The video Website Veoh is adding — albeit unofficially — more videos from traditional TV networks, with the content this time coming from Hulu, the NBC-Fox joint venture.
Veoh and Hulu have no official partnership. As NewTeeVee notes, Veoh “is basically pulling an OpenHulu — taking the embeds of shows like “30 Rock” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” straight from Hulu and plunking them down onto its own site.” The streams do include the original advertising on Hulu.
NewTeeVee quotes Dmitry Shapiro, Veoh founder and chief innovation officer, saying, “Look, people want access to all kinds of content. We are striving to provide access.”
NewTeeVee questions Veoh’s move, contending that it “cheapens” the Veoh brand because it comes off as though “they couldn’t get a straight-up deal with Hulu, so they did a workaround instead.”
Shapiro notes that Veoh is in official talks with all major content providers and already has a sanctioned content relationship with CBS TV.
Shapiro told Techcrunch that Veoh’s strategy is to turn the Website into a “hyper aggregator”. “This is the tip of the strategy — to become the hyper-aggregator,” he said. “We will continue to provide a breadth of content. Embedding third-party players will be extended to other offerings, including other vide-sharing sites.”
Shapiro passed along internal stats to Techcruch worth checking out, including the fact that Veoh grew from 2.5 million unique monthly viewers worldwide in November 2006 to 21.5 million in November 2007 — a whopping increase of 760 percent. Forty percent of viewers watch Veoh during early evening hours and during prime time, stealing attention away from traditional TV.
It doesn’t matter much if the content is on Hulu or Veoh, as long as it’s legit. I just wish I could go back and watch the beginning of season three of “Battlestar Galactica” rather than the last four episodes. I miss iTunes.