Comments on: Why Hulu Didn’t Save Caprica

By: iamcathyhammer

iamcathyhammer — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 18:05:31 +0000

I am delighted someone from a network clarified how these decisions are made. Try watching one of your favorite shows and estimating the cost of cast, locations, production design and effects. It’s obvious the money has to come from somewhere and right now the traditional commercial is still the main supplier. I’ll be keeping an eye on internet-based services to see what they do to stay in the game. Hulu is convenient, but will it be as appealing if I sit through more breaks or it costs me nearly the same as my cable company per month?

By: We Live in the Future…Sorta | Josh Braun's Blog

We Live in the Future…Sorta | Josh Braun's Blog — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:44:35 +0000

[...] the potential for it is there. I’ve written about this before and recently made a similar comment on NewTeeVee explaining my thoughts: Why not charge advertisers more to provide the program free [...]

By: Jeffrey Matthias

Jeffrey Matthias — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 18:15:22 +0000

I guess that’s the point I’m making. If there are enough viewers, but “the system” needs them to be “general demographic” viewers, the system is broken. It should be enough to have a good number of eyeballs, and now the technology is there so that ads can be customized to the viewer to make sure that they’re more likely to respond to them.

I have a Mac Mini hooked to our main TV, so I’m exactly who the system doesn’t view as a real viewer. The thing is, I’m not going back, it’s been a wonderful 2+ years without the cord. I look forward to when there is a way to fund shows based off of my type of viewership.

By: Walter D

Walter D — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 18:06:02 +0000

This is a very important post. Content costs money. Lots of it. And right now non-traditional viewing windows just don’t cover the cost of the product. Pretty simple math. Sci-fi customers are indeed valuable but not when they skip ads and pirate content.

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 17:02:02 +0000

It had viewers but not enough general demographic viewers to attract a renewal.

SGU was a bit ropey for the first half of season one and then hit its stride absolutely.

By: Jeffrey Matthias

Jeffrey Matthias — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 22:22:53 +0000

@mark Really? i could swear that we just read an article that said the show had viewers and that the problem was that they didn’t conform to the current advertising system’s definition of an ideal viewer.

Don’t get me wrong, I do wish that Caprica had started off a little faster, but I’m one of the weird ones who was happy with SGU from the get-go.

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 09:56:12 +0000

The trouble with Caprica is is took too long to get going. Once it did it was brilliant. The same is also true of SGU.

I think the blame here lies with the writers, not the viewers.

By: Jeffrey Matthias

Jeffrey Matthias — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 20:15:47 +0000

It’s not the ratings system that’s broken, it’s the advertising system.

It’s unfortunate that advertisers don’t get the value of HULU. It gets viewers to watch ads that would have been TIVOed away otherwise.

I, for one, wouldn’t care if basic demographic info was given to an advertiser from HULU (so long as I’m still anonymous), which one would think would actually make the advertising more effective. In fact, HULU has the capability to show me ads that are relevant to me. I don’t NEED to see 6 ads in a commercial break if you can show me the 1 that I’ll actually watch. HULU can obviously change up the ads on an individual episode, why not cater them to the watcher?

We’ll get there, but, unfortunately, there will be some good shows that fall by the wayside in the mean time.

By: Josh Braun

Josh Braun — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 00:52:49 +0000

I agree, with Ben on this one. Why not charge advertisers more to provide the program free on Hulu and other online distributors? Friends and I have hypothesized that people retain ads from Hulu and its ilk better than either TV or TiVo. TiVo’ers skip ads altogether. Live television ad breaks are long enough that people tend to talk through them, run to the bathroom, or make themselves snacks. But on Hulu and the network video players the 30 second ad breaks are (a) impossible to skip, and (b) too short to run away from. Thus, the ad recall online is likely to be superior to that from other types of media, to say nothing of the medium’s ability to target customers. All these are reasons the networks should be able to market ad space online for great rates. In reality, I guess that doesn’t seem to be happening.

By: Joe Patel

Joe Patel — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 23:49:18 +0000

I wonder if online advertising is really that much more valuable than tv or magazine ads. Other wise then there should be 10x revenue from online instead of the other way around. I guess its because there are no local offices for online channels to generate the kind of revenue needed to support the online networks.