The studios don’t want change. In the reality of television, each new ‘episode’ has a licensed purchased by the broadcaster at an ungodly sum, which is expected to be recouped by the broadcaster in the form of advertisements during the broadcast of said show. So, the producer of said show/episode has already covered his costs to create the content by gouging the broadcaster for the license to present it on their particular channel. Then what we hear alot of is, ‘the ratings were too low’, that can be translated into, ‘not enough people watched the show’ to recoup advertising costs to cover the broadcast licensing demanded by the producers of said show. If this happens long enough, the show is canceled, (the broadcaster refuses to pay the licensing for said show anymore because it is not making enough money with advertising eyeballs). Fake dollars for eyeballs, for sure, but that is how the current system works. This is exactly why you see Showtime, HBO, even SyFy (ick) creating their own content on their own dime, because it is cheaper to independently develop a show, than it is to pay these outrageous licensing deals the content producers want. (read Disney, Warner Bros, ad nausea). When cable television was first inroduced, it was advertised as ‘No Commercials!’, because it was premium, and had a subscription dollar value attached. That didn’t take long to see the broadcasters drooling over money they were NOT making before commercials broke into the ‘premium’ market, so fast that the average human cannot measure the time between cable broke into the scene, and when commercials began appearing in the new premium service. I would call that greed.

Now we have Hulu, which personally, I like and dislike, however irrelevant. Hulu is what the public wants, their ‘OP’ when they want it, instead of having to remember to ‘DVR’ it, or arrange their schedule around the airing. Limited commercials (actually, there should be NO commercials, because the broadcaster already paid the license to present the show via airwaves, and already got reimbursed via advertising eyeballs when the show initially aired), in an on-demand sphere.

The problem with Hulu is that it is based on 1970’s broadcasting terms/rules/agreements/business models. It is yet another ‘cable’ device to them, to be used to gouge customers even further, for even larger profits, or in other words, another chance to f*ck the consumer. I believe there is no reason NOT to have advertisements ON the page while looking for your next episode of ‘Pee-Wee’s Playhouse’, but not DURING the episode.

Speaking of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, how many episodes of this show does Hulu offer? I count zero. This is the flaw in the business model. As a youngster, I loved a BBC distributed show called ‘Space: 1999’, which was science fiction story about the moon breaking orbit from earth due to a massive nuclear reaction on the moon. The show aired between 1969-1971 for 2 full seasons of 24 episodes each. As an exercise, I searched legitimate retail resources, Hulu, Amazon, even eBay (shiver), and this quality British show is nowhere to be found. Well, not so impossible to find, all 48 episodes, in high quality were available on usenet, therefore I downloaded and archived both seasons for my own enjoyment.

My point is that the business models of today’s use of the internet as a broadcast medium instead of a communications medium has left end-users like myself wanting.. The focus should be about diversity, and choice. Offering the ‘customer’ a variety of content, and not just the latest episode of ‘American Idol’. This would spurn massive demand, and of course profits. If the broadcaster has already made money with advertising for the first airing, and then additional profit from syndication (in this case the BBC show was created and aired in Europe, and was then syndicated to the US because it did so well), then why is it so hard to offer the show on Hulu? I am not saying the broadcaster should not make a profit, just don’t gouge the living sh*t out of me in doing so.

I agree with charliebrown, there are no acceptable excuses left, the studios have no choice but to offer a larger variety of content, going all the way back to my Space: 1999 circa 1971, at reasonably low cost, without commercial breaks during the episode itself. I am no longer a mindless cash-cow, expected to relent to the studios version of variety, time-table, and overabundance of advertising. I am now a customer, and if the studios do not wish to offer what the customer wants, then I will seek alternatives to satisfy my wants. Unauthorized file sharing is a result of this enormous gap in demand left by greedy studios.

/rant