CBS' Shows Only Two Clicks Away from Hulu's Home Page

Even though the deal was expected, a fair amount of news outlets are getting tied up in their underwear over Disney/ABC agreeing to put its video content up on Hulu, along with NBC and Fox (and take a 30 percent stake in the venture).  One reason this is big news is that it leaves only one broadcast network, CBS, without a content deal on Hulu, which is fast becoming the Internet’s foremost location for professional content to reside safely and legally. (Yes, kiddies, CBS is the ultimate Big Daddy of BNET Media.)

But is this such a big deal? Not as big as you think.

In fact, Hulu is a  professional video portal, so CBS isn’t exactly shut out. As I recall, when I was in the audience at last year’s Interactive Advertising Bureau annual meeting, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, in demo-ing the yet-to-launch site, made sure to let us all know that Hulu felt it important  that users be able to find all professional video content using Hulu, whether that content resided on Hulu or not. As a result, if you use Hulu’s search function, you are no further away from an episode of CBS’ CSI than you are of Fox’s Simpsons — just two clicks.

That doesn’t mean CBS has nothing to worry about as the only network not on Hulu. It won’t benefit from the promotional weight of the site’s front page, or the relatively frictionless market for advertisers that will exist on Hulu since it has content from three of the four biggest media companies in TV. But it’s clear, from looking at comScore Video Metrix data released on Tuesday (above), that Disney/ABC had far more to lose. CBS Interactive sites, which include CBS.com and TV.com, get almost three times the traffic of Disney Online’s video ventures, and as a group, they are also not that far behind Hulu. Does this mean CBS will never succumb to Hulu? Impossible to say. But in the online video wars, up to this point, it’s clear that Disney/ABC was the weak link.