Why I trust Hulu (part 2)

In a previous Hulu post I waxed lyrically about the design and general loveliness of using Hulu.

That’s obviously important, but without quality content it’s just html, flash and some quite well done ads. The way Hulu deals with its wide range of content is very impressive and something we can all learn from. Essentially where the content originated from is given little importance. When you view an episode of Heroes there is no mention of which producer, channel or studio owns it. In Hululand it’s the content and the genre of the content which is important, not whether it’s a Fox, Warner Bros or Discovery channel programme.

This is a brave and I believe probably correct approach. The BBC could possibly have launched iPlayer without the channel associations, but they didn't and now it's very difficult to imagine them ever going. If you imagine BBC content on Hulu, there would be no mention of the channels, the stamp of quality would simply be ‘BBC’.


The breadth and amount of quality is impressive (probably greater than that on offer at any given time on the iPlayer). You can watch 37 episodes of Buck Rogers (including the fantastically titled ‘Planet of the Amazon Women’), 57 clips from the Onion News Network, 1152 clips from The Simpsons, 5 episodes and 65 clips of Heroes, and it looks as if all new episodes of The Daily Show will be available.


There are hundreds of full movies, from classics through to more recent releases, and many more movie clips. All for free. Critically, Hulu's content is high quality, profesional content and it's becoming clear this is where the advertisers want to be.

There is a Family channel on Hulu, but the content and the site as a whole are definitely aimed at adults. I imagine at some point this family channel will spin off and a child friendly version of Hulu will launch, possibly to try and compete with the power of Disney.

So what next for Hulu? Well content, advertising and territories are key for future success. Hulu’s in a strong position in terms of content, being backed by NBC and Fox, but there is content from many other providers. The competition is lagging, Joost is going browser based but critically, without the content it won't make the same impact.


YouTube is miles ahead of everyone in terms of video views and audience, but being mainly user generated content, it’s struggling to bring in the advertising bucks that it should be.

Here in the UK we can’t view any Hulu content, and it’s unlikely we’ll ever see hulu.co.uk launching. The main channels in the UK are heavily invested in either the iPlayer, or the future release of Kangaroo (hopefully). It’s unlikely that these channels will hand over content to Hulu, but hopefully project Kangaroo will learn a lot from Hulu and will launch with an impressive, clean, mature and uncluttered product next year. I might register Kangarulu.co.uk just in case.

Note: In the UK you can browse Hulu and get a sense of the breadth of the content, however you can't actually watch the video - unless you are sneaky, or you know someone sneaky.