The Web giant submitted a bid for the video site this morning, according to a person familiar with process. Other people looking to buy all or a piece of Hulu include:

• Directv,
• Time Warner Cable
• William Morris Endeavor, along with with PE backer Silverlake
• KKR
• Guggenheim Digital
• The Chernin Group

As AllThingsD reported earlier this month, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and COO Henrique De Castro have met with Hulu’s team recently for a get-to-know-you; Yahoo had previously tried to buy a large stake in French video site DailyMotion, but that bid was stymied by the French government.

Yahoo declined to comment.

The question, as it always is with Hulu, is what its owners — News Corp., Disney and Comcast — are actually willing to sell, and at what price. The three media conglomerates provide the site’s most valuable programming, primarily via shows that have already aired on their broadcast networks. Disney and News Corp. have been at odds about the best way to manage the site for some time; Comcast gave up its management rights as a concession to Federal regulators a few years ago. (News Corp. also owns this website.)

In 2011, Hulu’s owners put the company up for sale and were looking for a bid of at least $2 billion; in exchange, they would offer content licenses that would run for two to three years. But they ended up pulling the site back off the sales block after a few months.

Last month, former News Corp. COO Peter Chernin submitted a starting bid of $500 million, with the understanding that he would be willing to pay more for extended licenses. Bloomberg first reported on the KKR and William Morris Endeavor/Silverlake bids today.

Hulu hasn’t had a formal M&A process, but had asked prospective bidders to make an offer by Wednesday. That deadline apparently isn’t a firm one, so it’s worth wondering if the field will grow more crowded before this over.

In case you missed anything, here’s a quick roundup of the news that powered AllThingsD this week:

1. As AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher and Peter Kafka were first to report this week, Yahoo is seriously thinking about buying hipster blogging service Tumblr. In fact, Yahoo’s board is scheduled to consider a $1.1 billion all-cash deal on Sunday.
2. Google wanted to dominate the headlines this week during the company’s annual I/O conference … just maybe not like this. By sending Microsoft a cease-and-desist, they helped promote that rival’s anti-Google campaign.
3. That little drama didn’t come up during the official proceedings of I/O, but a lot else did. Here’s a rundown of all the news Google announced in its three-and-a-half-hour opening keynote.
4. Watch this: An interview with Bill Gates, in which the Microsoft founder talks about his longtime relationship with Steve Jobs, on “60 Minutes.”
5. Can productivity apps for the iPad make it as useful as a traditional work PC? Walt Mossberg puts them to the test.
6. Speaking of the iPad, the Justice Department is closing in on Apple with an e-book price fixing case … but one of the seemingly most damning pieces of evidence, a line from a letter from Steve Jobs to James Murdoch, is a little less damning in context.
7. Web video services like Amazon, HBO and Hulu all say they’re seeing significant growth. But is anyone cutting into Netflix’s lead? A new report says: Nope!
8. BlackBerry is bringing its messenger application, BBM, to iPhones and Android phones this summer. But is it too late?
9. Cisco’s earnings only barely beat analysts’ expectations this week, but that beat sent the company’s stock up 9 percent in after-hours trading. Arik Hesseldahl got CEO John Chambers on the phone to talk about where Cisco is and where it’s going.
10. And lastly, if you want more battery life out of your iPhone on the go, you may have considered a special re-juicing case. Product reviewer Lauren Goode tries the battery boosters before you buy.

To stay on top of the latest, follow AllThingsD on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to our daily email newsletter.

Hulu’s owners, including Walt Disney Co., News Corp., and Comcast Corp., are considering various strategic options for the site including a sale. Other firms that have bid or expressed interest in Hulu include cable operator Time Warner Cable Inc., Guggenheim Partners, Yahoo Inc. and former News Corp. president Peter Chernin’s investment group.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Earlier this week, Yahoo CFO Ken Goldman spoke at JP Morgan’s Global Technology conference and underscored the need for the aging Silicon Valley Internet giant to attract more users from the coveted 18-to-24-years-old age bracket. Along with more marketing, he explicitly said Yahoo needed to be “cool again.”

“One of our challenges is we have had an aging demographic,” said Goldman at the Boston event. “Part of it is going to be just visibility again in making ourselves cool, which we got away from for a couple of years.”

According to sources close to the situation, that could mean a strategic alliance and investment in or outright buy of perhaps the coolest Internet company of late: Tumblr.

Sources said the talks were serious, but any kind of deal — of course — could come to naught.

But it’s not the first time Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has been interested in the New York-based hipster blogging service. As an executive at Google, she had closely watched its fast growth, along with that of Foursquare. Since she took over at Yahoo, several sources said that she has met with its top execs, including founder and CEO David Karp.

But sources said that interest has gotten stronger more recently, coming at the same time as Tumblr has been stepping up its efforts to raise a large funding round that could value the New York company at $1 billion. In a series of fundings since 2007, Tumblr has raised $125 million so far, at a reported valuation of $800 million.

In the latest round, one source close to the situation said Tumblr was considering “strategic” investments, which would presumably be of the kind that Yahoo had tried and failed to do recently with France’s Dailymotion video service. Since then, Mayer and her team have looked at the ongoing deal to purchase Hulu that has many possible other bidders.

Tumblr is different from Dailymotion or Hulu, of course, in that it focuses heavily on user-generated content, largely text and photos, although there is an increasing use of video on the site.

But this puts it directly in Yahoo’s main wheelhouse, especially recent efforts to undergird its strong set of existing media offerings to appeal to a different audience and also get into the social space via consumer-based software solutions that are both elegant and easy to use.

“If you could pick a company that fits in with what Marissa Mayer has demonstrated in her career — aesthetics software technology and fast-growing — you could not land on a better choice,” said another source.

That said, Yahoo has been sticking to smaller acquisitions under Mayer’s regime, spending very little on a clutch of small mobile startups to up its game in the important sector. And at the same investment conference, Goldman also said additional M&A would continue to be smaller for Yahoo.

Still, any kind of deal with Tumblr could certainly bring Yahoo a big, young audience. Its worldwide traffic was at 117 million visitors in April, according to comScore. On its home page, Tumblr claims it has 107.8 million blogs and 50.6 billion posts. U.S. desktop traffic to Tumblr was 37 million in April, close to LinkedIn and Twitter, although Twitter obviously has much more via mobile.

But figuring out how to make money from that audience is a task that the company has only recently started to tackle.

