Digital Media

Hulu has debuted a long-requested feature--the ability to find out when new episodes of TV shows will be available to stream.

The video site, which is a joint venture of NBC, ABC, and Fox, calls the new feature Coming Soon. It went live Monday.

Hulu's new Coming Soon feature.

(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman)

The schedule of when TV shows will be released online has been unclear up until this point, leaving people guessing when an episode will be posted. This new feature solves that problem.

The update includes a few additional features. First, people can choose to get an e-mail reminding them when an episode gets posted. This is definitely helpful for those of us who are forgetful and don't use Hulu's excellent Queue feature. Also, Hulu now lets you place the embed code for an unreleased episode on your blog or Web site. I embedded this week's upcoming episode of "The Office" below to show how this feature looks.

... Read more

Asked whether the film industry is doomed, Big Champagne CEO Eric Garland predicts that it has more advantages in the Digital Age than music labels.

(Credit: Big Champagne)

During a visit to Hollywood last week, I wanted to talk to people who knew a thing or two about the film industry's burgeoning meltdown. One of the people I sought out was Eric Garland, CEO and co-founder of Big Champagne.

Beverly Hills, Calif.,-based Big Champagne has collected data on file sharing and sold it to media companies for almost 10 years. Garland's company has survived all that time, even while making the same sad pitch. He tells the music labels and film studios they are going to be chopped down at the knees by the Internet and online piracy--but that doesn't mean they can't survive.

As anyone might have guessed, almost everybody in media initially told Big Champagne to stick a cork in it. Back in the early part of the decade, nobody wanted to hear it, and Garland logged lots of five-minute meetings. Thanks to his persistence, though, he saw up close how digital technology buffeted the music industry. Now, some of the big labels are striking partnerships with his company.

What makes Garland an important speaker on this subject is that despite his gloomy message, he's bullish on both the Internet and movies. His interests and Hollywood's are aligned, he says, because if the studios don't survive then he loses customers. He wants them to do well but he just doesn't think that telling them what they want to hear, the "bedtime stories" as he calls it, is going to help.

In his interview with CNET, Garland predicted that the film business is in for a period of downsizing and cost cutting; that Hollywood's digital evolution will likely be similar to the music industry's but will unfold much faster; and that great wealth will still flow into the sector.

Question: Your business is watching file sharing. So is it spreading to the mainstream? Is Mom and Dad from Sheboygan pirating content?
Garland: Oh yes, particularly Mom and Dad in Munich; Mom and Dad in Seville; Mom and Dad in Paris. When we talk about video the reason I single out the European cities is because that's where people are forced to wait a long time to see content legally. In the digital world, we don't want to wait three months, six months. We're just not accepting that anymore...we want it all, we want it right now and even Mom and Pa Kettle are getting to the point where they say if it's not on, let's just fire up the computer and watch it. If they want me to wait six months, I've got other options. And people don't really have a conscious or qualms about that, or at least it's mitigated by their feeling that they are entitled to keep up with the Jones'. It is the Twitter, real-time Internet expectations.

What we're seeing is a tremendous pile-on of feature film and television content, led by TV worldwide. In terms of growth, it is eclipsing the sharing of these little music files. I mean most of the new adopter activity, most of the increase in terms of people, transactions, and downloads is coming on the video side.

That means that this year or next year is going to be Hollywood's year to really start to lose audience--not just at the fringes but in regular middle-American living rooms. They'll lose them to the other box, to the smart box.

Q: Reed Hastings (the CEO of Netflix) wants to see every TV set come equipped with the ability to access the Internet. That will only accelerate Hollywood's demise, no?
Garland: Again, I think it drives both. The winner is the one who ultimately wins on the merits, and those are ease of use. Certainly the legitimate markets should win there. It did in music. Remember, iTunes wins in large part because it works so much better than anything else. So, Reed should win. His competitors should win on ease of use. Quality of content? They should at least be competitive in terms of having great on-demand, high-definition, rich audio, video. But when it comes to depth of catalog, that's where pirate markets have the edge. They have it also in timely delivery. Sorry. Go to Hulu right now and type in 24. There's just a clipped sort of terse message that says "Sorry about season 1 and season seven...

