Future of Hulu

Hulu.comBefore Hulu, the notion of giving up television seemed almost impossible. This joint venture of NBC, FOX, and ABC, has made it easy for many Americans to watch majority of popular TV programming on their own time. Recently Hulu’s “Achilles’ heel” seems to be the lack of support from all major TV networks. As announced by a Hulu executive, Viacom Inc. is pulling out its two popular comedy shows, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, from the online video service. Although possible to view these shows on the Comedy Central website, this will come to a great inconvenience to many users as they are now forced to shuffle between two websites.

Destroying some level of centralism that Hulu strived to create comes as a double-edged sword for both Hulu and the programs not offered on Hulu. Ease of navigation of a site and casual viewers of a program not offered on Hulu, seem to be an issue glossed over by networks resisting to centralize its content.

Designed almost to be annoying, major TV networks websites are difficult to navigate to full episodes. Although not clear if this done intentionally to force viewers to watch the programming on TV, this truly comes an aggravation to a growing new user base that are strictly online TV content viewers. This sometimes constant flipping through websites to view a particular show can drive away viewers from a show. Centralizing online TV content provides an environment that is consistent for users and that is hassle free.

Aside from the poor navigational abilities of a TV network site, there is also another major side effect of having decentralized content. Hulu’s current site layout allows users to stumble upon new TV series and allow many users to be just casual viewers of a show. As one that casually views, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, I will be less likely to view these shows now.  Having centralized TV content allows viewers to freely roam from show to show and watch a program that would never have been watched by a viewer in the first place. Some shows watched on Hulu are not avidly watched, but just casually viewed. Programming, such as comedy programming, doesn’t have a strong connection with all viewers, but is enjoyed every once in a while. Removing programming from a centralized area, like Hulu, decreases the chances for a program to be “casually viewed.” For a major TV network to take a program out of a central source, especially a comedy program, goes back to an old saying “out of sight out of mind.”

In the end, these issues are viewed as “trivia” and not important enough to be considered when TV corporations and networks only truly care about the “Almighty Dollar.”

About Ed

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