and how to categorize the device, and not how to serve the content — having Flash or not having Flash is really beside the point. It’s a nice issue for users and developers and pundits to hang their hats on and debate, but really, if what is being reported is accurate, the issue seems to have very little to do with what wrapper the video content uses.

Assuming Hulu does come to the iPad — as part of some sort of subscription service — would you pay? How much would be fair? Would you also want access to other devices like a TV or mobile phone?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Reviews: Boxee, Hulu

Tags: hulu, ipad, tv