Proving once again, for a website to become an intimate part of life and culture, its odds are greatly enhanced by containing the comedy “oo” sound, as Hulu marched one step closer to becoming indispensable by pacting with Disney.
Rejoice, rejoice, for the future is now. Confirming rumors that appeared last month, Disney and Hulu announced on Thursday that the media giant and online video-streaming site will be joining forces.
What does this mean for you, the savvy online video-watching consumer? Well, it means Hulu has inched one step closer to being the central repository for watching television online. Disney brings with it much of its primetime content from ABC including hit shows like Lost, Desperate Housewives, and Gray’s Anatomy. In addition, the deal also includes older shows such as Hope & Faith and Commander in Chief as well as content from some of Disney’s cable networks like ABC Family and the Disney Channel.
This leaves CBS — which recently purchased CNET — as the only major network that hasn’t made a deal with the streaming video site, Hulu. Now shows such as Lost and Grey’s Anatomy will now be available outside the annoying and buggy ABC.com site.
Disney is now a 30 percent owner of Hulu, and will seat three members on Hulu’s board. It’s good to see, in a time of utter panic and crisis, that someone is deciding to do something about the future.
Based on those creepy commercials with Alec Baldwin, my daughter is afraid of Hulu. She’s afraid Alec Baldwin is going to eat her brain. Didn’t help any when I mentioned that Mr. Baldwin lives across the Sound from us in Long Island.
Yes! I absolutely HATE the way ABC’s streaming site works. Or doesn’t, as the case may be.
It requires an extra plugin, which claims to run on the Mac but doesn’t (meaning I can only watch shows on the one Windows box in the place), the commercials kick you out of full-screen mode, and they don’t return automatically to the show when they finish — which means if you’re watching from a few feet away rather than sitting right at your computer, every time there’s a commercial, you have to get up, go over to the computer, move the mouse over to the appropriate button and click, “Continue” instead of just waiting for it to finish.
Anyone know when the switch officially happens? Right now if you search for lost on hulu it lists all the episodes, but they link to the ABC site.
The average American watches about 20 hours of TV per week. If Hulu charged its subscribers $39.99 a month it would be generating an average of about 50 cents per hour of programming served, more than enough to support the production of an expensive show like “Lost”.
Now I just wish sony would update the PlayStation 3’s web broswer so it can stream Hulu without stuttering. I don’t like watching TV on my computer very much, I prefer it on the TV.