Archive for October 30th, 2007

Hulu Hoopla

Tuesday, October 30th, 2007

Sunday marked the first day of a private beta for the much anticipated Hulu video service, the first major initiative by content owners rather than technology companies, thereby making the whole licensing issue with television, film and music providers for their content much simpler. Hulu is the new-media creation of two old-media rivals, NBC, which is owned by General Electric, and Fox, owned by the News Corporation.

It will pick up shows from Sony Pictures Television and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. Videos will be available via the Hulu site as well as its partner network, which includes Yahoo, Microsoft, MySpace, AOL, and others.

Hulu will offer video content on an advertising-driven basis free to users. The videos on Hulu are full of promotional opportunities, including overlays, promotional graphics that roam over the bottom of the screen during a show. For each show streamed online, Hulu splits the revenue with the content creator and the distribution site, like MySpaceTV or MSN. The revenue splits vary by the type of program, but the content owner takes a majority.

Hulu was first announced in March and was originally seen as a rival to Google’s YouTube, which had come under scrutiny for copyright infringement. But Hulu is all about current TV shows, movies and professionally produced content. There’s no upload function. It’s much more like Joost than YouTube, except that you don’t have to download special software like you do with Joost. However, NBC Universal has stopped offering its shows for sales on iTunes and pulled its channel off of YouTube.

I'm still waiting for my invite, but nonetheless tonight I watched last week's episode of The Office and The Breakfast Club, plus several other videos where people had embedded the links.The quality of the video stream is very good.

In one sense, it's great to see NBC and Fox rise to the challenge of the Internet and new methods of digital distribution, but the irony here is that they may actually be hastening the audience exodus from conventional TV to online. The Internet already claims as much time with media as TV and has the momentum (particularly with younger viewers).

The Internet itself is becoming one big TiVo, and may eventually end up in the living room where we will be watching "TV" through an IP connection. Where we'll be looking for the shows we want to see, not on NBC, ABC, CBS, or Fox (or even cable VOD), but on Yahoo, MSN, AOL/Truveo, Google/YouTube, and probably Hulu.

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Lighten Up…It’s Just a Commercial

Tuesday, October 30th, 2007

Few commercials stop me in my tracks and strike me as great. A few I absolutely detest. But for most, I pay little or no attention. Personally, this one fell in the later for me.

I certainly had neither a strong positive nor negative reaction. Mainly, I found myself singing with the music (because I like the song). But I paid little attention to any message in the spot. In fact, until I read Garfield’s review on AdAge, I didn’t even know it was for CVS. I just saw avatars and the animation and assumed it was for some pharma company.

When reading Garfield’s review, I found myself laughing and audibly suggesting some Xanax for both Garfield (who said: You see a lot of bad ads if you watch long enough, but, really, how often it is that you see a TV commercial that makes you want to puke? ) as well as those of the polar opposite opinion who are pissed that he presumed to speak on women’s behalf.

CVS rolled out the spot in early October as part of a $25-million, national campaign to rebrand itself by celebrating and honoring women’s roles as nurturers and caregivers.

According to this story, “CVS conducted research with women — both online and in friendship groups in women’s homes — to better understand their roles. The research found that women make the health-care decisions in their families and are the main caregivers. One in four is a caregiver for people they live with or for a family member of friends. But while women embrace that role, 93 percent felt that no company was helping them in the tasks.”

The “For All Ways You Care” spots will air during programming that targets women ages 35 and up, and the push also includes social networking elements, with a new Web site (ForAllTheWaysYouCare.com) that features the ad and stories submitted by consumers who care for themselves or others.

All I can say is with a $25 million spend…I think SnowPocaAriel is going to be pretty visible out there, so for everyone that seems to hate this spot, get your remotes ready.

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