Benjamin Kuo’s Blog

There’s been more than enough written on the public launch of the NBC/News Corp. venture Hulu today, and perhaps I’m in the minority; but looking over the titles streaming out of Hulu, I’m suddenly realizing that network television lost me long ago. Out of the dozens of TV shows available — either as episodes, or even only with clips — on the site, I realize I’ve maybe (maybe) watched a couple of shows, and even then probably in passing at the airport waiting for a flight. Albeit, I’m probably a fraction of the population, since I very rarely watch TV, but the networks have a big job in front of them to attract back folks who they’ve lost long ago to cable/satellite, the Internet, and elsewhere.

For anyone who has been making the rounds of the holiday parties and networking events, one of the things you hear quite a bit now is people bragging about their traffic numbers. Just today, Funny or Die — the video site from comedy star Will Ferrell — reported that it had “surpassed 50 million views” of the firm’s hallmark “The Landlord” video. The video is hilarious — however you have to wonder how (and if) those traffic numbers correlate in any way to revenue. I recall a podcast I did last year with Tony Greenberg of Ramprate, talking about the costs of hosting video on the Internet. Traffic isn’t exactly free, and I wonder what the actual costs versus revenue numbers are for all that video traffic.