Opening Note

Since cutting the cable a few months ago, I have been relying a lot on Hulu, the recently launched joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp., to make up the content deficit. Designed as a central distribution site to deliver "premium content" online, it draws together programming from NBC and Fox stables, as well as a smattering of material from Sony and Warner Brothers, and wraps it all up in a reasonably easy to navigate and simple to operate interface. A solution to having to pick through individual network sites in order to catch up on content, the service also provides a reasonably large and seemingly rapidly developing catalog of older material, meaning Saturday afternoons can be spent with back-to-back episodes of The A-Team and under-appreciated wonders like Total Recall 2070 (a Canadian/German co-production).

As the online video market in the US becomes a little crowded, Hulu is impressive in both its simplicity and catalog, including full and regularly updated seasons of many current and past programs. But the site also reveals some of the frictions caused by the lumpy move of television towards a service more and more defined by first-order commodity relations, and the adjustment of television's organizational and audience modes in turn. A brief glance across the comments left on the service point to some of the expectations audiences bring about the value of attention and viewership outside of the broadcast sphere.

Hulu sits somewhere between broadcast and video-on-demand models of television. Advertiser supported, the service inserts usually a single 15-second advert into each of the commercial breaks structured into American programming. Each program is presented as sponsored by a particular advertiser, meaning one advertiser per program appear in these breaks (often, annoyingly the same commercial). This porting of the advertising model of broadcast television, however reduced, is an attraction for companies such as General Motors, who see Hulu as something of an extension of their broadcast spend (Dana and Steel 2008). The service provides advertisers with a 'safe' space, an antithesis to sites that rely on user-created video, which brings with it risks in terms of quality and appropriateness of content -- on Hulu there are guarantees the materials won't offend any more than prime-time television. (See here.)

This advertising model also provides the kind of direct connection between television content and online advertising dollars some media companies, NBC among them, found lacking on YouTube. Much like Viacom (see here), NBC it seems became convinced the promotional value of having content on YouTube did not outweigh the financial returns gleaned from the revenue-sharing deals Google was offering (see here, here, and here).

Frustrated at having to police content and seeing ad dollars not coming exclusively back to the rights holder, NBC committed to developing Hulu as an "official" alternative, where rights holders have complete control over the appearance of clips (rather than needing to take responsibility for their disappearance) and where third parties don't intersect the revenue streams -- an issue that also contributed to NBC severing its relationship with Apple's iTunes service in 2007. (For more on this, see this New York Times article.) These three factors -- the perception Hulu is an official alternative to YouTube, that rights holders are responsible for the distribution of content across the service, and that the service might fill the void left by NBC's withdrawal from iTunes -- seem to influence the perceptions some viewers bring to the site, and the value they ascribe to their attention.

Organized around an on-demand model, viewing the advertisements is often seen by viewers as direct payment for access to programming on the site. Television audiences have, of course, long been aware of viewing ads as the 'payment' for television content, but this relationship seems foregrounded on Hulu. Many of those commenting point out they would happily offer more attention in exchange for content, particularly anywhere seasons are incomplete. Writes one viewer:

ill put up with more ads if it means getting this content [previous seasons] added. You should create a ad watch vs. rating for show system. Just dont overload the ads.

Similarly, some viewers point to their attention as an indicator of a market force that should be acknowledged, especially where little more than a collection of 'clips' from programs appear:

why would we want to see a fraction of our favorite shows when we can download them for free? the reason i use your service is convenience, and clips are not convenient. if you want to sustain your advertising revenue i suggest you get more full episodes. THE USERS HAVE SPOKEN!

Regularly, viewers point out that Hulu is competing with 'free,' and that the bargaining chip Hulu possesses is access to official copies. While the content offered might be of higher quality and assuredly legal, the real point of differentiation for the service is episode duration:

No full episodes = bad. If I wanted to see excerpts, I'd go to youtube.

Remarks such as these turn up regularly, although they don't dominate the comments on the service, many of which review or discuss the respective programs (the only place to leave a comment is a section labeled "User Reviews"), or offer some praise to the service for making content available. It is also not uncommon to find a commenter pointing to the market logics of DVD distribution as a reason only a limited amount of content is available, though it is usually in a tone that suggests Hulu is ultimately under serving the audience, in this case, in order to preserve another, more valuable market.

This suggestion emerges again as viewers respond on the site to the availability of content on iTunes. Here viewers bemoan the fact that Bravo, a US cable channel owned by NBC Universal, posts such little content and offers few alternative options in order to preserve the value of a cable subscription. Writes one:

I can afford cable monetarily, but simply won't spend 20 minutes of every hour watching commercials-- its simply not worth it. I'm happy, though to pay $1.99 to watch an episode without commercials. Happy, that is, until Bravo yanked Project Runway off of iTunes. Seriously, how much does Bravo make off of a single viewer? Why in the world won't they take my money to watch a show?

