Hulu has been developed by News Corp. and NBC, and includes an investment of $100m by Providence Equity Partners. The web site offers free viewing of full-length films and TV episodes, supported by advertising. A test version of the site went online on Monday. The company plans to premiere a final version of the web site in a few months.
Hulu will host programming from the two networks, as well as TV shows and films from Sony Corp and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The companies will legally offer hundreds of episodes of shows such as Fox’s ‘The Simpson’s’.
In a move to gain advantage over other networks such as ABC, which sells downloads of its shows on Apple’s iTunes but streams free episodes mainly on ABC.com, Hulu will offer premium content that are not available on NBC or Fox’s web sites.
Hulu’s movie offerings will consist of films that have already been edited for television broadcast, which will contain short online ads in the places where they would appear on TV. The shows will also be available on Hulu’s distribution partner web sites such as AOL, MSN, MySpace, Yahoo, and Comcast. Hulu had partnered with these companies in March 2007.
The web site also offers tools to embed full episodes on viewers’ personal blogs, web sites or personal profile pages. Users would be able to select short clips from shows such as ‘The Tonight Show’, with an option to email such links to friends.
Consumers identify with shows and films rather than networks, said Jason Kilar, chief executive officer of Hulu. When you aggregate great content together, it makes things easier for the user.
AOL, MSN, MySpace, and Yahoo! users, who represent 96% of the monthly US unique users on the internet, will have unlimited access to the site’s vast library of content. Under the media alliance, Hulu will offer consumers with free long and short-form videos, and create a platform for advertisers to target the growing online video consumers. Cadbury Schweppes, Cisco, Esurance, Intel, and General Motors would advertise on Hulu’s web site.
Hulu’s debut intensifies competition between entertainment companies and online video sites, which host unauthorized clips from different channels.
YouTube, a popular online video site, was sued by Viacom, the owner of Comedy Central, MTV, and VH1, for $1bn (700m euros), claiming copyright infringement of clips from its popular shows. In the compliant, Viacom said that nearly 160,000 unauthorized clips of Viacom’s entertainment programming have been available on YouTube and that these clips have been viewed more than 1.5 billion times. In response to this, YouTube said that it follows copyright laws by removing protected video upon request.
In a similar case, Universal Music won its law suit against Grouper and Bolt.com, two online video sharing web sites, which settled for $10m.
Source: ComputerWire daily updates