Like other recent Web startups that have seen rocket ship growth — see: Twitter, Facebook — Tumblr resisted advertising for its formative years, and its user base seems particularly unwilling to accept standard banner ads. In addition, many industry observers think that Tumblr’s pages are packed with porn and/or other questionable content that would scare off advertisers.

But within the last year or so, Tumblr has started selling modestly sized “native ads” promoting brands’ Tumblr pages, on users’ “dashboards.” That’s the equivalent of running ads in a Facebook user’s News Feed or a Twitter user’s main feed.

Initial signs are promising. Tumblr told Forbes that it generated $13 million in revenue last year, and suggested it could do as much as $100 million this year; people close to the company say its momentum has continued this year.

In addition to figuring out its top-line business, Tumblr and its backers have also been spending a long time trying to figure out a managment structure. Even Karp’s strongest backers say that the 26-year-old needs help running the company, and for months they have been looking for a “Sheryl Sandberg”-style COO candidate.

“David is very charming, and clearly very very bright, and understands the product,” said an executive who talked to Tumblr about the role. But, “he’s incredibly confrontation averse, and there’s almost a ‘Game of Thrones’ palace feeling to the management team.”

Possibility of death by wildfire aside, sources said that the search has yielded two or three candidates that Tumblr is considering. It is a key hire since the company needs to build out an extensive infrastructure quickly, given its sharp consumer growth, including fielding a more robust advertising team. Tumblr hired an experienced exec, Lee Brown, from Groupon last fall, who has been busy hiring more sales execs. Interesting aside: Brown was a longtime Yahoo ad exec.

But building out the needed structure at the company is a long slog, and Tumblr might be seeking more help one way or another.

Yahoo declined comment and Tumblr has not gotten back to us as yet.

It isn’t clear how much Time Warner Cable is willing to pay and whether it is considering purchasing a minority stake in the site or an all-out acquisition. Hulu’s current owners don’t see the cable operator as the most likely buyer at the valuation it has signaled it would do the deal, one of the people familiar with the matter said.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

But Web video competitors like Amazon, HBO and Hulu all say they’re seeing significant growth. So is anyone cutting into Netflix’s lead?

Not really, said Sandvine, the broadband service company that tracks Internet usage.

A Sandvine report out this morning pegs Netflix’s share of prime-time “downstream” traffic delivered over “fixed networks” — that is, wires and pipes — at 32.3 percent. That’s just a hair down from the 33 percent estimate it provided last November.

Meanwhile, Sandvine said Amazon and HBO have seen their share of traffic hold steady, as well. Sandvine said Amazon dropped from 1.75 percent to 1.31 percent, and that HBO dropped from 0.5 percent to 0.34 percent. But that’s not a lot of movement either way.

The one service that did leap a bit is Hulu, which is up from 1.1 percent to 2.41 percent.*

Bear in mind that these numbers do include data transmitted from a home network, via Wi-Fi, to iPads, iPhones, Android tablets, etc. And that Sandvine said this kind of “home roaming” accounts for a whopping 20 percent of traffic now, up from 9 percent a year ago.

But Sandvine also tracks streaming traffic to mobile devices over wireless networks. And here it said that Netflix has made a move from 2.2 percent of downstream traffic to 4 percent in the last 12 months. YouTube, though, is still dominant: If you’re on the go, and you’re watching a moving image, there’s a very good chance you’re seeing something hosted by the world’s biggest video site.

So what does any of that mean? Short answer: Netflix is streaming more video than ever — it added at least two million American users between measurements, and likely many more — but so are its competitors. So its lead is staying more or less the same. Sandvine said the average Internet household uses about 18 gigabytes of broadband a month — up from 10GB a year ago.

Still here? If so, you’ve probably read Ashlee Vance’s excellent Bloomberg Businessweek piece on the engineering that lets Netflix move all those bits into your house. If not, you should definitely read it now.

* Sandvine researcher Dan Deeth notes that the numbers his company provided last fall were collected in the first two weeks of September, which means that Hulu wouldn’t have had access to a batch of new TV shows from its broadcaster partner/owners. The numbers in today’s report were collected in the first two weeks of March, which means Hulu would benefit from new programming that ran during February sweeps; Netflix would have also benefited from any surge in “House of Cards” viewers.

In case you missed anything, here’s a quick weekend roundup of the news that powered AllThingsD this week:

1. Wondering just how much your new S4 costs? Market research firm IHS pegs the cost of Samsung’s new flagship smartphone at just above $237 per unit.
2. It planned to do so originally, but Google will not roll out a physical credit card later this month to bolster its “Google Wallet” commerce project.
3. Everyone who works in Web advertising seems to be talking about the same video ad lately, and here it is: A three-minute-28-second mini-documentary from McDonald’s Canada.
4. The Onion is best known for its prowess at disseminating false information. But it performed an “awesome” public service this week when it explained in detail just how it got hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army.
5. Brace yourselves: Windows Blue is coming. Yes, Microsoft confirmed this week that an update to the “no compromise” PC-mobile hybrid OS Windows 8 is on the way.
6. In other Microsoft-related news, BlueStacks’ software that lets you emulate Android apps inside of Windows has been downloaded more than 10 million times. And it’s still in beta.
7. Mobile videogames currently cater to easily distracted players, but is there room for more thoughtful strategy games? Firaxis Games’ Sid Meier (a.k.a. the Civilization guy) says yes.
8. Two new iPad apps claim that they can teach children programming skills directly on the tablet. But can they? Lauren Goode puts Hopscotch and Kodable to the test.
9. It hasn’t made a formal bid, but Yahoo has joined the gang of companies meeting with wanna-sell execs at Hulu.
10. Social video startup Viddy is returning most of its Series B round to investors and moving people in and out of its board.

To stay on top of the latest, follow AllThingsD on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to our daily email newsletter.

According to numerous sources close to the situation, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer recently met with top execs at Hulu, the premium video service whose big media company owners have been considering selling it for some months.

Sources said Yahoo is “in the process,” although the Silicon Valley Internet giant has not made any kind of formal bid. Other players whom sources said are considering purchasing all or parts of Hulu include: Former News Corp. COO Peter Chernin, who now has a successful and well-funded multimedia and investment company called the Chernin Group; Guggenheim Partners digital arm, which is led by former Yahoo interim CEO Ross Levinsohn; and Amazon.

Sources said Mayer also had an extensive getting-to-know-you meeting, which was apparently not held at Hulu’s offices in Santa Monica, Calif., along with COO Henrique De Castro. The discussion is taking place in the wake of Yahoo’s failed bid — largely engineered by De Castro — to purchase a majority stake in France Télécom’s Dailymotion video service, after a top French government official said Yahoo could not own 75 percent of the company.

