Hulu Owners Looking To Make Hulu Even More Useless

from the you-can't-disrupt-yourself dept

It's been almost two years since we suggested it might be impossible for Hulu to survive, given that it was in a bit of a "rock and a hard place" situation. The only way for it to really succeed long-term online was to disrupt the existing TV business. Because, if it didn't do that, others could and would kill Hulu. However, Hulu is owned by the existing TV business, and that means the company can't do what it needs to do. The WSJ is reporting that NBC management is upset with the way Hulu is undercutting its current business model, and is now pushing to change Hulu entirely into an "online cable channel" rather than an aggregator and service for watching television shows. Of course, as many are pointing out, this would almost certainly kill off Hulu.

This is all pretty unfortunate. From a technical standpoint, Hulu appears to be a great service. The only thing really holding it back has been a bunch of owners and licensees who think that the path to the future is to apply all sorts of limitations on what can be done with their content. That's the exact opposite of the path to success these days. Putting limitations on content is not the solution. Enabling people to do more with your content is the solution. Hulu put in place a platform that could do that... but it's owners are choosing to go in a totally different direction, and they don't even seem to realize that they're making a huge mistake.

Filed Under: cable, disruption, innovation, internet, pay tv, tv
Companies: comcast, hulu, nbc universal

The Process Of Laying The Very First Transatlantic Cable

from the not-so-easy dept

One of my favorite Wired articles ever is Neal Stephenson's insanely long, but wonderfully entertaining account of laying fiber optic cable across oceans from back in 1997. If you've never read it, set aside a few hours and dig in. While he mentions, briefly, the first transatlantic cable laid in 1858 -- and suggests reading other accounts of what happened -- he doesn't go into much detail as to what happened. However, Shocklee points us to a (much shorter!) Wired UK piece about the laying of the first transatlantic cable. If you'd like to know the basics, it's basically two boats meet in the middle of the ocean, with each taking half the cable, and they then (slowly, carefully) head back towards their home coasts. It didn't always go smoothly:

After experiments in the Bay of Biscay had been conducted, the plan was changed -- the Niagara and Agamemnos met in the centre of the Atlantic on 26 June and attached their respective cables to each other, then headed for opposite sides of the ocean. Again, the cable broke -- once after less than 6km had been laid, again after about 100km and then a third time when 370km had been laid. The boats returned to port.

It's a fun read, reminding you of the massive amount of work that goes into the infrastructure that we rely on every day.

Filed Under: cable, infrastructure

Netflix Shows Which ISPs Actually Perform Well... And Which Don't

from the ah,-data dept

It's always fun to discover some data that reveals some useful info -- and the folks over at Netflix have apparently realized that they're sitting on a treasure trove of data concerning the performance levels of various ISPs, based on all that content Netflix is streaming. Rather than just keep it all internally, Netflix is starting to publish the data, showing how well certain ISPs perform, and highlighting how you generally get better performance out of cable than DSL. This is smart on Netflix's part, as it actually does a nice job encouraging ISPs to improve their quality, knowing that they can tout these kinds of "independent" rankings to show their overall quality.

Filed Under: bandwidth, cable, dsl, internet
Companies: netflix

Google To TV Industry: 'Yes, Yes, Cord Cutting Is A Myth; Google TV Is Nothing To Fear'

from the feeling-lucky? dept

We've already pointed out that the TV industry is in a serious bout of denial over the fact that people are really starting to cut the cord and go internet only. However, they know, deep in their hearts, that it's happening. It explains why they're doing silly things like forcing Hulu to block access to specific browsers in a crude attempt to block people from accessing internet television on their actual TVs. Google TV, for example, has been blocked. So, it should come as little surprise that Google TV execs are now suddenly claiming that they absolutely agree with the cable industry that cord cutting isn't happening.

That's Google's story, and it's sticking to it.

Of course, this is all really a rather transparent ploy by Google to convince TV/cable execs to back off the demands to block Google TV, by saying that there's nothing to fear. Google TV doesn't make more people ditch their cable TV... it just "enhances it." Uh, yeah, sure. That's not to say that products like Google TV don't enhance cable TV. It could. But the Google folks must know damn well that if they do their job right, Google TV will likely convince more people that it's perfectly fine to cut the cord. Somehow, I doubt that the cable execs fall for Google's pretty words here.

Filed Under: cable, cord cutting, google tv, tv
Companies: google

Comcast Buying NBCU Will Lead To Higher Prices... But Is That Really A Bad Thing?

from the driving-folks-to-cut-the-cord dept

I've said from the beginning that I really don't understand all of the complaints about the Comcast/NBCU merger. It's the modern equivalent of AOL/Time Warner, which really only served to hasten people to move away from crappy old solutions. So, when I see a report claiming that the end result will mean higher prices for consumers as NBC jacks up its rates, I'm still not convinced this is a bad thing. As we've seen, there's a growing trend towards people cutting the cord on cable (even if the cable folks are in denial about this). Having prices shoot up even higher seems only likely to hasten the inevitable. You can't raise prices indefinitely if there's real competition -- and the problem is that the TV companies still don't believe (or simply don't realize) that there's increasing competition every day. If NBCU/Comcast really does lead to higher prices, it'll likely also lead to more subscribers realizing that there are alternatives as well.

Filed Under: cable, merger, prices, tv
Companies: comcast, nbc universal

Oh Look, More Cord Cutters: Time Warner Cable Loses 155,000 TV Subscribers

from the that-river-in-egypt-keeps-growing dept

Back in August, we wrote about a NY Times article insisting that the cable companies had beaten the internet and the idea that people would "cut the cord" and get their TV from the internet was something of a myth. The centerpiece of the story was a single anecdote of a guy who tried to just watch TV on the internet, but went back to cable. Because, you know, a single anecdote must represent a trend. We noted the irony that the day after that article came out, reports broke that cable TV had suffered its first ever decline in subscribers.