Q: Because they want to sell me past seasons on DVD, right?
Garland: Yes, but Surfthechannel.com, (an online site where users can find links to a plethora of unauthorized shows and films) doesn't care about that. They're happy to serve up current and past episodes of "24." And just like music, Hollywood's first reaction to that will be "Well, that's just not fair. That's jumping the turnstile, that's breaking the rules. We have to shut that down, because if you remove that option then people will be more patient." You won't remove that option, and you're losing valuable time if you focus on removing that option at the expense of improving that option and bettering that option, beating that option.

The music people used to say, "How can you can compete with free?" And now you ask anybody in digital music and they'll tell you, "I'm just trying to compete effectively with free." They've embraced the very condition that up until very recently they said they would reject. I'm telling you, you are going to compete with free. Sometimes you're even going to win, once you make the commitment to living in the marketplace as it is and not as you wish it were or as it once was.

Q: That's got to be hard for people in that industry or in any industry to hear. After hearing that, I almost want to start collecting donations for Matt Damon.
Garland: But I want to be clear that I was far more bearish on music than I am about Hollywood's prospects.

Everything that the customer demonstrated that they wanted starting with the original Napster was diametrically opposed to what the music industry needed. Everything that the distributor or the (bandwidth providers) wanted was diametrically to what the music industry wanted. In other words there was no place to hammer out a marketplace that would work for both sides. Customers would say "I want MP3s" and the music industry would say "We can't do MP3s because we have to have (digital rights management)." The customer would say "deal breaker!" The customer would say "I want every piece of music ever recorded. I want access to everything, everything I can remember dancing to no matter what year I went to prom and I want it right now."

Napster said sure. The music industry said "We can't do that. We can only license these titles." Deal breaker.

The customer said "I want to eat all I want at one low price that feels like free." The music industry said "No my friend, it's a dollar a track." There was no point of agreement. Hollywood conversely, is very different.

Hollywood says we like DRM, we would like to extend to you this content but on terms that we control and the customer says "Yeah, that's cool. I've always been good with that. I like renting. I'll give it back to you when I'm done." The music industry says "How come we can't we do that?" The customer says "No, because it's not my expectation. It's not the contract that we've had all along." But in video this is in the contract we've had all along. Blockbuster has always given us stuff and we paid for it and then we had to bring it back. We're good with that. There are all these places where what the online consumer is demanding is actually a workable proposition to Hollywood. There's a lot of alignment but some really some important places where there isn't any. There's no easy fix. When I tell the film studios "The good news is that you want people to rent and not just own and people are happy to do that. Check."

I say "You want some DRM--people are accustomed to DRM. There's DRM on DVDs." But when you get to one where you want customers to wait two months for a DVD, then they say that's not negotiable.

Anybody who really understands the film business will tell you that's the end of our lives as we know it. That's the end of our industry as we know it. We have to be able to preserve those windows. We have to regain at least enough control to say you can have it, but not today. And when I tell them you're never going to get that, that's when the conversation breaks off and curse words are uttered and we go back to our corners.

Q: What windows are you referring to? They have windows that allows cable channels and broadcast stations to get exclusive access to a film title for a specific amount of time. But you can't be talking about theaters too. What is Hollywood if it can't promise theaters exclusive access to films?
Garland: I think the theatrical experience is totally viable. We love going to the theater. But when we walk out to the lobby I want to be able to pick up the DVD. If I got my 3D glasses on and my kids say "Can we watch it when we get home?" The answer has to be "yes." If the answer's no, the film industry loses.

Garland: These are tough lessons. By the way, I don't want to sound like the armchair pundit. You end up sounding not very empathetic. You sound like some ass who says "This is how it's going to be and if you don't like too bad." I'm not trying to be dismissive. I'm not trying to be glib about this. I understand the implication may well be tens-of-thousands of jobs lost, billions of dollars pouring out of the industry, shutterings, downsizings...I'm not trying to make light of that. I'm just telling you that in the final accounting i think some things we now know. Some of them are very unpopular even in concept and some of them are very hard to incorporate into strategic thinking, but that doesn't make them any less avoidable or inevitable.

