Nels Wadycki

I specialized in Management so forgive me if I don’t understand how TV can be profitable when you broadcast it over the airwaves, but not profitable when you show it on someone’s computer.

Apparently, Hulu is going to start charging for content at exactly the time when I stop using it. It’s a stunning coincidence that neither of those dates have been nailed down, and yet, they’re exactly the same!

“I think a free model is a very difficult way to capture the value of our content. I think what we need to do is deliver that content to consumers in a way where they will appreciate the value,” News Corp. Deputy Chairman Chase Carey said. “Hulu concurs with that, it needs to evolve to have a meaningful subscription model as part of its business.”

I’m sorry, Mr. Carey, but what is the current broadcast model referred to as if it’s not a “free model”? As far as I know, I haven’t paid for TV since I moved out of my parents house nearly 12 years ago. And the only reason my parents paid for TV was because they moved to a place where you can’t really get reception. Yet, somehow, TV shows have continued to air free of charge to me for those 12 years.

Here’s what I see as the impending trade off: Charge people for content vs. Show more commercials. I know from experience that during a broadcast TV show, there are several ads per commercial break, as opposed to the single ad that is shown during a break on Hulu. Is the problem that there aren’t enough advertisers who are willing to buy ads during a show on Hulu to be able to show three ads per commercial break? If that’s the case then Hulu is just doing a suck ass job of marketing to those advertisers.

Consider that the networks have absolutely ZERO knowledge of what I watch on broadcast TV. Now consider that the networks know that I am subscribed to: 30 Rock, Castle, Chuck, Dollhouse, FlashForward, Fringe, Glee, The Office, and V (which hasn’t even started yet). If I were the one running Hulu, I’d be telling advertisers that if you have a tech gadget, or some other super-geeky thing to advertiser, guess what? I can show your ad to someone who is subscribed to Chuck, Dollhouse, FlashForward, Fringe, and V. Is that not compelling? Seems pretty G-damn compelling to me. But then, my MBA is in Management.

Nels Diatribes, The New Web Advertising, Hulu, Marketing

As an only child, I kind of enjoy the solitude that comes with working from home. Of course, as I tell people when they ask if I like it better: If I could walk across the hall, and be in the office downtown, I’d go into work every day.

When I’m at home, though, I can watch Hulu during my lunch break without looking like I’m slacking off.

Nels Uncategorized Hulu, Working From Home

And I was more than willing to take part…

Too bad when I hit the second question their survey broke. From looking at the source code, apparently they were trying to show a video on a page that asked for my country, and either they didn’t like the version of Flash I have installed, or they just accidentally inserted a bunch of Flash and Javascript into a page that wasn’t supposed to have it and broke the whole “show continue button when the question has been answered” part of the page.

At this point, were I someone with a smaller vocabulary or less desire to type words (the blog equivalent of hearing myself speak), I could say FAIL!, or post a picture of the Hulu logo with a big red FAIL in Impact (which would be well within my Photoshop abilities). Instead I’ll just say, I was really looking forward to seeing what the 7 choices were for the charity ads that would have been displayed 250 times honor of my completion of the survey.

Nels TV, The New Web Hulu, Surveys

I do this frequently enough on my other blog, but I don’t really do it that much around here, despite being a huge Copycheater. It’s time for a Link Roundup!

Productivity

Zen Habits: Take Lots of Breaks – I actually try to do this when I find that I’m trying to do too many things at once (aka: trying to Multitask) and feel my brain energy draining and my thinking getting fuzzy.

Self-Improvement

The Simple Dollar: 10 Unusual Ways To Improve Your Appearance of Confidence – While I am not really sure about all of these, it’s certainly a good idea to take a look at what your body language communicates and what you can do to make sure you are communicating what you want to be (which, for a lot of people, I imagine, is the appearance of confidence).

Tech / Web / Media

TechCrunch makes a brilliant point that Hulu’s content owners are missing a major opportunity this summer. I understand that there are often contract and legal limitations, but I think that as new shows come out with new contract negotiations behind them, more of them will make their first seasons available on sites like Hulu. As Jason Kincaid puts it:

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.

He’s definitely not the only one who feels this way (because I’m at least one other person).

Nels Link Roundups, Misc Tech, Productivity Brain Health, Copycheating, Hulu, Link Roundup, Productivity, Zen Habits

So, I know the thing on everyone’s mind is the whole Twitter Replies scandal, but really, that’s already been overdone, and it’ll be over and gone in a day anyway. But it does sort of relate to to this post in the whole K.I.S.S. #FAIL way… you see…

Not too long ago, I was watching the “Web Exclusives” (aka Deleted and Behind-The Scenes) of The Office on Hulu and I see this:

Availability Notes:
The last 14 episodes of Season 5 are available until August 8, 2009. At that time, Season 5 episodes will revert to a ‘five rolling’ schedule with five episodes available at a given time and a newer episode added weekly as an older one expires.