Had the deal — which was reportedly valued at $300 million — gone through, it would have been the most significant by Mayer since she took over at the company last July. Thus far, she has limited her purchases to small mobile startup.

While the meetings with Hulu are only preliminary, Yahoo has been to this video rodeo before, having seriously considering buying Hulu when it was previously being shopped by its owners, News Corp., Disney and Comcast. (News Corp. also owns this site.)

Of course, if Yahoo’s interest becomes more serious, Mayer will have to make important visits to top execs at those media giants, since they control the rights to critical content, and thus Hulu’s value.

As Peter Kafka noted in a previous post about Hulu’s possible sale, “much hinges on the licensing rights News Corp., Disney and Comcast would provide for the money-losing site, as well as what happens to the $300 million debt its owners have taken on in the last year.”

Without those rights, Hulu by itself is a very pretty Web site and video platform, but not worth the billions it would be with very long-term television rights, content that attracts users. Currently, sources said its media owners are offering two to three years of rights, with a lot of flexibility over removing content from the site, which is not quite as attractive a deal (to say the least).

But video is a key component of Yahoo’s strategy going forward. Along with mobile efforts, Mayer has explicitly told investors that video was a key to company under her tenure.

Coincidentally, today in an onstage interview at a Wired conference in New York, Mayer broadly addressed the video issue when asked a question about the topic, noting it was important across all of Yahoo’s properties.

“I think video is really important … video is something that we’re all innately designed and born to experience, everyone is born being able to watch and to hear,” she said. “Video is just this amazing format.”

Mayer would know that well, having been at Google when the search giant bought YouTube, ironically snatching it at the last minute from a competing bid by Yahoo, which was then led by Terry Semel. Since then, YouTube has become the most important and powerful player in the space by far.

Yahoo, despite being one of the largest video players on the Web, has mostly been a lackluster competitor in the arena, pinging over the years from creating original content to doing branded deals with media companies, but never establishing a major beachhead with consumers as Hulu did from scratch.

Short of a full acquisition, there may be a way for Yahoo to partner and invest in Hulu, instead of buying it outright that works for all sides — owners get a new owner to foot part of the bill and also increase distribution, and Yahoo can claim that it’s providing users with exponentially more content that would help Yahoo’s long-declining engagement problem.

Sources said News Corp. and Disney have mulled scenarios where one or both companies hang on to the site, while Comcast has no control over Hulu’s fate, having given up its management rights to the site as a concession to federal regulators.

But the strength of the Hulu brand is clear and it has had some success in building a more significant business. While a lot of its video offerings are free, about four million people are paying for a Hulu Plus subscription.

Still, Hulu’s strength might be lagging, especially given after talented founding leader Jason Kilar recently left. Last year, Hulu was a top 10 video site, according to comScore. No longer — in a report in March, it had dropped out of the top 10.

While this likely has more to do with methodology than real decline in Hulu ratings, it does show that while it’s the biggest thing Yahoo could buy or invest in, Yahoo itself has plenty of video views, many more than Hulu.

The question for Mayer then is how much of Yahoo’s multi-billon-dollar cash kitty she wants to bet on a big video play. She might also be considering buying several smaller ones, said sources, with Yahoo having also looked at some smaller video sites, including Blip and Grab Media.

A spokeswoman for Hulu declined to comment and Yahoo PR has not responded to a query for comment (if ever).

Then you’re not going to be any happier with most of the subscription videos the site is going to start selling. They’re going to have ads, too, say people familiar with YouTube’s long-awaited plans.

That should give you a sense of how incremental YouTube’s move will be when the site formally announces it this week, likely on Thursday: This isn’t a shift in strategies, or an attempt to take on Netflix or Hulu, but a relatively simple add-on option that gives YouTube video makers another way to make money.

YouTube’s core business is going to be the same: Selling its billion-person audience to advertisers.

Subscriptions may still be welcome news for some video makers, who have been complaining about the ad dollars they are generating from the site. And an ad-free option that YouTube has also pitched may appeal to children’s-TV producers, as well.

But lots of video makers will likely hold back and wait to see the results of the experiment YouTube is starting up. The key question for a producer: If I’m already struggling with the economics of the free stuff I’m providing, where am I going to find the resources to make “premium” stuff, too?

A la carte subscriptions seem particularly useful for established YouTube stars with low production costs and rabid fans, like Freddy W, Ryan Higa or the Smosh guys.

Certainly, almost all of their teen video viewers are unable or unwiling to pay to watch their stuff. But they may be able to convert a small percentage of their superfans to open their wallets (or their parents’). Just like the Rolling Stones will convince some poor soul to pay $169.98 for a boxed CD set next fall.

Eventually, if this stuff works, YouTube may be able to start bundling cable-like packages of content together — say, a comedy block, or a sports block — and then things could get more interesting. And if all of that works, and YouTube proves there’s a real business for pay video on the site, perhaps it will start becoming attractive to the TV and movie guys YouTube has been trying to court without success for a very long time.

And then things could get very interesting.

But for now, don’t expect much. And do expect a lot of ads.

Last night, YouTube tried the same thing, but changed its pitch. Instead of trying to convince ad buyers that YouTube’s stuff is as good as what’s on TV, YouTube is now arguing that the stuff people watch on YouTube is better than TV — because they’re watching it on YouTube.

Gone from last year: YouTube’s efforts to push its “funded channels” program, where it handed out hundreds of millions of dollars in an attempt to get to more “professional content” on the site. Also missing: Testimonials from traditional actors, directors, producers, etc.

Instead, YouTube kept hammering on its huge audience — a billion viewers a month — and played up the stars that are mostly famous to that audience.

Actress/VJ/producer Felicia Day got a long monologue where she explained that she turned to YouTube after hitting a wall in Hollywood. Following a clip where she was reduced to tears on NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” dancing violinist Lindsey Stirling explained that YouTubers embraced her after Piers Morgan gave her the cold shoulder.

And hip-hop sensation of the moment Macklemore, who doesn’t have a record label but has a big YouTube presence and the second and third-biggest song in America right now, finished the show with a mini concert.

A handful of people who made their mark off of YouTube made their way onstage, as well, but only in a YouTube context: Producer Brian Robbins, who just sold his AwesomenessTV YouTube channel to DreamWorks, came on to talk about how his teenage sons don’t watch TV; DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg followed him to talk about how great Brian Robbins is.

And the artist formerly known as Snoop Dogg, who is now signed up with YouTube network Maker Studios, showed up to slouch through a couple of songs, backed by a group of YouTubers.

