Singer Chris Brown, should do something special for the happy accident that created the JK Wedding Entrance Dance Video which now has 12 million plus video views and counting.
Google has a post on the remarkable impact the video has had for the song and the artist. For example last it helped boost the the “click-to-uby” CTR for Brown’s song “Forever” by 2.5x.
In an earlier post I complained that Hulu was not easily available in Canada and that in order to access it IP masking softare was requried to watch the content. That type of software is buggy at best and lately has not been working for me
Well now there is CANULU – a service that promises to give you 24/7 access to just about all the U.S. programming that is currently being blocked from intenret vewiers in Canada.
It costs $11.95 a month – not a bad idea but I wonder how long these cats will be able to do their thing, unfettered, before Canadian Broadcasters or even Hulu comes after them – All the power to Canulu but I hope they have deep pockets for legal a small army of lawyers.
There has been a lot of talk lately about the emergence of Hulu as the next big thing in online video, with some pointing out that though Hulu is small its ultimate business model may be more viable.
More viable because it has licenced content, it is doing deals, it is easier to monetize the video and so on. All valid points but what people don’t talk about is that Youtube and Hulu fulfil very distinct audience needs.
Hulu is more a lean back experience, and experience that I mostly will do by myself, watching an episode of Battlestar Gallactica before I crash.
Youtube actually is much more social. I have seen my nephew hanging out with his friends, each taking turns driving youtube with their wireless keboard in front of a big LCD display. They were at it for what seemed like hours. I myself did it the other night with a few friends and it was a blast, digging up wicked bollywood videos, crazy japanese dancehall footage, the list goes on – we laughed, we cringed, we cried (OK we didn’t cry).
Youtube it seems is trying to leverage this type of behaviour with Realtime.
Youtube says with Realtime you can
Creating that social layer is a direction that makes sense for Youtube the question is what impact will that have on its monetization strategy?
In fact, Youtube has many questions that need to be answered.
What should Live video streaming strategy should Youtube have? It is clearly on thier radar, with recent a partnership with Ustream, a live video streaming service.
What should youtube do about Long form video considering it is viewed by many as a place for short form content?
What implications do any these decsions have on their bandwidth costs with must be through the roof?
Is the Youtube design just too clunky? Consider Hulu has a super slick interface.
What about search? Youtube’s search isn’t the greatest, odd considering it is owned by Google.
Indeed, Youtube has many, many outstanding issues. Hulu by contrast seems more focused. It will be intresting to see how all of this shakes out, considering in the world of online video Youtube is the sleeping elephant in the room – and you don’t want to be next to it when it rolls over.
The television and broadcast industry in Canada are, simply put, a bloody mess and it may only get worse if Hulu fully flexes its muscles.
On the one hand you have the CRTC and the broadcasters squabbling over the fate and financing of local television
On the other hand, you have the most recent report from Comscore on Canadian online video viewing habits – it is through the roof. According to Comscore 21 million Canadians viewed 3.1 billion videos online in February 2009. That works out to about 10 hours per month per Canadian a 53% jump. The vast majority used Google or Youtube (53% share) , followed by MSN (1.8%) and Yahoo(1.5%)
The only Canadian media company to register was CTVglobemedia at 0.8%. Granted Canadian companies do use Yahoo and MSN as distribution channels for their content.
However, none of the broadcasters as far as I can tell are contemplating collaborating on a Hulu type model to meet the challenge of the Youtube. Hulu by the way is now the number 3 video site in the USA, leap frogging past Yahoo.
Hulu of course is not officially available in Canada but it is easy enough to access by downloading an easily available proxy.
One of the reasons Hulu is not available are those pesky things called contracts – between US producers and networks and the Canadian Media companies. Territorial restrictions in the broadcast contracts (many of which include digital rights) prevent Hulu from streaming into Canada – a potentially lush secondary market.
If I was an executive over at Hulu here are the questions and calculations I would be making
1) When do these contracts expire? And are the digital rights the distributors hold negotiated in perpetuity? If so, who ever gave that up committed the biggest blunder in media history.
2) If Hulu can actually secure digital rights can they then stream directly into Canadian households, while granting broadcast rights to the Canadian Networks for those shows? (likely not)
3) At what stage will streaming directly into Canadian household become more lucrative than negotiating these contracts?
Now, none of this will happen overnight but there will soon come a day when the delivery of those American movies and TV shows will make sense economically and technologically – but for those contracts it already does make sense.
The only thing the Canadian Broadcasters can do is somehow convince Hulu that they can serve the exact same function for online sector as they do currently for the television sector - as a reseller of American content.
In the short term Hulu may well work out a deal with distributors but in the long term I wouldn’t bet on it.
If they fail to come terms or if Hulu eventually phases out Canadian Broadcasters out of the equation? What will be the future of the Canadian Private Broadcasting?
Meanwhile, I use the proxy server, and stream Hulu on my HD TV and more more of my friends do exactly the same thing.