I’m sorry… whosinawhatnow? That Don’t Make No Sense.

As opposed to the Twitter reply scheme, which I actually understood the first time I read it and – while kind of dumb – is actually comprehensible…

Maybe it’s just the date thing that’s throwing me off. I’m assuming that new episodes don’t start until some time in September, and so the August 8th date seems sort of arbitrary. Why not August 29th, 1997 at 2:14 am?

Here I thought Hulu was going to neatly take care of the fact that I don’t have cable or a satellite dish or AT&T’s Uverse (whatever that is). But instead of being my online TiVo, it appears they’re going to be all Big Media about it and force me to watch on their schedule (at least somewhat). Maybe if, instead of “limited commercials” they went to 2 commercials per break… or 3, or even 4, like on broadcast TV? Would the users revolt? Sure… but would they get used to it if they didn’t have any other choice? I know I would.

Nels Diatribes, TV, The New Web Diatribes, Hulu, The New Web, The Office, TV

So, I’m catching up on Dollhouse tonight (thankfully/mercifully, someone had the bright idea to extend the expiration dates so I could actually keep up), and I notice this:

Availability Notes: The 13th Episode of Dollhouse will not be available for online streaming.

Back To The Stone Age

I can almost guarantee you that the person who decided not to have the season finale available on Hulu is not the same person who decided to extend the deadlines… because one was a good decision and the other, a terrible one.

Guess what FOX (or Hulu, but I’m guessing it was FOX that made the decision)? My wife and I are chaperoning her school’s prom on Friday night. So, I won’t be able to watch your Dollhouse season finale… which means I have about 3 options…

1. Never get to see it – this is the extreme option, and is clearly superseded by the next two
2. I can download it illegally
3. I can wait until the DVDs are on Netflix and get the last one in order to watch a single freaking episode

I wonder if any of those 3 options is going to make FOX more money than they’d get by putting it on Hulu…

A fourth option would just be to follow Eliza Dushku’s Twitter. It doesn’t really actually accomplish viewing of the episode, but it supports an actress that I like…

Nels Diatribes, TV Diatribes, Dollhouse, Eliza Dushku, Hulu, TV

The Big Story is obviously that Disney has bought into Hulu meaning that by the time I get around to watching this season of LOST, it may be on Hulu! (ABC’s streaming video player is very good, but I am really hoping to one day have all the TV shows I want to watch on one queue)

But a smaller change that I’d like to mention just to point out how awesome Hulu is: You now have to click a link that says “View Description” to see the description of the episode. Usually when it comes to UI, extra clicks are something you want to avoid, but with this change, the plot of the episode isn’t given away, which, for most shows, I believe, makes for a better end user experience. And it’s those little details that really tell me that Hulu is being led in the right direction.

Nels TV, The New Web ABC, Disney, Hulu, The New Web, TV, User Experience, User Interface

According to TechCrunch, Hulu gained 10 million viewers in Feburary, which is an impressive number, but if you look at their chart, what I think is more impressive is the 64.5 minutes per viewer which is second in the top 10 behind only Google Sites (aka YouTube) which had 134 minutes, and 3.6 times more than the next highest average minutes per viewer in the top 10.

Maybe it’s because Hulu rocks the house. I wish CBS and ABC would take note. I would give them more advertising revenue that they are otherwise losing because I’d be all over the past 4 seasons of How I Met Your Mother and the last few episodes of LOST that I haven’t been able to watch yet (and I might even watch Wipeout if I could add it to my Hulu queue).

Nels Google, TV ABC, CBS, Google, How I Met Your Mother, Hulu, LOST, NBC, TechCrunch, TV, YouTube

So I went to catch up on some TVonTheInternet earlier this week and was offered the option of either watching a long ad and then the show straight through with no ads, or to watch with shorter ads interspersed as usual.

Of course I went with the long ad at the beginning. I think I saved myself 30 seconds that way, and it worked just as advertised. Pun intended. If that’s even a pun.

Nels TV, The New Web Advertising, Hulu, Marketing, The New Web, TV

According to ReadWriteWeb, yesterday was RSS Awareness Day. I totally missed it, but it’s funny because yesterday Soup.io did something really weird with my Hulu RSS feed. At first, I thought it was a problem with the feed itself, but the feed itself in my Google Reader has only my most recently viewed items, whereas the Soup feed somehow fetched all the recently added items.

Nels Misc Tech Hulu, RSS