If you were a skeptic, or a YouTube competitor, you might argue that YouTube had stopped trying to promote “real” stars on its site, because it spent the last year doing that, and many of those projects have underwhelmed.

You might also note that, unlike other Web video sellers, YouTube spent very little time trying to convince advertisers that it was willing to sell them video ads the way many advertisers want to buy them — that is, the way they buy TV ads.

A lot of people who make videos for YouTube think that’s a real problem that will prevent the site from ever achieving the TV-like ad rates it wants to command. And some of them are hoping/planning to take their stuff elsewhere, where they think they can make more money.

The flip sides of those arguments: Every other Web video site pitching at this week’s “newfront” sales events are making a big deal of the TV and movie stars they’ve signed on — Yahoo has Ed Helms! AOL has Sarah Jessica Parker! Hulu has Seth Meyers! — so YouTube’s approach will help set them apart.

And while lots of people would like YouTube to approach sales the way old-media buyers like to approach sales, that’s not very Googley. The pitch might alter again next year, but I’d be surprised if YouTube made a fundamental switch in the way it sells its eyeballs.

I’m guessing that at some point YouTube will have nice-looking video available from last night’s event. Because they’re a video company and all that. Meantime, you can get a flavor via some user-generated footage — via YouTube, of course.

Here, via BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield, is Lindsey Stirling:

And here, via Storyful’s David Clinch, is some Macklemore and a cast of dozens:

(Image courtesy of Felicia Day/Instagram)

So how about Hulu Plus, the subscription service that runs ads in the middle of its TV reruns? Turns out it is doing just fine: Hulu says its paid service now has four million subscribers paying $8 a month.

That’s not nearly as much Netflix, which boast some 30 million subscribers for its ad-free service (also $8 a month). But that seems awfully respectable to me, considering that Hulu Plus has been around (in one form or another) for less than three years.

Maybe even impressive, since much of what Hulu Plus offers are TV shows you can see for free on broadcast TV, or even on “regular” Hulu.com. The main selling point for Hulu Plus, I think, is that you can watch the service on a variety of screens, including phones, tablets and your actual TV, via devices like Apple TV.

The announcement comes as Hulu puts on a show for advertisers in New York, part of the week-long “newfront” presentations the big video websites are hosting. (Yesterday: Yahoo! Tomorrow: YouTube!)

While Hulu is still best known as the place to watch last night’s TV (or in some cases, last week’s TV), it is interested in promoting the stuff it has that you can’t see on TV.

Like Netflix and Amazon, it is investing in its own original programming; unlike Netflix and Amazon, its efforts have gotten much less attention, a fact that steams Hulu’s management team. So if you want to help them out, go ahead and look at the preview reel for “The Awesomes,” an “animated show for adults,” co-created by Seth Meyers of “Saturday Night Live”; it seems to be the new show Hulu is most excited about.

The good news for Andy Forsell, Hulu’s acting CEO, is that advertisers are already receptive to Hulu’s pitches, both for the reruns it airs and the new stuff it is showing. It looks like TV and Hulu is selling it like TV, and many ad guys like that a lot, especially compared to Google’s more … Googley approach with YouTube.

The bad news for Forsell is that he’s acting CEO, because Hulu’s corporate future is completely unsettled. It’s entirely possible, and probably likely, that the site, currently owned by News Corp.,* Disney and Comcast, will have a different ownership structure by the end of the year, and may have a different agenda, as well.

I’m guessing that doesn’t come up during this morning’s presentation. What I don’t know is whether that matters to advertisers or viewers.

*News Corp. also owns this website.

Word of the talks come as Guggenheim, a newly formed division of financial-services firm Guggenheim Partners LLC, is seeking to become a force in digital music and entertainment media. Guggenheim appointed media veteran and former Yahoo Inc. executive Ross Levinsohn to run the unit in January, with a war chest for acquisitions characterized by a person close to the matter as “hundreds of millions” of dollars.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Multiple sources say Chernin, via his Chernin Group holding company, has made a formal bid for the site, which is owned by Disney, Comcast and News Corp. (News Corp. also owns this site).

Reuters, which first reported Chernin’s interest in Hulu, says he offered $500 million for the site; two years ago, when Hulu’s owners put the site on the block, they were looking for $2 billion.

A source familiar with the bid says Reuters’ $500 million number is low. In any case, it’s likely to be the starting point for a negotiation, which would hinge on the licensing rights News Corp., Disney and Comcast would provide for the money-losing site, as well as what happens to the $300 million debt its owners have taken on in the last year. (UPDATE: Here’s a bit more clarity: Someone else familiar with the bid suggests that Chernin’s initial bid is for Hulu, along with a limited set of rights to programming from its three owners, but says that the bid could increase if those rights increased. That makes more sense.)

That is, if its owners decide to sell it. Though Hulu’s owners are talking to other would-be buyers, including Ross Levinsohn, the former News Corp. executive who once managed the site, News Corp. and Disney are still discussing scenarios where one or both companies hang on to the site (co-owner Comcast gave up its management rights to the site as a concession to federal regulators a few years ago).

If Chernin ended up with Hulu, it’d be an excellent full-circle story, if nothing else. During his News Corp. tenure, Chernin was one of the site’s primary architects and boosters; many people think that his departure from News Corp. was a huge blow for former Hulu CEO Jason Kilar.

Also interesting: Chernin has a big slug of funding from Providence Equity Partners, Hulu’s initial investor, which sold its stake in Hulu last year. If Chernin ended up buying the site, Providence would essentially end up as a Hulu backer again.

Chernin has also mused in the past about what it would take to create an online competitor to HBO, starting from scratch. Perhaps a well-known video property could help him jump start those plans.

Here’s a highlight reel of a chat I had with Chernin at our Asia:D conference in Hong Kong in 2011; we spent some of that time talking about Hulu’s past and then-present.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130405/peter-chernin-wants-hulu-too/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130327/understanding-the-new-boom-in-subscriptions/ http://allthingsd.com/20130327/understanding-the-new-boom-in-subscriptions/#comments Wed, 27 Mar 2013 21:08:21 +0000 Dan Burkhart http://allthingsd.com/?p=307193 More than a century before Netflix and Hulu and Spotify first charged subscribers to satisfy their daily media cravings, another device existed called the Théâtrophone.¹ From 1881 to 1932, telephonic devices called Théâtrophones were made available to dignitaries and guests in luxury hotels who required their daily fix of live opera performances via subscription fee — 50 centimes for five minutes.

