When You Watch Hulu, The Terrorists Win
By Lisa Fary
Via Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily: Laura Martin of Media Metrics says sites that stream primetime shows for free and with limited ads are anti-consumer, anti-media employees, and maybe even anti-America.
To summarize: giving shows away for free will kill media revenue. Giving shows away for free could also be construed as studios and networks having little regard for their programs which could lead to entertainment stocks being dumped. That would lead to less investment cash which would lead to less (not to mention lousier) productions.
Quality programming like I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, WifeSwap, and So You Think You Can Dance would be threatened.
Here are some other quotes from the article [my additions in brackets], which you can read in its entirety here:
[The] consensus is that Big Media [through sites like Hulu] could destroy. . . the entertainment “eco-system” especially if they train consumers to think that they’re entitled to see professionally produced stuff for free online.
[Spencer Wang says] consumers are not trained to directly ascribe monetary value to TV shows.
A couple points I’d like to make.
- Viewers already think they’re entitled to see content for free, at least on the networks. It has been that way since the dawn of television. Perhaps because we’ve never been charged for network television content in anything but ad time.
- I still find watching on the HD plasma screen to be far more enjoyable than watching on Fergus MacBook (my laptop – I named it Fergus) or my iPod. I’m likely not alone in this preference.
- I fully expect to pay for the ability to watch a show on HBO or FX or AMC or even (I hate to say it) SyFy. I’m happy to pay for cable. I even don’t mind paying a couple bucks to download an episode of a cable program, or maybe a whole season for something awesome. It costs less than buying the DVDs and has the added benefit of not taking up space on the living room shelf.
The difference is that I expect far more from cable programs than from network programs, and I usually get it. For me, this expectation is also going to be true for online content; although, not all online content.
But sorry, I’m not going to pay to watch network programming no matter how it’s delivered. I’ve never paid for it before, and I’m not going to start paying to watch network programs online. Not until they start delivering the quality and, most importantly, the integrity, of pay-for programs like Mad Men, The Wire, Carnivale or Deadwood.
So, networks, I’m going to tell you the secret. THE secret. How to make money with online streaming. Here it is, networks:
Make something worth paying for.
I’ll totally pay good money for something awesome. Maybe even subscribe to a service (but if you try to rope me into a year long contract, you can suck it) if it means getting quality, original stories (and by “original” I don’t mean yet another hospital drama or division of Law & Order – I mean original, like Dr. Horrible or The Guild. Be bold, people).
Online streaming sites are not a threat to television entertainment – it’s a threat to networks. Viewers have proved that they’ll pay for entertainment. Just not network entertainment. Will the TV landscape stay the same? Of course not. Personally, I’m excited to see what the landscape will look like when networks and studios are responsible to the viewers rather than to the advertisers. Compelling story and strong acting trump sleek production in my book.
And if the desire to shrug off network crap and make my own entertainment choices is anti-America, well. . . people think I’m a socialist hippie anyway.
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Lisa Fary’s early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl. She thinks diagramming sentences is a fun alternative to Sudoku.
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If more people watch something like Hulu, can't they just up the cost per ad?
I think that there are a few reasons why people turn to HULU and torrents, and I think the biggest reason is convenience. I don’t want to have to choose between doing something and watching my shows, when I can simply watch the show at my leisure online. It means I can both have a life and still keep up with the shows I care about. If you have a cable subscription to a given channel, the network has your money anyway, no matter how you watch the show.
I don't think some of this arguments here are that fair. For instance, drawing a line between cable and network doesn't quite work . Many cable networks are owned by the bigger networks, for example: Syfy is owned NBC. Also, while there's a glut of boring doctor/lawyer/cop shows on networks, there have also been great shows with huge buggets that need to be paid for somehow, if you want them to exist ie LOST, the first season of Heroes. Digital distribution, especially the free kind, really really hurts TV. One reasons shows have been able to have awesome production budgets in this previous TV golden age was becauase people paid actually did pay for TV contet, they bought DVD's. There was consumer assumption that people would buy content if they wanted to own it, not to sample it on TV everyweek. Also, people haven't proved willing to pay for content. They've actually proved the opposite, just look at what happened to the music industry. I agree that the studio system is full of glut, and that Hollywood should rethink its buisness plan by trimming the fat, but to say that digital content doesn't present a threat to everyone, is wrong imo. People are very willing to stream or download content for free, and this stuff is extremely expensive to make. A lot of people talk about Dr. Horrible as if Joss Whedon is some kind of internet visionary, but they leave out a key detail, Joss Whedon didn't need a distrbution medium or marketing to entice his viewers because he had a built in loya fan base eager to purchase his material, as a means of supporting him. Had Dr. Horrible been made by random people, I bet folks would be much less inclined to buy it. Also, I watch, and I'm not some kind of revolutionary here, HD nternet content on my plasma screen all the time. All it takes is are two little wire. It doesn't take a huge stretch of the imagination to expect TV's with direct internet feeds used as much as their tradition TV feeds becoming common place.
There's a really interesting piece on this very thing on HuffPo today: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/henry-blodget/the-t...
It's a sticky subject. What annoys me/makes me nervous, is that a lot of people see the internet as a place that no one should own, and as one that should not have rules. While I understand that to a degree, I believe every system needs to be mediated some way. Imagining the Internet as some sort of wild west is cute, but to not have oversight over the medium that will house most of our economic transactions seems slightly ludicrous to me. Maybe it's impossible. I don't know, but like tv shows, and I hope whoever makes them can find a way to pay for them…
It is very sticky. I really wouldn't mind paying for television content online when the time comes – I get that it takes money to produce and everyone involved certainly needs to be paid for their work up front. I suppose I get the impression that the industry is blaming viewers for the industry's own lack of vision.
The thing is, it DOESN'T really hurt TV. It only helps it. I know so many people who have caught up with shows on Hulu, gotten hooked, and started watching them on network TV once they've been pulled in by the story. I've seen this happen in the case of Fox shows like Fringe and Dollhouse, where people watch a bunch of episodes in a row, realize they love the show, then start watching it on TV.
Hell, I watched season 1 of Sarah Connor Chronicles on Hulu, loved it, and started watching season 2 because of it. It wasn't until the third or fourth episode of season 2 that I watched – on network television – that I realized the show was crap and stopped watching. Hulu had nothing to do with that decision. Crappy storytelling did.
And then there's all of us outside the US who can't watch our shows in a timely fashion so we get them illegally (and I would pay for them, quite happily). But I'm not waiting 18 months for it. I support the shows by watching illegally then legally buying the DVDs from US retailers. I know that doesn't give them upfront cash, but it'll have to do.