February 19, 2009, 12:17 AM EST Hulu Withdraws its Content from TV.com, Boxee
By Elizabeth Holmes Wall Street Journal http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/02/19/hulu-withdraws-its-content-from-tvcom-boxee/?mod=rss_WSJBlog?mod= Hulu has pulled its content from two other Web sites this week, marking the first notable distribution limitations for the popular online video site. Hulu, which features television programming from NBC, Fox, and dozens of other content producers, has pulled its videos from CBS Corp.s TV.com. Hulu issued a statement saying that it was exercising its contractual rights. A Hulu spokeswoman declined to elaborate. A CBS spokeswoman had no comment. In addition, Hulu announced that on Friday it plans to take its video down from Boxee, a software firm that makes Internet video suitable for viewing on a large screen, like a television connected to a PC. In a blog post, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar wrote that concerns of the content providers necessitated the removal. Our content providers requested that we turn off access to our content via the Boxee product, and we are respecting their wishes, Mr. Kilar wrote. Boxees response, also in a blog post, said the company had generated 100,000 steams for Hulu last week and that it would continue negotiations with Hulu in hopes of restoring a relationship. Since its inception nearly two years ago, Hulus strategy has been to distribute the TV programming on its site to as many other Web destinations as possible. The company teamed up with partners and devised a revenue-sharing program, in which Hulu kept 90% of the advertising revenue from the videos and the host site would received 10% of the revenues. The latest version of the Hulu player was designed so that the contentincluding clips from a show or entire episodescan be embedded in other blogs. Hulu is a joint venture of NBC Universal and News Corp., which publishes the Wall Street Journal. Our mission to make media dramatically easier and more user-focused has not changed and will not change, wrote Mr. Kilar on the Hulu blog. In regards to the Boxee takedown, Mr. Kilar wrote, The maddening part of writing this blog entry is that we realize that there is no immediate win here for users. The two removals highlight two separate challenges faced by Hulu and other video sites. The distribution deal Hulu made with TV.com was orchestrated when the site was owned by CNET, which CBS Corp. bought last year. The company has worked in recent months to revamp TV.com, a marquis URL, with more video content. For the second half of last year, traffic between TV.com videos drew a fraction of the Hulu viewers. TV.com had 144,000 unique viewers of its videos in December 2008, compared to Hulus nearly 24.6 million, according to comScore Video Metrix. But the redesigned TV.com, which launched in January, has seen significantly more traffic. (Those numbers were not available from comScore Video Metrix.) TV.com has become more of a direct competitor to Hulu as a result. The troubles with Boxee represent tension on the content provider side of the equation. Boxee is an example of a technology that is meant to bypass the cable distribution system. Andrew Kippen, spokesman for Boxee, said the company has been in negotiations with Hulu for two weeks but havent been able to reach an agreement. Mr. Kippen said they remain hopeful that Hulu content will return to the Boxee platform. We love Hulu, our users love Hulu, its the number one most used service, he said. The Twitter world was abuzz over the spilt between Hulu and Boxee, with hundreds of people lamenting the decision. ================================================= George Antunes Voice (713) 743-3923 Associate Professor Fax (713) 743-3927 Political Science Internet: antunes at uh dot edu University of Houston Houston, TX 77204-3011 *********************************** * POST TO [email protected] * *********************************** Medianews mailing list [email protected] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
