Live Internet Television

I remembered the other day that Fox hosts full episodes of Hell’s Kitchen online, and that I kinda like the show. Ditto Kitchen Nightmares. Dunno why I didn’t watch on Hulu instead, habit I guess. If I associate a show with a network, it’s more intuitive to just go to their site, still, for me.

I loved watching the episodes as usual but two (or, 2 1/2)  things spoiled the fun:

1. There was a lot of buffering and choppiness and if you know anything about Chef Gordon Ramsay and kitchen culture in general, you know half the words are bleeped out anyway. So, to lose more is a hardship!

2. When I used the rewind in an aggressive way I confused the player and got a black screen that I could not snap out of. Ugh.

2  1/2. I was aggressively using the rewind because I was trying to see a Tostitos ad again. Yes, I was trying to watch more advertising than was being thrown at me.

Sound insane? I agree. But, these Tostitos ads were REALLY good. Quiet, set in the chips aisle, with gorgeous-but-normal people musing int heir heads as they consider a chips purchase. The scripts are funny and surprising but quiet supermarket and lack of speach makes them authentic and actually quite pleasant to watch. Especially after all the yelling by Ramsay and crew! The sad thing was, the Tostitos ads are no longer to be found anywhere in the shows, it’s just promos for Fox now. I  may have done this to myself by clicking the “close” x on the bottom of the letterboxed full screen when it said Tostitos (see screenshot above). Hmmm.

Disappointment aside, I will say they ads are very short and sparse for the content and that is really nice.

According to the Marketing Sherpa 2009 Video Marketing Benchmark Guide, ad clutter pushes consumers to go to great lengths to skip advertising. Smart advertisers make their ads more appealing, shorter, and better targeted to avoid becoming clutter.

Advertising paired with online video will need to be less cluttered to be more successful. Advertisers are able to target online audience so scientifically now that the rates should justify a lighter load of ads. Quality over quantity is a winner for all concerned.

Infighting among strange bedfellows says a lot about future plans: Co-incident with CBS relaunching C|Net-acquired TV.com into a potential rival of Hulu, Hulu pulled its content from the site.

Hulu, backed by NBC and News Corporation, competes with CBS in the traditional television markets.  Hulu’s quick-fire removal of their content from TV.com shows that they are planning on fighting it out online as well.

Hulu and TV.com are tight-lipped about the contracted rights, but it appears that TV.com was caught slightly unaware with “video unavailable” riddling their site on all content provided by Hulu.

ivi’s mantra: Internet television must and will improve!

Consumer Affairs today has published Cut the Cable with IPTV. A long and detailed exploration of the online television landscape, it’s actually a pretty good argument for keeping your cable subscription for the time being!

The intro leads you through an exhausting 11 sites you’ll want to go to individually to find archived “catch up” TV in whole episodes.

The article gets going with some intriguing contradictions presented as incisive analysis:

“We did questionnaires with viewers ages 12 to 22 in 10 countries around the world and got the same result. When it comes to content, they unquestionably do not pay. It’s almost like one of the 10 Commandments: Thou shalt not pay,” says [Elroy Jopling, research director for consumer services at Gartner Inc., a leading information technology research company]. “I think time shifting is going to produce so many interesting changes in video because that is something people will put their money down for.”

Consumer Affairs then covers time-shifting, focusing mainly on current offerings (triple-quadruple plays) and the past (VCRs, anyone?), and then moves on through a la carte channel selection and on to the idea of your custom home environment being portable —  TV that knows what you want to watch and that will serve that up to you automatically — along with Facebook-style targeted advertising.

These things are each new[ish], but where’s the revolution? Forgive me, but I still see a pay- and advertiser-driven landscape. And a lot of trouble to go around collecting my TV content from a plethora of sources.

Isn’t one of the joys of TV just sitting back and vegging (sp)?

I’d still pay $60 a month to avoid all the trouble. In fact, I do. But that doesn’t dampen my belief in the better options yet to come!

Hulu was code-named “Clown Co.” by skeptics including TechCrunch before it realized runaway success.

Hulu, which offers professionally-produced television and movie content, has recently ranked 6th in online video content with an impressive monthly unique-visitors count of 24 million.

And now it’s won  Website of the Year from the AP (didn’t know they made news, thought they reported it

Online video site Hulu.com’s “trailblazing answer to how professional content can thrive on the Web” led it to be named Web site of the year by the Associated Press, in a “banner year” for professionally created online video, the news service reported Friday.

Hulu was launched March 12 by News Corp. and NBC Universal, and hosts more than 1,000 television shows, such as Saturday Night Live and The Office, from more than 130 content providers.

A big vote for an alternative to — a complement to — user-generated video. The little people in your TV can sigh a sigh of relief.