Q: Are paywalls one of the solutions? That's what Hulu's leaders are considering.
Absolutely not. What you have is a very effective antipiracy tool in Hulu, and I'm specifically drawing on the numbers and not just citing anecdotal evidence. People really do prefer the Hulu experience. So you actually have cannibalization, for once, of a pirate market by a legitimate market. You have a legitimate market stealing share and audience away from a pirate market. Put that behind a subscription wall and they'll just go back.

Q: But it doesn't appear that Hulu is making the kind of money that will satisfy content owners, at least those News Corp. and NBC Universal (Hulu's backers).
Garland: The cute answer, which is probably the truest answer, is that growing a sector is a privilege and not a right. There is no right size. There is no correct or God-given size for any sector. Why do we get to make movies that cost $300 million to make? Because we have found venues where people will spend more than $300 million on the result. If people spend only $50 million then the price of a movie must be $49 million or less.

I think in today's dollars no one could make "Gone With The Wind" because at the time this movie was made when everyone went to the movies. It was something like 79 percent of the population. The cute answer is that movies will get smaller.

I know people are tearing out hair and spinning in graves, but maybe "Transformers" has to be made for $75 million next time. Oh my God, what am I saying? Put the words back in your mouth. That is just a pretty plain faced observation. One outcome might mean that in the Digital Age the return on investment on a major International tent-pole franchise is not a billion dollars. It's a quarter of that or a third. Therefore we have to get our costs in line with the market value.

When we talk about this in 3 or 5 or 7 years, one thing we will all have to concede is costs have to come down. We don't have the total control over the distribution chain that we exploited so well as industries for so long. Without that you can't take advantage of the consumer in the same way.

Q: I feel like I just heard the doctor give his prognosis and the patient is a goner.
Garland: It's just "Lose weight man (laughter). Get on a treadmill, change your diet and lose weight."

Q: Has Hollywood given up on fighting piracy?
You mean has changing the name from "antipiracy" to "content protection" a symbol of a retreat or a softening? No. Not at all. It's likely that (the Motion Picture Association of America, the trade group of the six major studios) is trying to be more focused, more strategic. They are upping their game because that's how seriously they take it and that's how high a priority it is. On the contrary this is not the end, this is early days.

We now have the benefit of hindsight. We have watched an industry go through this. I think we can say with some confidence we know how this unfolds. What will happen is the studios will exhaust every available remedy and there will be a series of evolutions, meaning they will exhaust one remedy and a new one will present itself. These things will be pursued in tandem. They will pursue technological intervention on the Internet. This goes to the study at NYU that basically says this has had no effect. Ultimately, because they are spending a lot of money and not getting results, they'll become disillusioned with these vendors. They'll clean house. But something else will present itself.

"Well, maybe we were focused on trying to disrupt the networks and we should have focused on a technological solution to mass notification." Well be on to the next thing. Well spend some number of months--I'm just essentially recounting the music industry's journey--filing vast numbers of infringement notifications, letting everybody and their granny know you're infringing our content. They'll take the temperature and they'll do surveys and collect data and they'll try to convince themselves that this is having a real effect in reversing the tide and then after some period it will just not have been convincingly demonstrated to have worked. And they'll realize that by any number of measures the piracy problem has only grown worse. But they will have to exhaust all of those things and more. They will have to chase legal remedies, legislative agendas, all the way to what they view as being the end of the line before they say "OK, so this really is the landscape we're stuck with. As much as we didn't want it, this appears to be it. Now we have to just dive in and make businesses that work here."

And that's where music has only just arrived in this country and note it hasn't even come close to arriving in a lot of European countries. If you ask Universal Music Group in the U.K. "Are you going to win this war on piracy?" They will say "Oh yes, swiftly and decisively and soon. The rate of peer-to-peer infringement will be down 70 percent in the U.K. in the next few months. They have specific targets. Not here. We've exhausted all of those paths. There's a big gap. If the music industry in this country just now sort of arrived at the conclusion where they say "We just have to play on this field even through it ain't home court and there isn't a lot of advantage." And in some territories, music hasn't even gotten there yet, then how can Hollywood be there? This is early in the journey. I do think it's going to be a quicker path. It has to be. The economics are going to come down faster.

