Hulu CEO: "We screwed up royally"

http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1534-hulu-ceo-we-screwed-up-royally

by peter123 • 18 years ago

50 44 18 years ago

tptacek• 18 years ago

Note that he didn't just say the right things; they backed it up with actions. They got the eps re-added for two weeks to provide notice.

fallentimes• 18 years ago

And took full responsibility instead of shedding the blame on others. Talk about defying expectations, Hulu is incredible.

staunch2• 18 years ago

From what I've seen of Jason Kilar he seems like a damn good CEO. Totally excellent candidate for a Founders at Work II interview.

ALee• 18 years ago

Agreed. He was my vote for the CEO Crunchies Award. Just because someone has a good product is one factor, but I think this guy handles himself like CEOs should.

tdavis4• 18 years ago

Zuckerberg winning that award was a partial contribution to the incredibly laughable nature of that entire production.

iamdave• 18 years ago

Mistakes happen. It’s how you handle them that really matters

You know that analogy about the king not wearing any clothes, and the little kid is the only person to notice it?

Yeah.

unalone5• 18 years ago

I'm a bit confused. Who's lacking clothes in your analogy?

geuis3• 18 years ago

I'm sorry, but I think everyone is missing the point. Why is Hulu removing content from their site at all? We live in the age of practical infinite storage and effectual infinite bandwidth. I wonder if any of these people have read about the long tail. Even though the economics of the LT are still being debated, there is absolutely no valid argument to be made about removing content from your service that has already been made available. For instance, I have been listening to tech podcasts at ITconversations for years and have even been an occasional editor. They have a system that rebuilds their entire collection of shows multiple times per month with new audio ads/sponsors. They are a much smaller business than something like Hulu and have built a dynamic infrastructure that works very well. Hulu can slap updated ads onto their shows much easier than that because it's all flash based. So why are they removing content at all? That is the question AND the point, not whether or not they have a proactive and apologetic CEO.

unalone5• 18 years ago

They're removing it because the people that created the TV show want it removed. Those people are the ones with rights to the content.

They also remove The Daily Show after two weeks, because Comedy Central wants to archive it on their own show. They have that right as content owners.

So I get that you don't like that, but it's their right, and the fact is that Hulu's so good because they work well with others.

wmf2• 18 years ago

The real problem is that the whole concept of "release windows" is confusing and frustrating. Better explanations won't fix it.

geuis3• 18 years ago

That doesn't negate my argument though. Hulu is a creation of major content owners getting together and agreeing to put their content in one place and to run advertisements against it. The problem is that the same content owners who agree to put their content up for a limited time are also not getting the full picture of how things have changed in the last few years. The methods for distribution have changed. The content creators no longer have sole control over the distribution medium, like original tv and radio broadcasting stations.

The first major break in that decades old paradigm was the wide-spread growth of cable networks. This opened up more viewing opportunities and made room for new networks. Comedy Central itself is an example of this. The major networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS fought against cable pretty heavily in the beginning. Then they finally caught on and that has been their primary broadcast medium for the last 20-30 years. Now its happened again, and this time not only are the old networks being reactionary, so are the same cable networks that sprouted up as cable tv spread around. This time distribution is online and essentially worldwide. The content owners are now treating their own websites and services like channels and tv stations. They want to make the audience come to them in order to get access to content. They have yet to catch on that this will fail too.

The audience, us, will get content wherever we want it. A lot of us download via filesharing and p2p sites. Some of us buy via services like Amazon and iTunes. Most of us still watch TV, but more and more of us have DVRs and choose to skip over commercials. We will watch content how and where we want. The rules of the new paradigm basically mean that content is no longer packageable. You can't wrap it up in a tape or disk, lock it into a channel, or lock it down to a website. The audience is no longer vertical, but has instead gotten much wider and deeper. If you want to make money from the content you produce, you have to spread it out to every distribution method where you can get some kind of incremental revenue from it. Instead of having your content on your one station or website, keep it there and also push it out to Hulu, TV.com, iTunes, Amazon, Xbox Live, and wherever else you can push it to. Don't remove your content from certain services as an artificial mechanism to try to direct where your audience goes to get it. All you end up doing is alienating your fans and turning them off.

aston• 18 years ago

They even got two episodes added back that weren't there before (The Gang Gets Whacked, pts. 1 & 2). Sweet.

dfranke• 18 years ago

It seems "ClownCo" isn't quite turning out like we expected. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5972

Xichekolas• 18 years ago

No joke. I love Hulu, and when I found out it was just a joint venture I was kind of surprised. It really is a great substitute for traditional TV.

dabeeeenster2• 18 years ago

Why is this linked through 37signals? Why not just link through to the original message?

I understand people respect 37s here for whatever reason, but sometimes the linking is just ridiculous. This has nothing to do with 37s...

noor420• 18 years ago

is it just me getting this feeling lately or 37 signals is trying to spam HN

jonursenbach• 18 years ago

Is it 37 who's spamming HN, or is it their fanbois?

axod2• 18 years ago

The other day there were 4 37signals posts on the top page here. I think one is more than enough usually...

quellhorst• 18 years ago

This seems to go in phases... First TechCrunch spam, then anything Zed Posts, now anything 37s posts.

unalone5• 18 years ago

Because more people read 37signals than read the Hulu blog. This is how I came across the message, too. And some people use the HN autosubmit bookmarklet for fast posting.

mhartl• 18 years ago

It's a follow-up to their recent post on this subject: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1528-the-bullshit-of-outage-l... (posted here as http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=432737).

chris112• 18 years ago

I think Hulu did great in this situation. It's not like they have said they would keep episodes of shows up forever, shows get removed a lot. FX wanted the show off, so they basically had to take the show off.The only bad point was originally they would have lost credibilty as a reliable place to watch shows, but the notice and addition of the show for another two weeks show they are taking this seriously. Hulu has earned some of my respect, I'm impressed.

kwamenum86• 18 years ago

It's funny that 37s thought the apology letter was great because it violated some of the principles they laid out for good apologies.

charlesju• 18 years ago

How hard is it to create a startup when you have all the premium content on TV at your disposal?

jadence• 18 years ago

Excellent point. In many ways I think the networks get a bit too much credit for Hulu.

I thought a bit about it think and I think the accolades are largely because people didn't expect much after the fiascos of the RIAA and the MPAA. How many of us here expected the networks to be able to embrace, adapt, and deliver like they did with Hulu? I know I sure didn't.

Sure many readers here could've built something equivalent or better given rights to the content and half the capital injection but IMO the networks still deserve recognition for Hulu.

Hulu CEO: "We screwed up royally"

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