It’s no secret that summer is the season of terrible television, when networks flock to broadcast cheap reality TV and game shows that actually will turn your brain into a slippery pile of goo. Granted, there are a few gems out there (particularly on the cable networks), but for the most part TV fans are out of luck during the dog days of summer. At least, that’s the way things used to be.
Earlier this week I had something of an epiphany. Hulu, with its mountains of movies and prime-time TV shows, is the perfect answer to the summer doldrums. I’m finally free to catch up on those shows that my friends have been talking about for years, or at least watch the first few episodes of a show to see if it’s worth buying on iTunes or DVD. Eureka!
Unfortunately, when I went to catch up on a few shows the other night, I fell prey to a problem that’s nagged the site since it launched: content owners frequently impose bizarre restrictions on which content you’re allowed to watch on Hulu. The number of episodes available for each show vary wildly, and serial dramas will sometimes only offer a smattering of episodes scattered across a season, which makes it impossible to follow the story line. Hulu does its best to explain the situation to users with messages like “We are able to run five trailing episodes of this series”, but these bulletins don’t do much to ameliorate the frustration and apparent lack of logic. In short, it leads to a bad user experience on an otherwise highly-polished site.
A quick spin through the site reveals how bad the problem is. Rescue Me, which I’d heard was quite good, has a measly three episodes available, all taken from the end of the fifth season. Given that I know absolutely nothing about the show other than that Dennis Leary plays a firefighter, I figured this probably wasn’t the best way to get hooked. Fox’s popular serial drama 24 is currently offering a whopping five episodes, but these are taken from the middle of the first season (for those that haven’t seen 24, trying to pick up the story mid-season is an exercise in frustration). Battlestar Galactica is similarly limited. The list goes on.
In case it wasn’t obvious, Hulu has very little control over what it’s allowed to show users — it’s forced to bow to the whims of its content partners. And while it’s easy to point the finger at the studios and accuse them of simply being withholding, the reality is likely a bit more complicated. Distribution of this content is impacted by ‘windowing’ — the time periods when the rights to a show or movie belong to different mediums like Cable, syndication, or DVDs. So in some cases, studios really may have their hands tied.
That said, it’s hard to imagine that some of these media companies couldn’t do a better job with their licensing deals, and I suspect some of them really are withholding content because they’re afraid of undercutting their DVD and iTunes sales. In those cases, they’re shooting themselves in the foot.
If I can’t begin watching a show from the start, the odds of me watching it at all plummet. Sure, I could probably buy the first season on iTunes, but I’m not likely to pay for TV unless I’m quite certain I’m going to like it. Studios should be doing everything they can to introduce Hulu users to new shows during these summer months, perhaps going as far as enabling access to a show’s entire first season. Yes, I might wind up skipping buying the first season on DVD, but I’m also far more likely to go out and buy seasons 2-3 so I can continue watching from the comfort of my couch.
I had this happen with prison break. Ironically I had to use Limewire to get the missing episodes.
It will totally ruin my mood and piss me off, if I don’t get to watch a great series like Prison Break in the right sequence. Hope Hulu works out some kind of a deal with the content owners which is beneficial for everyone especially for the viewers like us.
Using Limewire in itself is fairly ironic.
seriously… ever heard of torrents?
Wow I hope you were joking. Limewire is one of many front end programs used to download torrents. You can use utorrent but mainstream pirates use limewire.
Also to the person saying using limewire is ironic: are you *sure* you know what the definition of ironic is? I think you meant to use another word.
What the hell is a “mainstream pirate”?
‘mainstream pirates’?
The only people who use limewire are those who don’t know any better. Those people are irrelevant.
I don’t think the OP was too far off re irony.
“Situational irony is the disparity of intention and result: when the result of an action is contrary to the desired or expected effect.” -WP
You’d be even more shocked at some of the initial deal points and red-lines that end up getting negotiated out of the final contract.
These rights owners could not be operating in a more archaic and fearful manner.
How old are they and when do they retire?
mininova.com always has what hulu doesn’t
dear content owners,
we don’t care we will download what you don’t give us for free so feel free to pull your heads out of your arses.
Love,
everyone on the internet
correct. their biz model would work if there was no black market to obtain content.
the internet IS NOT TV and they need to realize that.
mininova.org
Indeed. Can you believe that we are this many years into the boom of video on the internet, and those morons still haven’t taken advantage of what would be a bonanza for them, because they are worried about losing control of their content? Strange how too much attention to the bottom line can prevent you from seeing the bigger picture, or should we say jackpot in this case.
