Networks & Their Fear & Loathing of Hulu
Hulu, the online video joint venture of NBC, Fox and Disney that’s funded by Providence Equity Partners, seems to be having familial issues. No, it’s not YouTube or TV Everywhere giving the second-most popular online video service in the U.S. headaches. Instead, internal bickering is causing problems, MediaWeek reports. This is not the first time Hulu’s parents have undermined the service. But it comes as a surprise — traditional media companies have a long history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Read more of this story
Premiere Week Positive for Networks, But Don’t Call It a Comeback
One of the more memorable Monty Python bits is the “Bring out your dead!” segment from The Holy Grail. The poor subject of the joke pleading “I’m not dead yet!” is a fitting metaphor for the network TV world, which breathed a collective sigh of relief last week as new shows premiered with generally good numbers.
The concept of live network TV seems increasingly outdated as DVRs, iTunes and Hulu become more mainstream, allowing viewers to watch what they want, when they want. The industry itself even poked fun at its diminishing power during last week’s Emmy program.
But the networks got a bit of a reprieve as season premieres garnered respectable audiences. CBS was up 7 percent through the first four nights of the new season, with an average of 14.2 million viewers, writes The LA Times; and FOX was up 35 percent to 9.4 million, thanks to a big bow for House.
When It Comes to TV Content, Is YouTube Screwed?
Over the past year, YouTube has made a concerted effort to embrace premium content like TV shows to attract ad revenue. But according to a new report from Screen Digest analyst Arash Amel, the video-sharing giant faces an uphill battle as the Hollywood networks and studios gobble up most of the market for ad-supported TV programming online.
In his report “US Networks claim half of free online TV market,” Amel says that the broadcasting and cable business in the U.S. will shed $2 billion in ad revenue by 2013, dropping to $67 billion from $69 billion in 2008. While TV ad dollars go down, there will be an increase in ad revenue generated by TV programming on the web. Amel says that ad-supported, web-based TV programming generated $448 million in revenues in 2008, and the total ad revenues from online entertainment programming, sports, news and events will be more than $1.45 billion by 2013.
StatShot: Super-Sized Tweets
We’ve got a ton of TV-related Twitter action this week, and surprise, surprise, Trendrr says the Super Bowl (or “superbowl” for the character-limit conscious) reigned supreme, with everyone tweeting about the exciting game.
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Unfortunately, all those bummed Arizona fans threw off Trendrr’s charts a little as their Tweets about how the Cardinals “lost” made it look like people were buzzing about the show Lost at the end of last week. Such are the dangers of tracking commonly named shows.
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Fox Wrings More Time Out of Fewer Viewers
Nielsen released September viewers stats for web sites of the four major broadcast networks last week, revealing that the number of unique viewers went up across the board. But, in an odd turn of statistics, only Fox, which had the fewest unique visitors, was able to increase the amount of time per viewer on its site. In fact, time spent on Fox nearly doubled, while other sites fell off a cliff.
According to Nielsen, the new fall season and the tail end of the presidential campaign helped drive up the number of people logging on to the networks as they caught up on missed TV. NBC in particular got a more than 300 percent bump, which can be explained in part by one woman: Tina Fey-lin. The SNL star’s Palin impersonation was viral video gold.
But, while almost all the networks saw triple percentage growth in uniques from August to September (poor, CBS with its measly double-digits), only Fox saw an increase in time spent. CBS and NBC actually saw the time viewers spent on their sites just about cut in half. That’s bad news, because less time spent means fewer ads seen.
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