Something is up at TV.com, the CBS-owned site that recently relaunched as a competitor to Hulu. Since last summer, when TV.com was owned by CNET and was still primarily a community hub, the site has featured content from NBC and News Corp through a partnership with Hulu. Now, only two months after TV.com relaunched as a CBS-supported direct competitor to the popular media portal, it looks like much (if not all) of the content served through Hulu is no longer working.
Both clips and full episodes formerly supplied through the agreement simply present a note stating “video unavailable”. It’s possible that this is just a technical glitch – TV.com would have likely removed any links to the episodes entirely if the agreement had come to an end. But the videos have been unavailable since at least this morning, which seems like a long time to fix a bug. And other video sites like Comcast’s Fancast and Sling.com seem to be serving Hulu content just fine.
If Hulu has in fact ceased its agreement with TV.com, it would be a big blow to the rapidly growing site. TV.com does offer other content, including shows from CBS, MGM, Sony, Endemol, USA, PBS and Showtime, but many fan-favorites are still found on NBC, Fox, and other networks Hulu has partnered with.
We’ve attempted to contact Hulu about the issue, and will update the post as soon as we hear back.
With a great domain it would be a waste if popular shows aren’t aired on their website. I wonder if it’s just a glitch or a total stop on Hulu videos?
They might have a good domain name but their UI and focus is all over the place, comparative to Hulu.
Load Hulu and instantly your engaged and know hey i can click this to watch this or that TV show. TV.com there not focusing on online TV it’s a hodge podge of everything TV … i just want to watch online TV ….. for me i got a headache and left. Went to Hulu
Just not sure how all of these sites can thrive if they offer the same videos. Then brand wins. CBS will have to build its own branded viewing destination online. Can’t just be a redistributor of Fox/NBC content. I think these sites will all realise soon they are giving the farm away to Hulu by giving it to them in the first place. In the UK, the government just prevented Kangaroo from launching – that was the collaboration of UK networks a la Hulu. If ABC or CBS joined up with Hulu, Hulu would have too much power. No one would go anywhere else. The only answer is strong independent websites, with Hulu being the one for NBC and Fox. Users may want it all in one place, but too much is at stake to let that happen. So the same applies to TV.com and they better get on with non-Hulu content anyway. Only makes them weaker.
Great comment. It’s good that there is competition of sorts. It works best for the consumer anyways. Let the games begin!
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Agree 100%. There is no need for all content to be through all sites. Let NBC/Fox keep Hulu and CBS can do TV.com. TV.com would have been great domain for a central hub, but not if affiliated with any of the networks.
The said part is that it used to be independent and was a better site.
I totally agree. Regular TV stations don’t share advertising so why would they want to share advertising on the web. Their only valuable commodity is their show content. If they allow other websites to sell advertising off their content, then they are going to be out of business real soon. As much as I like free, I also want stations to have money to produce these shows, otherwise it will just be bad reality shows all the time.
they should start displaying videos on that gigantic rectangle between “tv” and “com”
democratization people! jeese, let’s all just play nicely! http://tr.im/gk8j
Content providers need to learn that making their own exclusive channel is not helping them. They are merely isolating themselves from where people would rather go.
@Francis
TV.com took Hulu content, but CBS didn’t distribute their contentonto Hulu, so TV.com had a competitive advantage. Given their recent video metrix increase in January, no surprise that Hulu pulled a TV.com plug. TV.com has much better community too, which is something Hulu is trying to address – but that takes a while to build.
It is time that TV.com starts to attract people from outside of USA.
I’m from UK. TV.com was a good mix of “IMDB for TV” and a good community site for flagging which new US (and other) shows were worth looking out for.
Since being relaunched, I’m constantly redirected to the UK site from the .com (there’s a different URL now for UK) which has split the community up. This was badly handled IMHO.
Also, the UI (as mentioned above) has gone AWOL and the focus has become on sponsored content rather than interesting features / community comment. Am sure they’ll sort it out (with a URL like that you can hardly fail) but for the moment it’s annoying and pretty useless.
The online video market has several strong players as evidenced by:
http://www.ebiz.../articles/video
However, the core cost of video delivery online is still a strong barrier to entry in this market and with the explosion in video ad sales and viewership of online video I believe both Hulu and TV.com will thrive in this environment. They will both carry enough exclusive content to create strong differentiation and the leader in the industry will fluctuate between the one with the better exclusives at the time, similar to network television.
Well never got in touch with that site but the domain name is really interesting..Wish I had it..
http://www.smartbloggerz.com
Why not everything in on place? That seems to me what Fancast does.
Hulu/Kilar is hyper-competitive, of course they killed the tv.com deal, which was struck b4 the CNET acquistion. What the rest media industry (ABC, CBS, Viacom, TWX) doesn’t understand is this is a winner-take-all aggregation game, and the winner will have monopoly power over online video, and maybe the connection back to the TV. They are letting Hulu run away with it and build a brand, they need a counter strategy or this doesn’t well for them.
TV.com is a great universal domain, they need to open it up to the rest of the world to watch their full TV episodes!
For such a high profile domain, that is the most confusing interface. Literally nothing and everything stands out at the same time.
I’m not sure what happened with TV.com, but we love being a Hulu partner: their attention to detail, always keeping us updated about new content, and technology has been great thus far.
I was always on the fence regarding their TV advertising. They seem be spending millions of dollars on TV advertising. Wouldn’t they be better off with more internet advertising.
I watch Hulu all the time. There are definitely glitches. It also seems that all of Hulu’s links for CBS have always redirected to another site. However, I have yet to find full episodes of CBS shows on line and that just doesn’t cut it when ABC, NBC, and CW have full episodes.
again, the same users that these sites are trying to lure are the ones who have to suffer. this is yet example of how tv networks are extending their tightfisted control of programming across the web. i agree with goodmars comment re democratization. that’s what internet tv should be all about – the freedom to see what you want, when you want to. thank god there are other sites to rely on – e.g. blinkx remote (tv.blinkx.com) and ovguide (obguide.com).
Hulu and TV.com should just be one. Everyone knows Hulu is the better of the two sites.
Too bad for tv.com – I really do prefer Hulu, their interface just seems cleaner and with SNL, Arrested Development, Heroes and more – they have plenty of content. I even use the hulu widget to play clips at work: http://gingagadgets.com/hulu/