Hulu, what the F are you thinking?
November 15th, 2007 — dan.linI watched a 43 minute episode of Ghost Hunters on Hulu the other day. It was a great show and the video quality was decent but the commercials are a million times worst than regular television. It starts out with a sponsorship drop saying that the show was brought with ‘limited interruptions’ by the advertiser. The truth is, the interruptions are unbearable. They are 5 minute long commercials that you can’t skip. That can be fine if the commercials are engaging and have a good variety of content but that is definitely not the case.
Throughout the 43 minute show, the same 5 minute commercial played 5 times. That’s 25 minutes worth of commercials with 43 minutes of content where usually only 17 minutes would play on regular TV. The fact that you had to sit through the same 5 minutes 5 times is enough to make you want to pull that ethernet plug out of your computer. On top of that, they cut into the shows at random moments. If this is how they are going to deliver their content online, it is going to discourage a lot of viewers.
It is possible that the networks don’t really want hulu to be as successful as it promises to be due to the lucrative contract they have with satellite and cable providers. But that’s just not the way to launch a product that has so much promise just to be sabotaged by its creator.