You couldn’t be more right, Jason. Everyone’s losing with the current situation Hulu has going on
I was just thinking this the other day, good post! I’m always amazed at how old school these media companies think about viewers.
The studios are fighting tooth and nail to retain as much control as possible, and to preserve their existing business model as long as possible. Hulu is just an experiment to see just how little they have to give up while still appearing to be giving consumers what they want. These restrictions are silly in this day and age. The longer they–the studios–drag their feet, the more likely piracy will take hold and drive them out of business entirely.
The content holders have to be complete idiots not to put their content on Hulu. Especially when you talk about shows that have been of the air for years as in the example with the OC in the screenshot. No one else is buying the DVDs to those or even able to find out what the show is about without purchasing it outright. You can create so much more buzz for your show even if it’s canceled or off the air (example: Arrested Development) and create an extraordinary increase in DVD sales or even a renewal of the show, not to mention what they get already from Hulu to have it up there at all. It’s unreal the lack of logic and bravado the content holds have.
This reminds me of those relationships that go like “I love you, now change.” Stop trying to use Hulu for something it isn’t and do whatthe rest of us are doing. Torrenting. Or, god forbid, even pay for a netflix subscription and rent the DVDs. Amazon streaming? iTunes? There are plenty of legal means to watch what you want when you want. No need to whine about hulu not catering to your every whim.
Sure, but what exactly is Hulu supposed to be then? A site where content owners arbitrarily select which episodes you should have access to? That just leads to a bad user experience and will hurt the site in the long run.
Hulu needs to let you watch the first few episodes of the show for free. They need to set up a micro-payment system for the shows they do not have rights to. I would pay 50 cents to stream a show I want to watch in high quality without commercials.
A couple of months ago, when Hulu first started showing Rescue Me, they had the first 4 seasons up online that you could watch before Season 5 started. They should do this for all the shows coming back in the Fall. For example, Fringe. It’s an okay show, but that’s not the point. Hulu could have the whole season 1 for a few months, say starting in August and ending in Sep-Oct, so viewers can catch up and then watch Season 2 with no worries. They could do this with Heroes, Chuck, Lost, whatever. I bet they could get a whole bunch of new viewers that way.
At minimum, putting up the first 5 episodes of each season would be better than the last 3-5 episodes of a season. At least that would entice viewers to go out and buy the DVD seasons if they like it.
Agree 100%.
Most people watch most TV episodes *ONE* time. The whole DVD thing is just silly.
I had a very similar experience (looking to catch up on good shows while my regular programs are on their summer hiatus) and was impressed by Netflix’s streaming content. I always heard “Weeds” was a good show and they had the first two seasons available online. I got hooked and now I’m a fan of the show and even considering adding Showtime to my cable lineup. Seems like Hulu could learn a lesson from Netflix. Every show should have the first season available for new viewers as well as the last few episodes so existing fans can catch anything they missed.
“television”? what’s that? something like teleportation?
I recently found the first four seasons of Stargate sg-1 on Hulu. If there had been just a smattering of episodes, I would not have bothered to watch any of them. Now I think I’d pay to watch the remaining episodes, because I’m ‘hooked’
Just to give it from the other side… from a studio’s perspective these things aren’t as planned as you think.
A missing episode is often because of something as trivial as a bad FTP transfer.
For library product, it’s usually because the lawyers aren’t sure if the music is clear for the Internet.
For more recent product, having it free on Hulu would really hurt its performance in syndication. Yes, it drives some people to pirate it instead, but as long as the number of pirates is below a certain number, you’ll come out ahead.
To the guy who asked me to pull my head out of my arse… all I can say is someone’s gotta pay for the production costs. Hulu alone can’t fund all this. If some people pirate, you factor that in and deal with it just like a clothing retailer factors in that 25% of their merchandize will get shoplifted. But if everyone pirates, the simple answer is that no more TV will get made. Or, if you want everything put up on Hulu… then that’s only enough revenue to support cheap reality shows.
Thanks for the insight. But I still don’t understand how having the first few episodes of a given series ALWAYS available would hurt syndication. Granted, I’m not an expert on the TV industry, but it seems to me Hulu offers a great way to get people hooked on a show.
agree with the point, but since Hulu is on both sides of the dime (the content owners *are* Hulu’s owners) they are only grabbing themselves by the short hairs on this….