While the Théâtrophone was an impressive invention in its day, the subscription model itself has a prolific and fascinating history of enabling innovation throughout the world. Subscriptions have helped companies pioneer new distribution models across a diverse set of business applications; all in the name of seeking efficient annuity revenue streams that outweigh the cost of production and distribution. From an end-customer “subscriber” perspective, the convenience of easy access or repeat consumption can greatly outweigh the incremental cost of subscribing.

Subscriptions have historically also found ways to take on greater social meaning through the signaling of a certain status by way of access to a secret society, social club or charitable organization. In the 1700s, by “subscribing” to become a benefactor to a charitable organization or society, individuals were able to achieve certain significance among their peers. Subscriptions to charity balls and full-seasons of theatre access were as much of a status symbol as they were convenient. Country clubs, yacht clubs, athletic clubs, fraternities and other private clubs have almost always been entirely member funded by way of the subscription membership model. Memberships, dues, donations and even tithing from the Catholic Church were achieved via scheduled “subscription” payments.

During the 18th century, the notion of subscription that we know today arrived when subscriptions to periodicals, magazines, books and theatre events became common. These subscriptions typically included delivery of the printed material and were sold for a specified number of issues or a period of time.

During the 1800s, the idea of pay-as-you-go subscriptions emerged to support the need for staple items such as heating oil, coal, milk, ice and even diapers to be delivered to your home. In Paris, a five-franc annual tariff was levied on all residents for their “subscription” to a hectoliter of drinking water per day.

Throughout history, we observe some interesting commonality across each of these examples. Whether we’re talking about subscriptions for the purpose of convenience, pay-as-you-go consumption, engagement or status, the underlying business driver has always been that subscriptions provide the ability to generate capital in the form of an attractive annuity revenue stream. From a financial perspective, companies that are able to generate a growing audience of subscribers producing predictable revenue streams are far more capital-efficient than companies that need to acquire, and then re-acquire, each customer interaction. (If you’re ever curious about this assertion, just ask yourself why so many insurance companies occupy the largest buildings across all major cities in the United States.² By definition, insurance is an annuity-based, subscription business.)

Fast forward to today. We are in the midst of yet another explosive expansion of subscription business models. From traditional media moving to digital media, to the rapid adoption of SaaS and cloud-based businesses, mobile and social products, applications and services are all careening toward some form of subscription-based offering. This is largely because the cost of developing and launching new businesses has declined to such an extent that it requires a very different level of up-front capital investment to chase these opportunities.

Why are subscription models everywhere today? The following intersection of trends is powering the recent appeal for subscriptions:

From the business perspective, there has always been a strong appeal in creating a predictable stream of revenue. Beyond that, the notion of maximizing lifetime value from existing customers is something that has always existed, but is now enabled through better visibility into activity. Traditional e-commerce companies like eBay have long focused on optimizing the “Triple A’s” — Acquisition, Activation and Activity. With today’s technology in place, we now have the ability to solve for all of these variables in a way that is not only more palatable to the end customer, but in many respects the optimization is couched in a way that is actually a benefit to the customer. (Think about the recent reminders you’ve likely received from your oil changer, dentist or even hair stylist that it is time for you to come back for your next appointment.)

Consumers have evolved a long way from the cable and magazine subscriber of yesterday as well. Today, consumers expect to have a range of choice in their offerings. They’ll commit to subscribe particularly if they have the ability to select from a range of feature/pricing options that best suit their own preferences.

There exists a psychological minimum. If a service is offered at a price level that feels low enough in relation to the marginal benefit that they receive, a consumer will subscribe. Conversely, they will elect to cancel if the marginal benefit wanes and is no longer worth the cost to continue subscribing. Managing the perceived value of any subscription product or service over time creates a relationship between the consumer and the service provider, each of whom seeks to maximize the value they are receiving from the other.

At the same time, the upfront capital investment required to launch a new enterprise service has declined to such an extent that it affords businesses a greater opportunity to test and learn as they go. As recently as 10 or 12 years ago, during the first dot-com boom, companies raised massive amounts of money not only to signal a coveted first-mover market position, but also to fund the huge amount of investment required to scale out a company. Today, we have cloud services and SaaS/PaaS offerings like Amazon Web Services and RackSpace.

The Web has become too fragmented to sustain ad-only revenue models.
Ten years ago, venture capitalists were inundated with companies seeking funding for ad-supported business models. Today, the Web is far too fragmented to support businesses seeking to aggregate massive ad dollars.

There has been a 100X reduction in the cost of software infrastructure within 10 years.
Here is an example: In just over 10 years, the “rented” application infrastructure model once offered by Kontiki (before it was called SaaS/PaaS) would have cost a customer approximately $100,000 per month to launch a business. Today, the same offering is delivered by Amazon Web Services for approximately $1,000 per month.

The cost of storage has plummeted 16X in the last 10 years.
Today, it costs you $0.085 per GB to store data. Ten years ago, it cost $1.39/GB. This decline in storage costs has created the opportunity for subscription-based file-sharing and backup companies like Box.net and Dropbox.³

The cost of Internet bandwidth “transit” has declined 75X in the past 10 years.
Entirely new business models have emerged due to the proliferation of inexpensive and ubiquitous broadband connectivity. This has allowed companies like Hulu and Netflix to have distribution to large markets at economically sustainable rates.⁴

Open-source software has eliminated the need for expensive licenses.
Ten years ago, companies aiming to deliver a service at scale were likely to sign up for expensive Oracle and Microsoft licenses. Today, startups have an impressive roster of free open-source software to choose from to run their operations.

On the Web today, the confluence of these trends is creating new markets and opportunities. The functional role of marketing has evolved to become increasingly data-driven.

Financial CRM allows the consumer to get what they want, and the business to provide a well-crafted migration path of high-probability options for cross-sell and up-sell options in the future. The management of this path for monetizing users post-sale has become an even more critical discipline for maximizing enterprise profitability than the sexy and creative brand-building efforts on which companies have traditionally focused.

All of these factors combined increasingly lead entrepreneurs to a similar conclusion. It is now far more efficient to offer products and services via subscriptions. Subscription pricing easily attracts customers, eliminates their purchase anxiety and, if designed well, keeps them happily paying over a longer period of time. Subscription models not only allow for attractive and efficient pricing, but also alleviate the need for a heavy-handed sales pitch. Ultimately, customers appreciate that they are in more control — always having the ability to upgrade their service, or to cancel and move on to something better.