I spent years when everyone ignored what I was saying because I know it's not pleasant to hear. But my job is to help businesses all over this landscape to get from point A to point B with the least amount of pain. But that means getting smart and getting ready for the transition before the competition. I want them looking in the mirror now and not when it's too late. It's tricky. I want these guys to do well but l don't' want them to tell themselves bedtime stories. That's what the music industry did.

They spent a lot of money going back to antipiracy and spent a lot of emotional dollars on vendors who sold them panaceas and told them everything is going to be okay. "Don't listen to Eric Garland," they said. "He's a gloom-and-doom guy. He gets off on telling you things are going to be terrible. Spend a few million dollars over here and we'll clean up the Internet for you. Hey, I understand that. I want to open up my wallet for that guy too. It's comfort food.

But my message to media companies is they don't have that kind of time anymore.

On Thursday came more signals from News Corp. that Hulu will charge for at least some of its films and TV shows.

Chase Carey, News Corp.'s deputy chairman, suggested in comments he made at the OnScreen Media Summit that it's just a matter of time before Hulu, the video service founded by News Corp. and NBC Universal, launches a subscription service.

"I think a free model is a very difficult way to capture the value of our content," Carey said, according to a report Broadcasting & Cable, which co-hosted the conference. "I think what we need to do is deliver that content to consumers in a way where they will appreciate the value...Hulu concurs with (the notion) that it needs to evolve to have a meaningful subscription model as part of its business."

Asked when Hulu would roll out its pay model, Carey, who has been to only one News Corp. board meeting since his recent arrival at the company, was less sure. According to Broadcasting & Cable, Carey thought the move would likely be made in 2010. He acknowledged however, that no timeline had been set.

Carey's comments follow similar statements made by other News Corp. decision makers, including Rupert Murdoch, the company's chairman. Murdoch has talked about charging for content at the online units of many of his media properties, including The Wall Street Journal.

If Hulu charges, it's a big deal. The video site, which offers full-length TV shows from NBC Universal, Twentieth Century Fox Film, and other top entertainment companies, is a pioneer. It's the first online ad-supported video service to successfully offer long-form content. If it retreats from the ad-supported model, then what consumers get is the cable business model transplanted on the Web.

And charging for content online may not solve Hulu's revenue problems. Subscription video-on-demand services have to compete with a score of sites that offer pirated content free of charge.

The reason that Hulu is considering a pay wall is presumably because the site isn't generating the kind of money the studios have grown accustomed to. Advertising experts have said that it's not possible to insert enough ads without ruining the viewing experience on one end and on the other, it's not possible right now to obtain the kind of ad rate that will generate big money.

It's interesting to note that while News Corp. appears to be dissatisfied with the ad-supported model, Sony Pictures Entertainment appears to be doubling down on ad-supported Crackle.

There isn't another major studio distributing as many full-length feature films online on an ad-supported basis than Sony Pictures. In February, Crackle began offering catalog film titles from its vast library on Crackle. Recently, "Taxidriver" made its ad-supported Internet debut.

Since Sony Pictures relaunched Crackle--formerly a user-generated video service--in February, the site's premium monthly streams have grown to nearly 10 million, 27 percent of which were in the site's core demographic (men, ages 18 to 34), according to statistics provided by ComScore. Time spent on Crackle has increased sevenfold in that period, to 13.4 minutes per unique session. In the core demographic, that number rises to 16.7 minutes.

Here's another benefit that Crackle offers Sony: the site will post premium films when they aren't under contract to a cable or broadcast TV station. Before Crackle came along, movies like "Taxidriver" would gather dust during the periods when they weren't being aired.

We don't know what kind of money is being made by Hulu or Crackle, but regardless of whether Hulu charges for its content, there is still hope for ad-supported movies and TV shows on the Internet.

