Live Internet Television

I love NewTeeVee because they are always at the forefront of analyzing Internet TV offerings from a consumer-advocate point of view, while understanding and exposing the business issues that come into play. Their notes about Hulu today are right on.

Because Hulu has created such an attractive, easy-to-use service that people do unabashedly love, it is all the more disappointing to users when that promise goes unfulfilled. The average viewer doesn’t know or care that licensing restrictions mean Hulu can only offer five full episodes of the current season of 30 Rock and no episodes from seasons one or two. The average viewer just gets frustrated that the missing episodes aren’t there. People are used to the networks callously screwing them over, but Hulu? Hulu said it was our friend.

That’s why there was such a hullabaloo when Hulu pulled itself off of Boxee, or blocked international users from sneakily checking out the service through Hotspot Shield.

I think this is important because the future of online TV is — whether we like it or not — about business relationships. Content providers have to get paid in ways that consumers can stomach. It’s that simple. Partnerships and new business models will prevail.

Business Week has published a very comprehensive look at the TV landscape — cable, network, online — and it’s an interesting read for anyone interested in this kind of thing.

For those who love TV but might not want to get into the weeds, here are a couple of trends that may not be so fun:

Blurring the line further between ads and programming

Programs will be tailored to audiences, and increasingly advertisers will show up in the programs instead of just the commercials.

There’s a good round up examples here, but one of the most obvious examples of they missed is The Apprentice/Celebrity Apprentice. Thanks to Mr. Trump and his producers, I have the original AND fictional Chicken of the Sea jingles running through my head days after the last episode, and I am aware of all the selling points of the darn stuff. And that’s just this week. Maybe next week’s blatant product promotion will replace this week’s in my consciousness?

Off-message tangent: I also learned that I really like Jesse James, that I pretty much detest Clint Black, that the show is hella frustrating (Why choose Clint Black as the Project Manager when you can manage the project effectively and use him write the jingle? Why did no-one give Jesse James credit for the great creative he consistently contributed, which was not taken up by the team?)

A Web-like experience with interactive ads and a next-generation remote

Cable companies are hard at work rushing to market with ways to integrate the social, user-driven, and integrated experience of the Web with their programming.

Beyond improving the viewing experience, the technology also will allow the cable companies to offer interactive commercials. For example, viewers will be able to request more information about a sponsor’s product and, at some point, even buy it through their televisions.

Naturally, for [this functionality] to reach its potential, the remote control will have to change, too. Despite a proliferation of buttons, remotes typically lack a keyboard, which would make searching for shows easier. Time Warner Cable is testing a prototype with a touchscreen. Built by Panasonic, the remote includes an iPhone-like keyboard that makes searching for programs more simple.

This direction is a way of moving into the future without jeopardizing the current business model which works just fine for cable companies (Expect a lot more legal and strategic wrangling by Cable distributors to keep cable content producers from putting their content online for free).

I’m not sold.

What we already know

One of the big questions looming over the cable industry is whether Americans will cancel their subscriptions. Some are cutting the cord to save money; more and more are watching shows online. In a recent survey by research firm GFK-Roper Consulting, 40% of respondents said they would consider canceling their pay-TV subscriptions.

The cable guys profess to be unfazed. Of course they would say that. But so far significant numbers of people aren’t ditching pay TV. “People love to complain about their cable bill,” says Craig Moffett, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. “But it’s hard to find a better bargain in entertainment.”

Online video remains a minnow next to TV. The average viewer watches 151 hours of TV a month vs. three hours of video online, according to Nielsen. And for now the range of offerings online is paltry compared with what is available on cable. Hulu, for example, doesn’t offer recent-run movies, live sports, or many of the most popular shows on cable. That helps explain why 1.7 million people signed up for cable, satellite, and phone TV last year.

Subscribers also have a powerful incentive to keep their pay TV. It’s called the triple play, wherein a customer pays about $29 a month each for basic cable, broadband, and phone. Cancel cable, and the price for the other two services can rise substantially.

Those of you that have visited the ivi TV Website and found a sparse single page will want to cruise by and see our populated site, just launched today. You’ll learn more about what ivi TV is all about, and how it works. We’re still pre-launch but this visibility is a big step!

There is a certain kind of link I never follow on YouTube, and the polar bear attack in a Berlin zoo is of that sort.

However, the still photograph I saw this morning of a woman smilingly and purposefully swimming toward a polar bear made me click the YouTube link, as it promised to give me some sort of insight into what kind of state a person would need to be in to swim happily toward a zoo polar bear.

Maybe more than the size of the bear I wondered about the murky green water.

But, my intial instincts were validated  after I clicked: I didn’t see the pre-attack fooage of her swimming toward the bear. Just some difficult rescue moments with a biting bear, a busted lifesaver, and a tall concrete wall.

Silicon Alley Insider reports today that Google is redesigning You Tube to look a lot more like Hulu. My first response? It’s about time!

I have always found the YouTube interface to be repellent. It has never seemed so much stripped-down and simple (a la craigslist, Google, etc.) as amateurish. And perhaps, as it popularized user-generated content, that feel was a plus.

As it moves into legal professional content, however, and throws in-stream ads at its viewers for the first time, the hacked-together interface fast becomes a liability even for a pioneering giant like YouTube. The professional content paradigm demands a slick, sleek, sexy, and easy-to-use interface.

Like the makeover subjects on TLC’s What Not To Wear, YouTube will lose a lot of its funky and organic personality, but it will align better with its commercial ambitions and potential.

Update: As always, NewTeeVee has great commentary, raises great questions about the deeper implications of this makeover.