---

¹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Théâtrophone
²http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_the_United_States
³http://www.archivebuilders.com/whitepapers/22004p.pdf
⁴http://drpeering.net/white-papers/Internet-Transit-Pricing-Historical-And-Projected.php

Based in San Francisco, Dan Burkhart is the CEO and co-founder of subscription billing service Recurly, Inc. He was also an executive at eBay and NBC Internet.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130327/understanding-the-new-boom-in-subscriptions/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20130325/hulu-isnt-for-sale-yet-but-buyers-are-asking/ http://allthingsd.com/20130325/hulu-isnt-for-sale-yet-but-buyers-are-asking/#comments Mon, 25 Mar 2013 20:56:08 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=306515 Two years ago, Hulu’s corporate owners put the video site up for sale — and then took it off the block.

New version of a similar story: Hulu’s corporate owners still aren’t sure what they want to do with the site. But they are starting to hear from would-be buyers, anyway.

One of those potential purchasers is Ross Levinsohn, who worked hard to buy Hulu when he was running Yahoo in 2011.

Now Levinsohn is working for Guggenheim Partners, the $160 billion fund manager that owns the Los Angeles Dodgers and media assets like the Hollywood Reporter, and industry sources say he has talked about buying the site again.

Other companies that have kicked tires — or indicated an interest in kicking tires — include Yahoo and Amazon, sources say.

No prospective buyer has made anything like a formal offer, though. And no one can buy anything until Hulu owners Disney and News Corp. (News Corp. also owns this Web site) figure out a plan for the video hub.

They’ve been trying to do that for a couple years, and in the interim there have been some significant changes at the site. Last year early backer Providence Equity Partners sold its stake, and in January CEO Jason Kilar announced his plan to depart.

But Disney and News Corp. still haven’t agreed on whether the site should focus on an ad-supported model or a subscription one, and while both have talked about buying out the other partner, those discussions are still “fluid,” according to people familiar with the negotiations. (Comcast’s NBCUniversal also owns a stake in the site, but gave up its management role a few years ago in a concession to federal regulators.)

And just like 2011, the key issue for any Hulu buyer would be the content licenses Disney and News Corp. are willing to extend to an outsider.

In the past, the two companies were unwilling to offer long-term deals for their content, which meant anyone who bought Hulu was really buying a Web site and a chance to renegotiate for new content deals in a couple years — that is, they weren’t buying much.

Maybe that will change when and if Disney and News Corp. resolve their differences. If not, hard to see anyone buying the site this time around, either.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130325/hulu-isnt-for-sale-yet-but-buyers-are-asking/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130323/to-do-this-weekend-watch-star-trek-all-of-it/ http://allthingsd.com/20130323/to-do-this-weekend-watch-star-trek-all-of-it/#comments Sat, 23 Mar 2013 14:00:38 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=306089 If you have access to Hulu* and want to do something truly epic this weekend, you might consider mainlining Hulu’s newly posted “Star Trek” archive to relive your favorites of some 700 episodes of sci-fi legend — or if you’re uninitiated, make yourself into an instant Trekkie.

Until the end of March, Hulu is streaming nearly every episode of the show ever, for free.

Want a way to make this a business research project, kinda sorta? Well, we’ve heard Google execs talk about how their ultimate search engine would be a version of the personalized, voice-activated “Star Trek” computer.

My favorite “Star Trek” expert reminds me that the talking computer system was known as “LCARS.”

She elaborated, “In the original series, there are crude voice commands, but starting in “The Next Generation,” it’s much more responsive. And — fun fact! — LCARS is voiced by Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, the wife of the ‘Star Trek’ creator.”

*To watch, you need to live in the U.S. and be using a device that supports Flash.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130323/to-do-this-weekend-watch-star-trek-all-of-it/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130320/waiting-for-the-cord-cutting-numbers-to-show-up-keep-waiting/ http://allthingsd.com/20130320/waiting-for-the-cord-cutting-numbers-to-show-up-keep-waiting/#comments Wed, 20 Mar 2013 20:26:34 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=305427 As long as we’re talking about cord-cutting, or the lack of it, today, here’s a new report that won’t make either the cable guys or Team Kill the Cable Guys happy: Pay TV subscriber ranks grew — but just barely — in 2012.

That also isn’t a surprise, since it fits the no-growth trend we’ve seen from pay TV for several years now.

For the record, SNL Kagan figures that the U.S. pay TV industry — cable, telco and satellite — grew by a teeny-tiny 46,000 subscribers last year.

That’s basically negligible given an installed base of 100 million pay TV households. But it’s not a decline.

And it’s also in line with what we’ve seen from the industry for a while, where subscriptions go up and down each quarter — usually up in Q1 and Q4, and down in Q2 and Q3. And as always, it’s important to note that this is for all the pay TV platforms.

You might read today, for instance, that Kagan says the cable guys — Comcast, Time Warner Cable, etc. — lost 1.66 million customers this year. True! But the telco guys — Verizon and AT&T — and the satellite guys — Dish and DirecTV — added the same number. Hence, no growth.

As always, the real debate is about why there’s no growth. There are three standard answers, which don’t necessarily negate one another:

• 100 million pay TV customers is the size of the U.S. market, period. It’s just not going to get bigger.
• The market would be bigger if the economy was better, and more people were buying homes instead of “doubling up.”
• People are ditching pay TV for the Internet and some combination of Netflix, iTunes, Hulu, etc. And/or the population of “cord-nevers” — college grads who have grown up with Web TV and see no reason to pay for cable — is growing.

The last one is certainly worrisome for the pay TV guys, and the ones who used to boast that they see no evidence of cord-cutting are a lot more muted about it these days.

You’ll occasionally hear a top pay TV executive — like Dish’s Charlie Ergen — talk candidly about the fact that there are lots of kids, like his own, who aren’t paying for TV anymore. But as always, for right now, cord-cutters are like vegans — you may know a lot of them, but the rest of the country still eats a whole lot of Big Macs.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130320/waiting-for-the-cord-cutting-numbers-to-show-up-keep-waiting/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130320/how-6-million-cord-cutters-disappeared/ http://allthingsd.com/20130320/how-6-million-cord-cutters-disappeared/#comments Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:00:12 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=305084 Last year, a Deloitte survey reported that a staggering 20 percent of Americans had either cut the cord — stopped subscribing to Comcast, Dish, Verizon, etc., in favor of Apple, Netflux, Hulu, etc. — or were thinking about it.

But that was then! This year’s Deloitte survey reports that a mere 8 percent of Americans are cord-cutters, or would like to be.

