NBC Universal and News Corporation have proved the nay-sayers wrong with their new venture, Hulu. Bloggers, news publications, and YouTube fans all had a lot of doubt about whether an NBC/News Corp. partnership would be able to take on video user-generated content websites.
Since NBC and FOX weren’t happy with sponsored groups on YouTube, it comes to no surprise that full episodes of NBC- and FOX-owned shows are placed on Hulu. I think it was also a smart move that FOX shows were not placed on MySpace, News Corp.’s own social network.
“Consumers are clearly interested in easily accessing a broad spectrum of programming,” said Peter Chernin, President and COO of News Corp.
Even though Hulu is still in Beta testing, some of their clips are available on MSN and on AOL. The videos that are available by Hulu on AOL and MSN are of high quality so that should be a reason for future Hulu users to be optimistic about the future of video content. How will NBC and News Corp. make money from Hulu? Advertising most likely.
What are the pros and cons of Hulu? The pros are that more time will be spent on Hulu because the quality of the content is much higher than YouTube. The cons is that YouTube was made for people that wanted that quick snapshot of entertainment.
Let’s say that I wanted to show a buddy of mine a 15-second clip of Family Guy, Hulu would not be the ideal place to do so. There are a lot of funny one-liners on FOX and NBC shows. But Hulu does not offer that convenience. And that will be Hulu’s one weakness.