This weekend, starting Friday at 10:30 a.m. PDT, Hulu will be live-streaming the Austin City Limits music festival. Hulu will be using its Watch Now application on Facebook, which has a live events box integrated so that users can discuss the concert as they watch.

(Credit: Hulu)

You can see the schedule of acts on the Facebook application page for the live-stream. Unfortunately, the stream features only a fraction of the acts that are playing the festival. In fact, some of the biggest acts, including Kings of Leon, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Dave Matthews Band, and Pearl Jam are missing from the live-stream lineup. Luckily, we still get to check out some great acts like Thievery Corporation, The Decemberists, Ben Harper, and The Dead Weather. There's no real indication of how the selection was made and I'm certainly grateful that we are getting a stream at all, but I can't help but wish that the full compliment of acts would be available for streaming.

Rupert Murdoch said in July he wanted to reshape MySpace into an entertainment hub, and sources say the site now plans to launch a new video service sometime in the next several months with the help of sister site Hulu, CNET News has learned.

The big question is whether MySpace's service will offer downloads or a subscription service.

Rupert Murdoch, News Corp. chairman

(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET Networks)

Murdoch, the chairman of media conglomerate News Corp., intends to overhaul MySpace Video by bringing in a larger number of feature films, TV shows, and music videos. The social network's new video area will be given a major face lift, more exposure, and be re-branded so as to make it more attractive to advertisers, according to two sources with knowledge of the plans.

A MySpace spokeswoman declined to comment.

Murdoch's News Corp. owns MySpace and a large chunk of Hulu, which also boasts NBC Universal and Disney as its other stakeholders.

MySpace already streams some of Hulu's TV shows and a tiny number of full-length movies to users. But MySpace Video, as it is now, can't come close to competing with the Web's top video services, such as YouTube, Netflix's Watch Now, or Crackle.

A visit to MySpace Video on Monday evening revealed a section that provided few clues that feature films or prime-time TV shows were even offered there. Besides being buried, the content is displayed on a jumbled Web page. The links to the few long-form films and shows are mixed in with the much more plentiful short clips and trailers. To be frank, the site is a mess.

"MySpace's intention is to do a much better job of monetizing the video area," said one source.

What isn't clear is whether MySpace Video will offer downloads and subscriptions. Last week, Murdoch and and Jeff Zuker, CEO of NBC Universal, said ad-supported Hulu is considering whether to offer pay-per view and a subscription service.

Whether a new MySpace video service would also offer these isn't clear.

But it seems logical to set up a Hulu storefront at MySpace, which would enable the site's users to purchase a movie download or rent a flick without having to hop over to Hulu.

The television season is about to arrive full force.

Soon, most of your favorite television shows, as well as new series, will be making their way into your home. But if you're unsure when your show will come back, you want to catch up, or you simply want to track the show as the season progresses, I have you covered with some great sites.

Let's check them out.

Tracking TV

Hulu...There are few better ways to track your favorite shows than to watch them on Hulu, which is backed by NBC Universal, ABC, and Fox.

Thanks to strategic partnerships that Hulu inked with networks, finding and watching your favorite shows is quick and easy. And since the site is ad-supported, you won't need to worry about doling out cash to watch your shows.

I spend considerable time on Hulu. I caught up with last season's of "Family Guy" on the site. The videos run well. The ads, while a necessary evil, aren't that bad. And the quality is outstanding. Even better, you can embed Hulu videos into your blog, making it a great platform to share your favorite shows with friends.

Hulu has outstanding video quality.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

MyTVRSS...When you first get to MyTVRSS, you'll probably be a little sickened by its design. A black background sitting behind pink type makes the site an extremely unattractive target for your attention. But once you realize you'll spend very little time there, you'll get past it.

MyTVRSS lists every television show currently in production. When you click on one of the links on that site, you'll find a show summary, information on the last episode that aired (assuming it isn't a new show), and the series premiere's date and time. Unfortunately, not all the show listings are as informative as I would have liked. For instance, the site's "The Office" page was great. But its "30 Rock" page didn't feature nearly as much information. Your mileage will vary.

