Hulu pulls TV shows from rival sites
CBS's TV.com, Boxee among first sites to lose content
By Jennifer Netherby -- Video Business, 2/19/2009
FEB. 19 | Online video site Hulu.com yanked its TV shows from TV.com Wednesday and said it will pull its content from another site on Friday, causing some outrage among viewers and questions about the motives of Hulu backers NBC Universal and News Corp.
Hulu pulled its video off CBS-owned TV.com without explanation to users Wednesday morning citing “contractual rights.” The move comes as TV.com builds itself into more of a Hulu rival.
Heroes, Family Guy, The Simpsons and other popular Fox and NBC shows were among those pulled from TV.com.
Hulu is intended to be a one-stop shop for online TV viewing. But the moves have led to speculation that the online world will end up more fractured, forcing consumers to go to multiple sites to watch shows.
Hulu signed a syndication deal with TV.com, part of CNET, when it launched a year ago, allowing TV.com to offer Hulu's full-length, ad-supported TV shows and other content. Since that deal was signed, CBS bought CNET and in January relaunched TV.com, adding full-length TV content from CBS and Showtime. CBS also signed direct content deals with Sony, MGM and PBS. CBS doesn’t offer its TV shows on Hulu.
In a statement, Hulu said it “has contractual rights with regards to our relationship with TV.com, and we are exercising those rights. Out of respect for their confidentiality, we will not disclose our discussions.”
CBS hasn’t commented on the move and during a company conference call Wednesday afternoon, CEO Les Moonves didn’t mention the dispute as he hyped TV.com’s growth.
Following its January reinvention, TV.com’s traffic spiked 263%, according to numbers released earlier this week by Nielsen VideoCensus.
TV.com isn’t the only site that will go without Hulu content. On Friday, Hulu will pull all of its content off Boxee.com, a social networking startup that allows users to watch videos from across the Web on one site or stream those shows to their TV through the Apple TV.
Hulu CEO Jason Kilar announced the move in a blog post titled “Doing Hard Things” Wednesday evening, apologizing to Boxee users.
“Our content providers requested that we turn off access to our content via the Boxee product, and we are respecting their wishes,” he wrote. “While we stubbornly believe in this brave new world of media convergence—bumps and all—we are also steadfast in our belief that the best way to achieve our ambitious, never-ending mission of making media easier for users is to work hand in hand with content owners.”
In its own blog post addressing the content pull, Boxee CEO Avner Ronen said the company is working with Hulu and content providers to get content back on Boxee’s site. He notes that last week alone, Boxee generated 100,000 streams for Hulu.
Frustrated Boxee users complained on both sites, with some threatening to turn to pirated videos on BitTorrent. The Wall Street Journal’s All Things D blog speculated Fox and News Corp. forced Hulu to pull the content for cable companies losing audiences to Boxee.
Unlike TV.com, Hulu doesn’t have a syndication deal with Boxee to offer its video content through the site. Hulu has syndication agreements with AOL, Comcast, MSN, MySpace, Yahoo and other sites, which continue to feature Hulu content.
