Cordkillers Ep. 18 – Does Hulu Make Sense Now

Cordkillers / May 5th, 2014

Hulu’s letting more folks watch shows on mobile without paying. Is that a good thing? Also AOL and Nielsen are teaming up to save Internet TV.

View on Youtube

Download VIDEO

Download AUDIO

CordKillers: Ep. 18 – Does Hulu Make Sense Now
Recorded: May 6 2014
Guest: Derrick Chen

Intro Video 

Primary Target

  • AOL releases 16 original shows, Nielsen to do the ratings 
  • Nielsen will begin rating new AOL original series. AOL is the first digital client to get Nielsen’s ratings for its original shows.
    – AOL’s 16 series will be measured with digital ratings in a beta test. The ratings will take an audience measurement of the shows and then deliver “gross ratings points” to show what type of people are watching the programs. Additionally, Nielsen will measure associated advertising shown with AOL’s shows.
    – AOL announced Tuesday that it’s coming out with a slew of new shows — 16 to be exact — which feature actors and producers including James Franco, Steve Buscemi, Sarah Jessica Parker, Zoe Saldana, Ellen DeGeneres, and more.

Secondary Target

  • TV execs want Netflix to be more like Hulu and Amazon
  • – during a panel at the Cable Show in Los Angeles Wednesday, Executives from Nickelodeon, FX, Showtime and AMC explained that they would like Netflix to do more to promote their networks
    – Bumpers, branding etc. (Amazon and Hulu do this)
    – FX Networks EVP of Research Julie Piepenkotter quipped: “Breaking Bad did a whole lot more for Netflix than Netflix did for Breaking Bad.”
    – AMC Networks Research SVP Tom Ziangas even suggested that Netflix’s website should feature this kind of branding as well: “I want our stuff on Netflix to be branded. I want an AMC page with our content on there,” “I think maybe we undervalued our content,” he said.

Signal Intelligence

  • Hulu will allow free viewing on mobile this summer
  • Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins announced Wednesday that they will let viewers watch a selection of TV shows on mobile devices
    – Free episodes will arrive on Android first, and then come to iOS. A redesigned iPhone app will be also be launching later this summer.
    – Hulu is still in talks with pay-TV providers to begin integrating Hulu with their cable boxes.

Gear Up

  • Online video could soon come to your cable box, with help from Frequency
  • Frequency Android app provides curated videos from more than 4,000 sources
    – the company built apps for TV sets from Samsung, TCL and Hisense as well as Amazon’s new Fire TV.
    – Frequency is now offering a set of SDKs that allows TV operators as well as consumer electronics manufacturers to integrate Frequency-curated videos right into their own platforms.
    – Frequency CEO Blair Harrison says everybody wants short-form content on their set-top boxes

Under surveillance

Front Lines

2014 Summer Movie Draft
http://draft.diamondclub.tv/

  1. DTNS: $237,155,480
  2. GodsMoneybags: $127,948,458
  3. /Film: $91,608,337
  4. Amtrekker: $47,552,736
  5. The Morning Stream: $26,426,047
  6. Night Attack: $0

On Screen

Dispatches from the Front

This is a little old news since Youtube has now been out on Roku for a couple of weeks now, but I just wanted to say that this has pretty much killed the Chromecast for me. The addition of DIAL means that now my Roku does all the great things it always did and now adds the easy casting ability that made Chromecast so attractive and really starts to edge out the AppleTV in terms of features. If I can just find a Chromecast-type Chrome plugin that works with DIAL-based devices so I could do full screen sharing, Roku would really become the top of the streaming device heap.

Alex

 

While I was watching Cosmos tonight, our station, WVUE Fox 8 in New Orleans, cut to commercial during the discussion of monkeys developing the ability to walk and did not return until Jupiter appeared on screen.

It could be coincidence (I always try to err on the side of technical malfunction). Twitter searches lead me to find it happened at an affiliate in Mississippi and Indiana, as well as Green Bay, Wisconsin, but that Wisconsin station put out a message online saying there were technical problems. I’ve yet to see the other stations post similar explanations.

I’ve only seen WVUE do this once in the past with the Malcolm in the Middle series finale, but that was practically a decade ago, and this just never happens on their station to my knowledge.

Thought you might find this interesting.

Sherman

 

Was wondering why you haven’t been watching “Continuum”? It’s one of my favorite sci-fi shows and they are currently airing the third season on SyFy. It’s a Canadian science fiction show (yes I said Canadian) that stars the eye catching Rachel Nichols as a law enforcement officer from the year 2077 who gets involuntarily transported back to 2012 with a group of freedom fighters known as “Liber8”. There she tries to stop them from changing the future and to try to get back home to 2077 to be with her family. The first two seasons are on Netflix streaming (23 episodes up there) so you should go and check it out. Oh, and by the way, one of the guest stars on the show is William B. Davis (aka The Smoking Man from The X-Files). Curious to hear your thoughts on it.
Thanks,

Corey

 

I agree, the outcome is murky, but here’s why Aereo will WIN. In the very first question, the attorney for the broadcasters agreed that Aereo was NOT a cable company. That would appear to take public performance licensing off the table. Additionally, Aereo appears to be following the letter of the law. A conservative jurist may say it’s OK to follow the letter of the law, even if it violates the spirit of the law, no matter who it angers. With that view, it should not be the court’s job to fix the problem. Remember, the VCR case is also precedent; we are allowed to make recordings of shows with our private equipment. Does the location of that equipment matter? Also, the attorney for the Justice Department admitted that Aereo fell somewhere between a cable company and a private antenna. I felt the justices asked hard questions to both sides. I do think Aereo has a fair shot at winning. I will want to read the opinion if it does not.

Chris

Links

http://www.patreon.com/cordkillers
Dog House Systems Cordkiller box
Red Letter Media
Your Movies Sucks
Crimson Engine