And since then, the evidence of cord cutting has only grown. We noted recently that Comcast had lost 275,000 video subscribers, which they tried to explain away by blaming "the economy." Of course, the economy was a lot worse last year. And, now, Time Warner Cable has released the news that it's lost 155,000 TV subscribers. But cord cutting isn't real, right?

Filed Under: cable, cord cutting, tv
Companies: time warner cable

Turns Out TV Cord Cutters Are, In Fact, Young, Educated And Employed

from the ain't-the-economy dept

So you remember how the cable folks were saying that all those people ditching cable TV were doing it because of the bad economy, and rather than young, tech-savvy early adopters -- they were old poor folks living on dog food? Yeah, so it turns out: not so much. A new study shows that they actually tend to be younger, well-educated, fully-employed and make a decent amount of money. Can't wait to see how the TV folks talk themselves out of this one...

Filed Under: cable, cord cutters, internet, tv

New Cable Talking Point Against Cord Cutters: They May Be Cutting, But They're Poor Nobodies

from the nice-try dept

We already noted that the cable industry is really trying to stick its head as far in the sand as possible when it comes to the fact that many customers are starting to drop their cable TV subscriptions. First, they pretended it wasn't happening at all, and that they had somehow "beat" the internet (based on a single anecdote of someone who had dropped cable, but gone back to it a year later). Then, when news came out of massive numbers of people dropping their cable TV plans, they said that they weren't really cord cutters, because they were only canceling service due to the down economy. The latest strategy appears to be to insult the cord cutters, saying that while the idea behind cord cutters was that it would be young, technologically savvy folks, it's actually people who the cable companies just don't care about: poor older folks. Seriously. At least that's the argument being made by one of the cable industry's favorite talking heads, who tries to minimize the cord cutters by saying they're "poor" people who "eat a dog's breakfast."

Mr. Moffett said the image of the cord-cutter had been that of a "cutting-edge technologist" who preferred to bypass cable to watch programming on computers and on an ever-proliferating array of devices. "The reality is it's someone who's 40 years old and poor and settling for a dog's breakfast of Netflix and short-form video."

Sounds kind of like the cable industry is moving from the "denial" stage to the "anger" stage of grief...

Filed Under: cable, cord cutters, craig moffett, tv

Democrats Are From Cablevision & Republicans Are From Fox In Retransmission Fee Dispute?

from the republicrats dept

One of the nice things about most tech issues is that they're not split down typical political party lines. In practice, tragically, that sometimes means that both of the major political parties side with rent-seeking interests, rather than the public good, but in other cases, it does mean that you can get actually cross-party discussion on the issues, rather than the talking points. However, it seems that whenever any particular issue gets "big enough," it suddenly has to break down on party lines. We saw it happen with net neutrality, but now it appears to be happening on the whole silly retransmission fight between cable companies and TV networks. As mentioned, these fights break out every few months, with both the networks and the cable companies blaming each other. In the end, consumers end up with higher prices either way. The whole fight itself is silly, but when TV stations get blocked during key sporting events (football, baseball playoffs), apparently Congress immediately sees an issue worth grandstanding over.

And, as Broadband Reports notes, at least in the case of Cablevision/Fox, it's become a partisan issue, with Democrats lining up behind Cablevision, introducing legislation that would bar broadcasters from pulling channels during negotiations. Meanwhile, Republicans are being lobbied heavily by News Corp to take its side. It could just be that it's because this is News Corp./Fox, which tends to support Republicans. So it will be interesting to see if similar battles involving other broadcasters split along similar lines...

Filed Under: cable, politics, retransmission, tv
Companies: cablevision, fox, news corp.

Fox Extends Cablevision Blackout To Hulu... Temporarily

from the doesn't-make-much-sense dept

These days, fights between the TV networks and cable providers are so common that we stopped bothering to report on them. Basically, every few months, there's a fight over how much money should be paid to carry the networks, and the two sides get angry, a public relations brawl ensues with threats of channels being removed (or, the channels are removed for some time). Eventually a price is agreed upon between the networks and the cable providers... and the consumers pay more. Great, huh? Of course, some have been suggesting that these fights could drive the push for people to ditch cable altogether, and switch to going purely online.

Except, in the latest such fight, between Fox and Cablevision in New York, things took an odd twist, with Fox not just pulling its network from Cablevision, but somehow getting Hulu to block access to Fox shows to anyone accessing the site from Cablevision. Apparently, after people started asking questions, Fox/News Corp. changed its mind and let Cablevision subscribers view Fox content on Hulu again.

However, this does raise a bunch of pretty serious questions. First of all, why did Hulu consent to this move? If Hulu were serious about its offering, it wouldn't agree to take part in a silly fight like this, singling out people on a particular ISP. Once again, though, this shows how Hulu is way too beholden to the content providers. Second, while this is not really a "net neutrality" issue, it's somewhat surprising that Fox/News Corp. would take a step like this that undoubtedly will be talked about in "net neutrality" terms. Any move that specifically restricts content to a certain class of users isn't going to be looked upon kindly. Finally, in what world did News Corp. think this was a smart move? Did they actually think that users would be so upset that they'd asked Cablevision to raise their bills to bring Fox on Hulu back? Of course not. They're simply going to blame Fox (and Hulu) for pulling their shows.

Filed Under: cable, internet, tv
Companies: cablevision, fox, hulu, news corp.