Can Television Make the Transition to the Internet?

The birth of www.hulu.com has created a stir in the media industry. Big Media has worked through youtube, iTunes, and other online venues to build an audience among online audiences. I am not referring to Halmark that brings its own brand of sweet television through an online version of TV Guide. Or other endeavors to bring individual episodes to television audiences through streaming.

Hulu has taken this one-step more. NBC, Viacom (VIA) are taking a more inward approach. They are working to distribute their content via internet. They demanded that the FCC forced broadband providers to ban pirated traffic.

Hulu offers film, TV, and video clips from a number of companies. It does limit the content to the most recent 5 episodes of a series.

They are not banning the public from embedding short clips from shows to other websites, but the embed video comes from the NBC show. This takes the efforts of nbc.com, abc.com, cbs.com, fox.com to the next level.

It also gives big companies a place to advertise on the Internet with a more traditional look and feel. It basically puts ‘video on demand’ on the net. What it is missing is the user interfaces and blogging capabilities that made YouTube a success.

“Thirty-eight percent of the video streamed on the Web now comes from YouTube, according to ComScore. No other player has more than 4%. Google owns the biggest television station on the planet. It will upload 600 years’ worth of video this year.” Forbes

A television station can create an online presence, but will it generate income? YouTube’s creators failed to find the pot of gold until Google purchased the company. Each now owns $400m of Google Stock.

Google pundits replaced most of the 60 original workers, and the site is now the fastest growing entity on the net, growing even faster than Google itself. They made other changes too.

While NBC was crying ‘not fair’ Google was working with the content owners. They created a fingerprinting system. When they find pirated video they contact the owner and ask them if they’d want to put advertising on the video.

The main difference between the networks and YouTube is found in advertising. A small business can advertise for the low starting price of $25 000. Here is a get started page: http://www.youtube.com/advertise. This is attractive enough that many smaller companies will be more likely to advertise here than at Hulu.

A critical thing to consider is that small business can still advertise on YouTube free by uploading their videos.

The battle between the networks and Google will unfold over time. Predictions can be made, but no one can see what the future will bring. Will it bring the collapse of the cable networks as people stream their favorite shows – and advertisements – through the internet into their television, only time will tell.