Many shows are produced by a studio, but then broadcast by a network owned by a competing media conglom.
Rescue Me is produced (and therefore owned) by Sony, but broadcast by FX, part of the News Corp conglom. So Sony has it’s hands tied by News Corp. Ditto for Two and a Half Men, produced by Warners (part of TWX) but broadcast by CBS.
When a Studio and Network are joint (as in Desperate Housewives, both of which Disney/ABC owns), then you have local affiliates to deal with which may not be owned and operated by the parent network (the term is O&O). Most Networks own their NYC and LA affiliates, but there are many independent affiliates as well generally owned by Newspapers. For example, the Fox affiliate in Seattle is owned by by the Chicago Tribune.
So if you are sitting at Fox Broadcasting… and want to put all eps of American Idol up… and mr Tribune in Chicago calls you up and says, “you are gonna kill me if you do that! Don’t do it… I need exclusivity!”, you really have to support your existing partners which generates in one day probably 100x of what Hulu will get you in a year.
But I do agree w/ Jason that we should definitely negotiate a way to put up say the first 5 or 10 eps of EVERY series up on Hulu. That would drive interest in both home video AND syndication.
This is all very reasonable and it makes a lot of sense. It should, as it has developed organically over several decades.
But that does not change the fact that it is the problem. Studios run the risk of riding very reasonable industry structure and compromises right into the turf, just like many other businesses or industries in the past.
It’s not enough to explain why things are the way they are. People don’t care; they’ll just pirate what they want to see if they can’t get it legally. Your business needs to be able to explain where it is going, not where it has been.
The technology is there to handle the complexity. For instance, tell Mr. Tribune that Hulu views from his geographic area will share revenue with him. But understand that people who can’t find what they want on Hulu, will not tune into Mr. Tribune’s channel instead. They’ll tune into Limewire. Viewership not a zero-sum game among your partnerships. The pie will get smaller and smaller over time, just like it did in the music industry.
If everyone watched shows on Hulu instead of TV, wouldn’t that drive up the ad rates to the same as what they are on TV? Wouldn’t that pay for good TV shows?
Cable TV was a mess of upstarts for a long time before it consolidated into the major players of today. People used to put 6-foot satellite dishes in their back yards to pirate TV. TBS couldn’t attract any mainstream advertisers for years. The big 3 broadcast networks attracted almost all the viewers and ad dollars long after most people became cable subscribers. Don’t assume Hulu will be running 4 ads per show indefinitely. Not long ago there were no ads.
The next generation of content services is already getting built: a free tier with slowly increasing ad content, and a pay tier with slowly increasing monthly fee, plus extra fees for special events or features. All they need now is time for the magic of exponential growth to kick in.
Im very family with someone who wanted to watch all 7 of the Shield seasons. When he could stream he just downloaded them. Same for Breaking Bad, United States of Tara, and the last season of Lost. He attempt to stream first if thats not an option then straight to the download. Netflix takes to long.
Bah. Hulu is for people who would drool on themselves before using IPTV.
“shows that actually will turn your brain into a slippery pile of goo”
um…I thought that was the definition of TV
Umm… The Wire. The Sopranos. Mad Men. Breaking Bad. If anything, these shows will turn your brain into anything but a slippery pile of goo, unless it’s already a pile of goo to begin with.
And what might they be missing out on?
You might be able to watch ep12, but they might take it back right in the middle.
I hate it when I have to dig through the internet to look for missing episodes. But, I still find this very convenient.
http://appuseful.com
I really have to agree on this. In my opinion, Hulu has the infrastructure setup to handle thousands of video clips and the consumer base to serve it to. The media companies just need to take hold of the web as a source of their TV shows.
Excellent post … so if Hulu or its content providers don’t give us the best content this summer someone could take that opportunity for a new business
Who take the challenge?
No one. Part of the Hulu deal is that NBC, Fox, and ABC can only broadcast their shows on Hulu and self-owned sites for the next 2 years. CBS has it’s own strategy.
Yes that is what I have noticed too, unable to watch the first set of episodes! and many random episodes. Anyway, a simple google yields better results
It’s sucks. However, the situation is even worst here in France were there s nothing like hulu…
And 45€ for a serie season ( already paid by tv networks) you cant even resell is really too much.
