There's nothing wrong with Hulu

The big news today is that Hulu failed to come to an agreement with Comedy Central / Viacom. As a result The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are being pulled from the site.

This means that when I miss an episode of The Daily Show then I'll have to surf over to TheDailyShow.com instead of Hulu. Or it means that when I want to look over clips of The Colbert Report's "The Word" segment then I will have to surf to ColbertNation.com's Word page.

And, as a result, Viacom will get more advertising dollars from my viewage than they would have from my viewage on Hulu. Hulu gave them a percentage. Now they get it all. It's a good decision on Viacom's part, especially since they already have the websites up and running and paid for by advertisers.

But there's all this chatter, now, about how Hulu will have to start charging a fee to viewers of their other shows. That may be the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

I will say this: If paying a fee means I don't have to watch any commercials in order to see the shows I watch on Hulu then I'm listening. How much of a fee? That could be interesting.

But if it's a choice between commercial-free with a fee and commercial breaks with no fee then I'll probably still go with commercials and no fee, thanks. Unless we're talking about a lot more commercials than Hulu currently shows during a typical show. If the commercials get to the point where I should actually start using my old VCR to tape shows again then I may do that, instead.

Someday I will possess a DVR, but not yet.

Here's the thing: VCRs and DVRs allow viewers to time-shift their television viewing. They record the show on Thursday night and they watch it on Sunday or something. Fine. But that's not all that these video-recording technologies allow users to do. They also allow users to fast-forward through the commercials.

Hulu doesn't. If a viewer time-shifts his/her viewing on Hulu then that viewer is going to see a commercial at each break in the show. The whole commercial at its intended viewing speed, even. The viewer cannot fast-forward through the commercial. The viewer can, however, rewind within the commercial if s/he really wants to .

To the advertiser this should mean that advertising on Hulu is better than advertising during the broadcast of a show. It's also better for other reasons involving demographics and disposable income.

Advertisers, however, are stupid. They're willing to pay a lot more money in order for people to fast-forward through their commercials.

"But what about real-time viewers?" I hear you ask. I answer: Real-time viewers flip channels during the commercials. Or they run to the kitchen or the bathroom. They try to move clothes from the washer to the dryer during that commercial break for which the advertiser has paid so much.

So again I say that advertisers are stupid. They should be willing to pay more for Hulu viewers (the numbers of which are counted exactly by Hulu's computers and software) than they are for broadcast or cable viewers (the numbers of which are estimated using a small sample of homes).

Either that or Hulu is just not charging the advertisers enough.