Hulu Points a Way Toward “iTunes for News”
Important Details: Hulu just released its Hulu Desktop from Hulu Labs. The desktop product is a handsome one, providing a more TV-like experience on a computer, including HD-quality video.
Founded in 2007 by NBC Universal, News Corp and Providence Equity Partners, Hulu presents entertainment programming from NBC, News Corp, and now from its recently-added partner, Disney. It features those companies’ TV programs and movies, offering dozens of “channels” from home improvement to extreme sports to sketch comedy. Hulu is an ad-supported site, and its owners are experimenting with a variety of ad formats, aiming to balance messaging value and consumer intrusiveness. NBC CEO Jeff Zucker has said Hulu is also looking at paid subscription options.
Hulu is considered the third-largest video portal at this point, behind News Corp’s own Fox Interactive Media and the front-runner, Google’s YouTube, which still commands a 41% market share. In March, Hulu saw 41.6 million unique visitors, with 380 million videos viewed. It is expected to break even this year on revenues of more thatn $100 million. Yet Zucker has been quick to say that Hulu is searching for the big money: “These programs will be watched on television, online and many different platforms. But the question is how do we get paid for it.”
That goal is a familiar one to print publishers as is its attempt to reduce non-monetized piracy; at its inception, Hulu aimed to head off Google’s YouTube and many smaller sites.
Now, Hulu Desktop (download here) begins to take the watching experience to a new level. Among its features:
- A menu for surveying choices;
- Allowing consumers to put programs into a queue;
- Providing program descriptions;
- Offering both recommendations and a “random” button;
- Enabling customers to “subscribe” (now, for free) to programs and/or program clips
In sum, these features take the online video experience to a new standard, providing the greater value of a video home, a step beyond the usual one-off experience of being presented a video player, with a play/pause button.
Hulu Desktop is just one of four new apps from Hulu Labs. The other three have not yet been released, but point to a deeper and broader customer experience, as well: a Video Panel designer for customizing the look of Hulu; a recommendations list; and original air date-based browsing.
Implications: TV programming and news publishing may seem like two different businesses, but they face similar challenges. Both readers/viewers and advertisers are fleeing the older media and moving to an Internet that pleases consumers. but provides dimes instead of dollars in related revenue to content creators. Both also face profound piracy issues.
Last week, a newspaper conclave in Chicago assessed challenges and potential solutions, and Outsell believes the Hulu example should be among the models studied.
Among the potential parallels:
- A dedicated jointly owned portal;
- An anti-piracy initiative that emphasizes improving the customer experience to more effectively compete against piracy;
- A free model that may serve as a basis for a “freemium” model, blending wide, open access and paid products;
- The creation of “an experience,” a new kind of destination through the Hulu desktop. Its features resonate well with the notion – somewhat discussed, never-tried – of an “iTunes for news”. The Hulu desktop’s beginning features are promising, and certainly would be further enhanced by social networking/sharing tools, more content, and editorially-driven recommendations. All of these and more could provide a superior web (and then mobile) experience for local news.
It’s that experience — one that would please consumers and provide the best possible local news experience on the web — that we believe should be the news industry’s goal, as it figures out how to find big and sustainable new revenue models.