In an interview with NeeTeeVee, Hulu CTO Eric Feng talked about the progress of the project and where things are standing as of now, and where they will be in the near future. You can view and listen to the interview below. The sound is a little low, but there are subtitles to aid listening to the conversation. Don't be so shy next time Liz.;-)
Feng came along with Mojiti, the video company Hulu bought, and which he ran.
Some of the report Feng gave was unsurprising, in that the majority of people watching video on the site spent time watching full-length shows rather than short-form video so far in its beta. He added that of their entire online catalog, over 80 percent of it is viewed sometime over a weekly period. The time spent per visit on the site is over a half hour for each person.
The writers' strike hasn't had much impact on the service either, as demand for previously viewed content has surged during that time.
Another change the company has made during its testing period, is to allow entire seasons of a show to be on the site, rather than allowing them to expire after a period of five weeks. This is a smart move, as when they announced the five-week limitation last year, it made me wonder how people would respond to that. Obviously the beta users let it be known that it wasn't acceptable.
It was probably concerns over broadband streaming costs that concerned Hulu, which can become significant. Evidently they found it was worth the extra costs or extra ad revenue if they allowed the whole season to be on the site at once.
One way the partnership is looking at extending their reach is to possibly allow websites created for fans of shows to be able to embed an entire library of the show on their site. To me that makes a lot of sense and would probably get more views than they would solely on the Hulu site.
Feng said sometime in the first quarter Hulu should go live to the general Internet population.
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