Comments on: How Big — Or Small — Is Hulu? Depends On Who Provides The Numbers

By: silver

silver — Mon, 18 May 2009 18:02:11 +0000

hmmm, it looks like Hulu was at 8.3 million in April in Comscore. Where does that 42 million figure come from? It sounds way too high.

By: webby

webby — Mon, 18 May 2009 04:47:19 +0000

There is a bigger story here. Nielsen numbers are a joke.

NYTimes disputes Nielsen ratings for April.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003973868

By: Will

Will — Mon, 18 May 2009 02:03:06 +0000

I actually agree with Ryan. The number of people in the U.S. willing to watch TV online (as well as on demand) is actually relatively slim. They might be approaching that limit now.

Making it international would really open their service up. Doubt they could get agreements with enough foreign content owners to do it, though.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Sat, 16 May 2009 22:24:28 +0000

The internet is a worldwide service. If Hulu wants to continue to grow, they should take a look at sites like YouTube have done, and that is be available to the most number of eyeballs on the planet as possible. The only way to do this is remove geographic restrictions.

By: David Kaplan

David Kaplan — Sat, 16 May 2009 00:47:54 +0000

Thanks for the kind words and careful reading, Jason. The CBS line was corrected; as for Nielsen, here's part of the reason everyone is confused: Hulu's unique visits have been trending downward, while at the same time, the number of streams it has been generating have been rising — both sets of measurements are according to Nielsen.

By: jason

jason — Sat, 16 May 2009 00:21:21 +0000

David, 2 mistakes in your normally great reporting.

1) You refer to Nielsen talking of growing numbers as well as declining; for the former I think you were referring to Comscore.

2) Your final sentence on CBS should be reason to keep their distance as opposed to what you outline.