Hulu cuts off boxee
Word came down today from boxee and Hulu that the content owners behind Hulu do not want their shows to be available through the boxee interface. Â According to Avner, the CEO of boxee, the two companies have been negotiating the last couple of weeks to prevent the cut off, but without success.
I’m going to have to assume this move makes sense from the perspective of NBC and Fox, because it certainly does not from a user’s point of view. Â The stream of Hulu content that a boxee user viewed was precisely the same as what one saw from the Hulu website, including the embedded commercials that are the source of Hulu’s revenue. Â The only thing missing was the wrap around interface of the site itself, which is not all that compelling in my opinion. So now a boxee user interested in watching The Office or Dollhouse will likely just get it off of Bittorrent, with all the commercials stripped. Â Not sure how that’s a win for anybody.
Maybe the content owners heard that boxee got some VC funding and think they are deserving of a cut, but that is like them demanding money from the creators of Firefox, because the browser is the most popular manner users are accessing the Hulu website. Â Silly.
I would suspect, with no real knowledge, that it would take the boxee team literally minutes to figure out a way to keep the Hulu content coming through their interface, no matter what the content owners say, but Avner and company are respectful and will not do that. Â I’m sure others, though, will gladly take up the challenge and create plug-ins or hacks to get around any hurdles Hulu puts up. Â In other words, the result of this action will likely mirror what’s going on at The Pirate Bay Trial right now, with the perceived outlaws getting a ton more publicity and the flow of content hindered not at all despite the wishes of Hollywood.
Also interesting is that this is a serious misstep on Hulu’s part (regardless of who actually made the decision). Â Jason Kilar and his team have done a pretty amazing job walking a fine line between users, technology, and their content backers, but this really lays bare the tensions underneath the surface of the site. Â This is not likely to be the last time such issues crop up, and Hulu is going to have to be very creative and sure-footed to maintain a positive relationship with their users. Â It may prove an impossible task in the long run.
What’s interesting to me is that Hulu blames “our content providers” for making them cut off access to Boxee, while failing to mention that those “content providers” are also, by and large, their owners, as Hulu itself is a joint venture between two of the biggest content providers in the business. Sooner or later this kind of conflict was inevitable, of course, and it’s only surprising that it didn’t happen sooner. In the offical blog post, Kilar says Hulu is about a “..ambitious, never-ending mission of making media easier for users..”, which is of course a nice and idea and is also, of course, absolutely NOT the mission of “their content providers.” NBC and Fox don’t want to make media easier for anybody, and that’s not likely to change anytime soon. As much as I love the Hulu experience, it’s only an iterative step along the way and this news shows the inherent limitations of any new media play that’s owned lock, stock and barrel by “content providers”, a la the late and not lamented Movielink.
WSJ had a nice report this morning on how the cable providers are trying to get a piece of the action. Could this be the death of hulu: http://tinyurl.com/bczptd
I truly get the sense that someone high up, either at a network or cable company just realized that people were watching Hulu on TV’s. IOW, that it had never occurred to them that people could do that, they are that clueless. It does not bode well for their future (or Hulu’s, unfortunately).