If you compare the two reports side by side — and don’t look closely at the wording of the questions — you’d conclude that the cord-cutting population had decreased by about 6 percent of TV households, or six million people.

2012:

2013:

What happened? Clearly, people didn’t get more excited about paying for TV in the last year — based on industry reporting, the total number of subscribers remained about flat, just like it has been for the past few years.

The most likely answer is the one that occurred to me in 2012: That the wording in last year’s survey confused respondents, and that many of them thought the question was about dropping a pay TV channel, like HBO — not cutting the cord altogether.

After I wrote about last year’s numbers, I ended up on the phone with a Deloitte executive who had overseen the research. We went back and forth a little bit, and he allowed that polls like this — and poll questions — are a work in progress.

And this year’s report looks like a tacit acknowledgement of that. Deloitte made the effort to tweak the question, but it looks like it didn’t feel strongly enough about the data to include it in the main “State of Media Democracy” report (though it did furnish it to me upon request, which I appreciate). Perhaps next year it will include it, and show change over time.

Until then, hard to use these numbers to draw a conclusion about cord-cutting, one way or another. Not that it will stop you folks from sounding off in the comments. Have at it!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130320/how-6-million-cord-cutters-disappeared/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130314/why-you-can-watch-ncis-on-your-ipad-but-not-big-bang-theory/ http://allthingsd.com/20130314/why-you-can-watch-ncis-on-your-ipad-but-not-big-bang-theory/#comments Thu, 14 Mar 2013 19:58:09 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=303709 CBS has a new iPad and iPhone app that will let you watch many of its shows for free. That’s not interesting at all.

What is interesting are the decisions the network has made about what you can watch on the apps, and when you can watch them. Because they say a lot about the state of the TV business, and the way it is and isn’t adapting to digital reality.

Stuff to pay attention to:

• CBS, which for a long time kept most of its shows off the Web, now offers almost all of them on the Web, and you can see most of those on the apps. The omissions in the mobile lineup are the shows that CBS doesn’t own. “Big Bang Theory,” for instance, comes from Time Warner’s Warner Bros. studio, so it’s not on the app.
• You can see most of CBS’ daytime and nighttime programming (soaps, “David Letterman”) on the apps the day after they air. But its primetime stuff — (“NCIS,” “The Good Wife,” etc.) won’t show up until eight days after it airs on the network.

The state of mobile, or at least the state of TV’s thinking about mobile, has a lot to do with both of those decisions.

For starters, while regular human beings recognize that stuff they look at on a tablet or a phone is the same as the stuff they see on TV or a Web browser, that’s not how biz dev and legal people think. So CBS, for instance, doesn’t have the rights to show “Big Bang Theory” on your iPad, even though it can let you watch it on its website.

And even when CBS does have mobile rights, it can’t convince advertisers to give it full credit for the eyeballs that watch its shows on phones and tablets, for technical/measurement reasons. So it’s not going to put stuff on mobile until it has wrung out the full value of its TV ad dollars.

When it comes to “Letterman” and “The Young and the Restless,” that’s the next day. But CBS and other networks are trying to convince advertisers that they should get credit for shows and ads that people watch in the seven days after an episode first airs. That’s not happening right now — currently, they get credit for shows watched live or on DVRs in the first three days after air — but CBS is hoping/assuming they’ll get what they want in the next couple years.

CBS isn’t the only network paying attention to the so-called “C7” window; you can see evidence of that in Fox’s decision to keep its shows off the Web except for “authenticated” viewers who are also paying for cable TV. (News Corp., which owns Fox, also owns this website.)

But that thinking isn’t universal, either: Right now you can watch the episode of “The Neighbors” that aired last night on ABC, on the network’s site or its iPad app, or on Hulu, for free, without any kind of sign-in/registration.

Actually, you can watch it here, too (unless you’re reading this on a tablet or mobile, because, see above). Enjoy.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130314/why-you-can-watch-ncis-on-your-ipad-but-not-big-bang-theory/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130313/survey-says-more-good-news-for-reed-hastings/ http://allthingsd.com/20130313/survey-says-more-good-news-for-reed-hastings/#comments Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:07:17 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=303056 Investors are back in love with Netflix. And Web video watchers seem like they’ve warmed up again, as well.

Or at least they say they have. Check out the results of a recent survey of U.S. Web users, conducted by Goldman Sachs. And notice the Netflix bump across all ages — but particularly with teens and twentysomethings:

Goldman doesn’t attempt to explain why people like Netflix so much more now than they did a year ago (the survey was conducted in mid-January, before the deluge of press for “House of Cards,” so it’s unlikely that Kevin Spacey is the cause). But the numbers do give some credence to Reed Hastings’s contention that old and new customers are beginning to forgive the service for its multiple mistakes in 2011. Then again, the blowout numbers in Netflix’s last earnings report suggested the same thing.

It’s crucial to note that this is a self-reported survey, so users’ actual behavior may be quite different from what they’ll admit to Goldman or themselves.

For instance, I’m sure that YouTube occupies a lot more viewing time than people suspect, or are willing to admit. Similarly, the Goldman report suggests that YouTube and Hulu are in the same league when it comes to viewing time, and that’s certainly not the case.

That said, I would love to know why people are reporting significant drops in iTunes engagement — particularly since iTunes has always had a fairly modest video component.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130313/survey-says-more-good-news-for-reed-hastings/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130307/loose-lips-yahoo-ma-head-tells-employees-company-looking-at-two-significant-and-a-half-dozen-small-buys/ http://allthingsd.com/20130307/loose-lips-yahoo-ma-head-tells-employees-company-looking-at-two-significant-and-a-half-dozen-small-buys/#comments Thu, 07 Mar 2013 20:33:13 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=301478

Lost in the sauce of the national work-from-home debate of last week that engulfed all things Yahoo, was a fascinating tidbit that several employees passed on to me from a recent Friday FYI meeting at its Silicon Valley HQ.

At the gathering, CEO Marissa Mayer talked briefly about the new telecommuting arrangements for some staffers, including the controversial new work-from-home memo that HR head Jackie Reses had issued that day.

But when Reses — who also wears another corporate hat as head of M&A at Yahoo — spoke she mentioned to the crowd that Yahoo was working on two “significant” acquisitions and about six smaller talent “acqhires.”

“It was kind of odd to telegraph it in such a big forum,” said one employee of Reses’ comments at the meeting in late February.

The revelation was unusual, to be sure, but perhaps not a surprise, given the recent run-up in Yahoo stock, its healthy cash position and, most of all, its need to add meaningful growth to the current efforts at turnaround.

