NBC and News Corporation have been talking for months about a joint venture into the realm of online video. Up until recently, the realization of this seemed to be waning, but on Monday Hulu was unveiled to beta users.
Though it has been billed as a “YouTube killer,” that label is misleading. While YouTube focuses on offering user-generated content, Hulu will focus on providing premium content, including television shows and movies.
Television shows will be provided by NBC and Fox, as well as more than 15 other cable channels including Bravo, E!, FX, SciFi, Sundance, and USA. This means that hit shows like The Office, The Simpsons, and Heroes will be made available to viewers for free. The site will be ad-supported.
Movies will be shown courtesy of Fox, MGM, Sony, and Universal. These will be shown for free as well.
Advertisements on the site will be in the form of banner ads, text overlays at the bottom of videos, and in-video ads that will be played before, during, and after videos are played. Shorter videos will be less likely to feature in-video ads.
Hulu has already partnered with distribution channels including AOL, Comcast, Fancast.com, MSN, MySpace, and Yahoo! It is probably no coincidence that Google is not part of this group.
Videos will be available for sharing through e-mail and HTML embedding. One nice feature will allow viewers to select clips from a video to share with friends through e-mail or embedding.
The site will be open to the general public in a couple months, but its videos will trickle onto its distribution partners’ sites in the coming days and weeks. As of Monday, AOL already had a Hulu channel with videos available for viewing.
Hulu has already received $100 million in funding courtesy of Providence Equity Partners.
This joint venture is bold, and though it does not directly compete with YouTube it certainly will not help the Google-owned video site. As the online video market grows, expectations are also increasing. Hulu will offer users high-quality content in a crisp, simple presentation. If it gains traction, and there is little reason to think it will not, Hulu could carve out a strong niche. This is not to mention the increasing number of content providers that will be clamoring to jump on Hulu’s golden chariot.
YouTube may have a hold on user-generated content, but there is still a big void to be filled by a first-rate site that offers premium TV and movie content at no cost to the user. Users trying to scour YouTube to find ephemeral TV show or movie videos will have a much better option available to them.
Sources:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071029/tc_afp/uscompanyinternetnbc
newscorpmediaindustry;_ylt=AuB5WhaJrCqCwn_zB_xDcqj6VbIF
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=13100C1F748S
http://www.redherring.com/Home/23059
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/28/hulu-launches-private-beta
-first-impressions-very-good/
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