Pop Vultures

Yesterday, I considered doing an entire week of posts about fun summer television. It’s July, I’m happy, why not celebrate all the light-hearted fare available at the moment?

But then something happened this morning that was very much not fun. It was, in fact, anti-fun. At 8:00, gigantic mug of coffee firmly in hand, I happily clicked over to the Dr. Horrible site, pressed play and waited to be astounded by the Whedon wonderfulness. Instead, I got a message from Hulu, firmly rebuffing my attempts to view the first act. Apparently, only US viewers can watch it.

So much for the grand global launch, huh? My first thought (because I only think of you, my lovely readers) was, “Oh, hell. I have posted erroneous information! I am a terrible, awful, no good, very bad blogger!” Then, I read this announcement on the Dr. Horrible blog:

Many fans around the world have been disappointed to discover the feared message “not available outside the USA” but rest assured the problem is being addressed and we’ll report back as soon as we’re aware of the details.

Never fear, Doctor Horrible will save the day…..err……ahh….. Captain Hammer will save the day? …. well, rest assured, someone will!

The team behind Dr Horrible are really sorry about the problems and want to assure you that they really are working hard to get it all sorted out. The best news is, it’s worth the wait!

I didn’t screw up. Yay! Someone else did. Boo. No, really, boo. Of all the stupid-assed mistakes to make, putting an international product on Hulu is a pretty big one. For television addicts that live in the US, Hulu is the greatest thing ever. For the rest of us, it is evil. EVIL, I say.

Hulu is quickly becoming the default way to embed video on websites and in blog posts, due to the depth of its catalog and its high quality video. I see more and more sites using it every day, and I would like to say, as courteously and politely as possible: STOP IT. Yes, Americans make up the bulk of your readership. That is true for Pop Vultures, as well, despite the fact that I live in the UK and cover a fair amount of British television. However, Hulu immediately excludes everyone not residing within those 50 states, and that just ain’t right.

Thanks to the Internet, the television market isn’t what it once was, when everyone would watch shows as they aired live in their home country. It’s an international market now, and any pretense to the contrary is just foolishness. People want to watch shows as they become available, and anyone with the technical knowledge of an eight-year-old has learned about these magical things called torrents that allow that to happen. Yes, downloading copyrighted material is wrong, but until the networks figure out that television viewers want to be a part of the international conversations about their favorite show — whether that show is Battlestar Galactica or Torchwood — and start offering all viewers equal access to the programs, it will continue. I can’t fault a single viewer that choice. If it wasn’t for my US bank account, which allows me to use the US iTunes store, I’d be doing the same damn thing. I’m not going to wait three months to watch Gossip Girl, then try to dig up old blog posts about the episode while frantically avoiding spoilers. That just doesn’t make sense. I’m well aware that the international economics of the entertainment industry are complicated, but I don’t care. They need to change, to fit the new audience and their needs.

And this is why Hulu is EVIL. It actively promotes the old model, in which those in the US can see everything first and the rest of us have to wait for it to become available online, legally or otherwise. People aren’t going to stop downloading, and it’s not because they inherently lack respect for copyrighted material. It’s because they want to watch the same things everyone else gets to see at the same time. I was able to download Act I from iTunes, but there are currently plenty of grumpy people around the world who just wanted to watch Neil Patrick Harris sing this morning, and weren’t able to do so. That’s not fun at all, not one little bit.