Content owner sucks, and really are an important reason for piracy.
we use netflix watch instantly on boxee. we’ve made it through all of friday night lights back seasons and are now doing the same with weeds
Jason – after leaving that comment i decided to write a full post on this stuff. thanks for starting the conversation. i hope others will keep it going.
http://www.avc....to-netflix.html
Awesome Fred, thanks. I’ve been using Netflix for pretty much the same thing as your kids have. Just wish it had more shows!
YES! Thank you for saying this!! I’ve been thinking this for months – hopefully you have a podium tall enough that someone will listen! : )
Abso-f’n-lutely! The only reason to browse such a paltry smattering of episodes is if you somehow know the exact description of an episode from a series you watched, but missed. IF they happen to have the one you missed. Otherwise, I. Just. Don’t. Watch. What a wasted opportunity.
I was thinking about this the other day as well, but in regards to new shows for the upcoming fall season. Why doesn’t hulu release the premiere episodes of new fall television shows during the summer?
Better yet, why not release them before you even commit to which ones you’re going to show next year. I can’t think of a better way in which to get a feeling for which shows are going to be winners for the fall season.
Also, what better way to get people hooked on a show that’s still to come. Some shows could actually build some hype before they even begin airing of the full season…
Dumb, dumb, dumb. Another good example: Royal Pains. All the episodes available except the first two. How do you start watching the series without the premiere?
Considering Hulu’s targeting ability and audience captivation it should be able to effectively sell advertising.
Hulu could actually expand even more with older shows, and that would be my top request. Newer shows are more readily available.
Can someone please explain why Hulu is not allowed to stream their content outside of the US? I don’t understand why this would hurt Hulu, the networks nor the advertisers. Can someone please explain?
Same for Netflix streaming service and Pandora.
Thanks in advance.
I applaud your post but unfortunately it is perfectly reasonable and we know how well the studios handle Reason.
I hate to say it, but this is what makes the “China model” so compelling. Get the whole series of any show for next to nothing and immediately after first airing. Catches you up pretty quick and then you can take it from there.
If it wasn’t for that, there are a whole bunch of shows today that I wouldn’t be watching.
Of course, you have to be a frequent traveler to China for this to be a viable option.
do you guys like hulu?
I can’t count the number of shows I’ve passed up because of this. I wouldn’t have started watching Kings if it had started at episode five. Nothing would make sense.
As a Canadian I am even in a more difficult situation getting access to shows that have heard good things about but can’t access. Breaking Bad, Burn Notice, Eureka, Leverage all have limited or no access here. How do I get them? There is no legitimate way in many situations unless you buy the whole season on DVD. So you find the path of least resistance and dl the torrents.
You would think the better business plan would be to put on the first 4 episodes of season 1 so people could determine their interest and maybe the last 2 episodes of the current season for those who have missed it for some reason.
If agreements allow either ad supported or micropayment support for other episodes then they could add this as another layer.
Hulu initially sounds like a great idea. People login, sign up, and watch a few shows. It is only then that they realize how crippled Hulu is in terms of show/season continuity. The initial wow factor wears off, people get tired of hearing Intel dweebs going da dum dum dum dum 5 zillion times, and users go elsewhere…
Hulu is a great concept, but the studios need to allow it more episodes. More episodes, I say!
I’m surprised there isn’t more comment on “summer is the season of terrible television”.
How TV producers expect to survive using the model of “get rid of all of your customers for the summer”, and expecting them to return in fall is beyond me. It ain’t a monopoly any more, folks.
I watched hulu for a while, but it’s dead now; too many shows are on hiatus. By the time new shows come back in the fall, I’ll be on to other websites that don’t stop updating.
I agree completely. Thanks for starting the conversation.
I realize there are a myriad of reasons for Hulu’s sometimes crippled lineups, but it’s aggravating.
oops. didn’t mean to directly reply to you Tom. apologies.
oops. didn’t mean to directly reply to you Tom. apologies.
I had this same problem with It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Once they made it a rule to only have three online at a time, I just downloaded them with a torrent. Now they don’t get to show me any ads!
Yay for them!
You can get full seasons on Netflix … and watch them on TV via a Netflix ready device like Xbox, Roku, or internet-enabled TVs or Blu-Ray players.
Ugh, i hate that Hulu is missing so many episodes! sooo annoying, i dont even use Hulu anymore. there are so many other sites like ovguide that everything i wanna watch. i don’t understand the hype around Hulu, its not all that.
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