And while some of its recent buys have been interesting and focused on improving its moribund mobile efforts, they have also been very small. And, as one high-ranking exec there told me, they “don’t move the needle in the way we need to in bringing in senior talent or loads of users or serious revenue.”

Indeed, while Yahoo shares have benefited greatly from the impressive performance by Alibaba Group in China, which is clearly on a roll, many think that showing actual improvement in its core business will be critical in the months ahead.

While making changes to Yahoo’s homepage and email, as well as cutting products, has been done, it is not yet clear what the impact is; the changes are aimed more at holding on to consumers rather than exciting them with new offerings.

Yahoo could also create its own new products to wow the masses, but that has been harder for it over the years. (Remember Livestand? Yeah, not so much.) In any case, an innovation infusion of such a large magnitude will take some time, given Mayer has to get the right people into place to do so.

Thus, a big purchase of an exciting new company with prominent leadership seems more likely than not and sooner than later. While Mayer has not articulated her vision for the new Yahoo in anything more than general ways, what she buys will say a lot.

Thus, sources said that Yahoo has been looking at a range of such acquisitions, in a number of categories such as advertising tech, mobile monetization and, of course, consumer “daily delight,” which is a phrase Mayer has used a lot.

It would be bold if Mayer went all out and made a mega-buy that would shake up the competitive landscape. My first choice for that is Pinterest, the scrapbooking phenom that was just valued at $2.5 billion in a new funding round. Mayer has also shown a lot of interest in blogging superstar Tumblr, while at both Google and Yahoo, as well as Foursquare, the well-known location app. Of course, there is also the troubled gaming giant, Zynga.

All are very pricey and would face rival interest, but such a move would be akin to Facebook’s billion-dollar blockbuster purchase of Instagram. Many now think that was prescient and cheap, given how important mobile photos are to the current digital ecosystem.

The list of possible big deals goes on: Hulu (which needs a tasty content element to make sense) as a video play; Millennial Media or Jumptap for mobile advertising; Quora for social answers; Flipboard for social media consumption; Rubicon or PubMatic, for ad targeting; and many more.

But all of those begin at the billion-dollar or more range and I have checked with a number of these and come up peanuts. Still, there are a whole lot of choices for Mayer and Yahoo in the $200 million to $500 million price range.

Here, Yahoo has the financial strength to make at least two of these significant purchases that Reses mentioned, as well as developing a much better reputation for Yahoo to keep real talent interested.

As one prominent startup exec, who had told me he never would consider selling to Yahoo in the past, said recently: “They are no longer complete losers, although Facebook and Google and Apple and Amazon are still cooler.”

Hey, it’s a compliment, even if it’s a back-handed one, so it will be interesting to see who finds Yahoo cool enough.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130307/loose-lips-yahoo-ma-head-tells-employees-company-looking-at-two-significant-and-a-half-dozen-small-buys/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130301/disney-news-corp-discuss-hulus-future/ http://allthingsd.com/20130301/disney-news-corp-discuss-hulus-future/#comments Fri, 01 Mar 2013 23:45:54 +0000 Martin Peers and Christopher S. Stewart http://allthingsd.com/?p=299814 News Corp and Walt Disney Co. have begun discussions about resolving uncertainty over their jointly controlled online video site Hulu, with one possible outcome being that one or the other company sells their stake.

The two companies, which each own about a third of Hulu, have each indicated at different times over the past few months their willingness to buy the other out, the people say. There is also the possibility both companies will decide to sell to an outsider, the people said.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130301/disney-news-corp-discuss-hulus-future/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130225/great-news-about-those-terrible-oscars-you-can-watch-them-again/ http://allthingsd.com/20130225/great-news-about-those-terrible-oscars-you-can-watch-them-again/#comments Mon, 25 Feb 2013 12:43:28 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=297922 Twitter and Facebook consensus about last night’s Oscars: Worst ever!

Weirdly, though, all of you seemed to keep watching, or at least typing about it. Presumably so you could warn everyone else about how bad it was?

In any case, this is normally the point where I tell everyone who didn’t watch it that they’re both lucky and unlucky. Because Disney, which broadcast the show on ABC, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which produces the show, aren’t making it available online. Which makes no sense, because all anyone wants to do the day after the Oscars is watch clips.

But not this year! For the first time ever, you can watch the entire show via Web replay. It’s on Hulu right now, up through Wednesday. And supposedly it’s going to be available through ABC and or/the official Oscars site, though I can’t find a link on either.

Also as important, ABC and the Academy have clips of the show’s highlights/lowlights, which you can either watch on the Oscars site itself (weirdly, the video clips are labeled “blogs” there), or share with your pals. Even more progressive (or long overdue) was the fact that some of the clips went up when the show was still airing.

Here, for instance, is the “We Saw Your Boobs” number that host Seth MacFarlane opened with, which seemed to upset all of you so much that you had to keep watching for another 3.5 hours.

Content aside (was all of it like that? I really didn’t see.), this is all good, even if it should have happened years ago. Next step will be getting the clips and streams where people will actually see them: Once again, the Oscar’s day-after presence on the world’s biggest video site is a joke. The show’s official YouTube page is a graveyard of old clips you don’t care about, and searching for clips on YouTube gets you none of what you want.*

One day this will get simpler, because it ought to be a no-brainer. Still: It’s 2013, and you don’t have to break the law to watch a day-old TV show. Progress!

And in that spirit, here’s the first 17 minutes of the show — the part where everyone insisted they would stop watching but didn’t.

*The good news for YouTube is that its ContentID program, designed to automate takedowns of stuff copyright owners don’t want up there, has gotten ultra-efficient.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130225/great-news-about-those-terrible-oscars-you-can-watch-them-again/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130208/former-hulu-cto-and-kleiner-perkins-partner-eric-feng-heads-to-flipboard/ http://allthingsd.com/20130208/former-hulu-cto-and-kleiner-perkins-partner-eric-feng-heads-to-flipboard/#comments Fri, 08 Feb 2013 17:46:48 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=292999 Eric Feng, a mainstay in digital media properties such as Hulu, Airtime and Erly, announced on Friday that he will join the executive team of Flipboard, the social magazine app made popular on smartphones and tablets. Feng will join the startup as CTO and second in command to CEO Mike McCue, and will head up engineering and strategy for the company. Feng will also bring along Eugene Wei, a colleague of Feng’s who rose to prominence at Hulu and was VP of Product at Erly.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130208/former-hulu-cto-and-kleiner-perkins-partner-eric-feng-heads-to-flipboard/feed/ 0