After what feels like a pretty long wait since the announcement that this would happen back in April, we’re finally seeing the start of Disney’s adding its content to the Hulu streaming service. One of the biggest properties that Disney has on the ABC television network, Grey’s Anatomy, is the first show to appear on the site. This is supposed to be the first of many television shows, to be followed by the likes of “Ugly Betty,” “Scrubs,” “Desperate Housewives,” and “Lost,” the last of which is one of the most popular television shows in the United States.
This is great news for Disney as it gives the Hulu user a whole new smattering of content to sink time into. A common behavior in people who watch television is that they will sit down and find whatever is on. This is the same in Hulu users, except they browse for shows that look interesting. If Hulu has the entire first season of a high profile show like Grey’s Anatomy, a user is likely to sit down and start watching that, if only to learn what all the buzz is about.
But Disney’s content is a bigger deal for Hulu than it is for Disney as to watch ABC shows online, users had to go to ABC’s streaming site and use a proprietary technology to watch those shows. But the convergence of ABC shows onto Hulu suggests that Hulu is taking over as the portal for all television content viewable online. Even networks which only allow users to view content on their own sites, such as CBS, have thier shows come up when users search on Hulu, even if the results only serve to take users to a different site. But on the strength of ABC’s primetime shows, it might not be too long before the other networks cave in.