Next week, in the conclusion to this piece, Green looks at these user comments, their underlying logics, and confusion in industry rhetoric about the value of various audiences.

Glancing at the C3 Blog

Follow the Blog

Don't forget – you can always post, read, and carry out online conversations with the C3 team at our blog.

Closing Note

Television industry trade press have been full of interesting developments in what might be considered the "women's" cable space in recent weeks. Lifetime has made headlines with the news that it has "stolen" Project Runway from Bravo, a story that we likely haven't heard the end of given threatened litigation. Then, as adding this particular and high-profile series might suggest, Lifetime followed with news of a new younger target, which comes a few years after jettisoning its long identified tagline of "Television for Women," that it adopted over a decade before.

Such shifts at the veteran gendercaster occurred in between significant developments at another femme-centered channel, Oxygen. First, NBCUniversal completed its purchase of the long independent channel in November 2007. Five months later, the conglomerate announced a rebranding of Oxygen to audience members in "Generation O" who connect with its new tagline of "live out loud."

In both cases, the channels are shifting their brand message from one that clearly identified them as a destination for women--although the actual substance of the channels' programming seems as gendered-targeted as ever. Additionally, the announced brand adjustments position these channels as closer competitors as both set their sights on an elusive and narrow segment of female audience members.

What do these brand shifts tell us about categories such as "gender" in an ever-fragmenting cable environment? Are these changes suggestive of lessons about the viability of the gender niche? Are these adjustments lessons about consolidated cable ownership? And, what parallels might be found in the similarly awkward "men's" channel space? The ample explicit and subtle rebranding in the cable space in recent years reminds us of how fluid this sector of media remains. Despite much attention to what some conceive as a "next generation" of television platforms, such as those available online, cable channels remain an important component of the contemporary and future television industry.

The Recent Past of "Women's" Cable Channels

By all counts, when Oxygen announced its plans to launch in 1998, and even after it appeared on some cable systems in February 2000, it seemed unlikely to succeed. Developed as an "independent" cable network--meaning it lacked ties to a cable service provider such as Comcast or media conglomerate with other content to leverage, as perceived as somewhat essential in order to gain access to enough subscribers to court advertisers at launch--there was little to suggest Oxygen would survive other than the curious array of funders and partners that included some of the most accomplished names: Oprah, Geraldine Laybourne, Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner, Paul Allen.

But the early 2000s, though they seem like just yesterday, were a very different time in the cable industry and in terms of convergence among media industries. The two crucial aspects of Oxygen's identity at its launch were its planned identity as a "thinking" women's network--offering an alternative to the middle brow melodramatic identity identified with the established player in this space--Lifetime, and its identity as an integrated web and cable brand. These were heady days of online optimism before much meaningful conceptualization of convergence. Oxygen launched before the dotcom crash and even though its web/cable integration often amounted to little more than featuring advertisers' web addresses in a black bar at the bottom of the program screen or posting real time chatting in that same black bar, this was all very innovative at the time.

Another critical piece of context--the same year Oxygen launched, Lifetime began a twenty-six month reign as the most watched cable channel in prime time. Not just among women, but THE most watched channel. This was the era before USA established itself with its "Characters Welcome" original series and TNT and TBS rebranded with their respective drama and comedy identities.

But this is the ancient past of Oxygen (particularly if we measure in web years). In its first incarnation, the channel succeeded in achieving its thinking women's fare fundamentally different from anything else on the screen at the time, and its web integration was obvious and even "organic." The size of audience apparently desiring and able to find a channel with this identity, however, was too scant (even factoring in limited distribution) and the brand evolution began. Oxygen steered clear of Lifetime's established melodramatic identity by shifting from "thinking" fare to funny fare and offered "outrageous" comedy. Although it did not amass a large audience, both its original fare (such as its femme-fronted take on Candid Camera called Girls Behaving Badly) and its off-net content such as Roseanne and Cybill, marked this focus clearly. Despite some critical praise for its original comedy Campus Ladies, Oxygen never managed to capture lightening in a bottle with a series in the manner that has proven so crucial for bringing cable channels from the ranks of relative obscurity to mainstream attention. Oxygen has attempted many reality series that feature some combination of celebrity, outlandishness, and competition that have succeeded elsewhere, but never found a bonafide hit.

Rumors of a possible NBCUniversal purchase appeared in August 2007, and normally such suggestion of conglomeration or the loss of an "independent" cable voice would lead me to criticism. But the truth is that Oxygen lost its independent edge eighteen short months after its launch and steadily devolved into a less interesting viewing destination long before NBCU acquired it. It even seemed possible that the new ownership might help the channel create an original narrative series that might garner some attention--in a manner similar to the success of FX--as Lifetime has created many original series, but for some reason not offered anything since its first efforts in the late 1990s for women with the innovation or excellence common on FX. This brings us to the new brand campaigns announced by both networks in the past few months that position them as targeting the same sub-segment of the women's audience.