Hulu - Big Media gets together

Hulu began to privately test their video service today according to the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. The venture between NBC (owned by GE) and Fox (owned by News Corporation) seems counter-intuitive at first. So much so that when news about the venture came out six months ago, the critics and analysts were quick to point out flaws and pegged it to fail. How do competitors get together and create something valuable for their customers? Notably missing are Disney, Viacom, YouTube and CBS. Last minute deals were struck with Sony and MGM. The venture will provide legal television and film content online and through five distribution partners: Time Warner's AOL, Microsoft MSN, Comcast and Yahoo MySpace. Hulu is headed by Jason Kilar, from Amazon.com fame, who says the company only has to worry about the videos, not showing TV schedules or providing information about actors.  They will optimize the experience for viewing and interacting with the content. You can log in to hulu.com and register as a beta. You may have to wait a while to get an email invite.

AOL and MSN already have Hulu driven content up on their site. Although with AOL, you still have to use AOL's player so you don't get full screen mode or fast forward. NBC recently pulled their content from YouTube and iTunes in order to focus on Hulu as their primary vehicle. One of the more interesting features of Hulu is users can share television shows, select and cut clips from the shows and post it on their own blogs or websites. There are many promotional opportunities such as overlays and video player framing, and Hulu will have fewer commercials than the media company sites. Other community features include letting users view and comment on specific video clips thereby creating more buzz and interaction with a specific show. A big downside right now is Hulu will not display videos internationally; you get the error message "The requested video cannot be display in your region." Users from Canada, Australia, Brazil, Europe and elsewhere have weighed in on Techcrunch and other sites complaining that big media still doesn't get the Internet. Despite the criticism, it looks like they scored with an innovative business model and if they can keep their costs in check; it has a good chance to succeed.