As you sift through all the shows on the site, you can pick those series that you watch most often by checking the box next to their titles. At the bottom of the page is a "Create Feed" option. When you click that button, you'll receive a unique RSS feed that you can add to your reader. That feed will alert you when your shows air. For someone like me who easily forgets a favorite show is on, it's a nice service to have.

MyTVRSS is certainly an ugly site.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Boxee, a New York-based start-up that makes "media center" software, announced Wednesday that it has raised $6 million in a Series B financing round led by General Catalyst Partners. Existing investors Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital also participated in the round.

Boxee raised its series A round, to the tune of $4 million, last November. With the new financing the company hopes to ink more deals with media companies and set-top box manufacturers, as well as hire more employees to keep building out its technology (which includes a developer platform). Currently in an alpha test phase, Boxee hopes to expand to a beta test in October.

More deals will also help Boxee gain some industry cred. It has still been unable to convince Hulu, now the big name in premium online video, to reverse a ban on Boxee's access to its content--which includes a huge library from NBC Universal, News Corp., and Disney's ABC Entertainment.

"I think that the best thing that we could do in order to become partners with Hulu is, on one end, work with other media companies so they see that Boxee is overall a friendly company to content owners," CEO Avner Ronen told CNET News. "And the second is that we need to grow our footprint, we need to grow our user base, we need to get on more digital devices, and I think if we do those things it will open the opportunity up for us to partner with Hulu."

"Our belief is that, eventually, content owners need to follow the users," Ronen said.

(Credit: Roku)

In its bid to put together a roster of compelling content, Roku has just acquired an ace.

Starting Tuesday, the set-top box--known to many as "the Netflix box"--will begin streaming Major League Baseball games. As with the current Netflix arrangement, you have to be a subscriber to the service, in this case MLB.com Premium, to access the content that normally would be available only on a PC or iPhone.

And while this is a boon to baseball fans, it's an even more important development for Roku. MLB.tv Premium is the first live content available on Roku's device, and by bringing that from the PC to the TV, the 50-person Saratoga, Calif., company is beginning to differentiate itself from similar consumer electronics products.

Roku currently has access to the Netflix Watch Instantly queue, as well as Amazon Video on Demand, which allows for rental and purchase of movies. More recently, Roku added content from Blip.TV and MediaFly, two content aggregators, for videos and podcasts.

MLB.tv will work the same way. It will be accessed via a new pane that can be reached via the small remote. Once a customer's account is synced, any live, out-of-market (as in, not your home team) game across the league can be seen, with the choice of both the home and away team's local broadcast feed. Games up to one week old are available in the archive, and previews appear of each team's scheduled games up to a week in advance. ... Read more

In a move that makes him seem a bit like Dr. Evil wanting to be paid one hundred billion dollars for Austin Powers' ransom, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has said that he will charge for all the online content associated with the newspapers and television stations he owns.

Rupert Murdoch, media baron

(Credit: Dan Farber/CBS Interactive)

It's a goal that some in the digital-media space will bill as ludicrous--and some as inevitable.

The Financial Times reported the news Thursday, adding that Murdoch had spotted "some good signs of life" in the battered advertising sector.

He's already got most of The Wall Street Journal, which News Corp. acquired two years ago, behind a pay wall. But he also owns the rest of Dow Jones & Company, the Fox television and film empire, the New York Post, and the U.K.'s The Times. News Corp. is also a partner in Hulu, the joint video venture that offers a big chunk of Fox television content (as well as NBC and ABC) for free on the Web.

Robert Iger, the CEO of new Hulu partner Disney, said at a conference last month that he does not believe Web content needs to be offered for free, and that consumers will be willing to pay for it.

"We intend to charge for all our news Web sites," Murdoch said, according to the Financial Times. "If we're successful, we'll be followed by all media."

In late 2007, well before the market collapse last fall, Murdoch had said pretty much the exact opposite, claiming that a free and ad-supported model would be more beneficial than a subscription model for The Wall Street Journal.

Presumably the new paid-content strategy wouldn't apply to News Corp.'s digital-only assets, like social network MySpace.