The Medium We Interrupt This Program
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
The New York Times January 4, 2009
My video will resume after this ad, in 26 seconds. The video is really a movie - or at least it was a movie. I don't know what to call it while I'm watching it on my computer screen, with my browser set to Hulu, the streaming-video site.
Let's call it "Wimbledon." Released in 2004, it's a romantic comedy about tennis that I could have seen for $8 or so in a theater four years ago or ordered from Netflix, caught on HBO or bought as a DVD for $4 on eBay. But I didn't. In fact, I only now discovered it in the modest movie lineup on Hulu. After a rocky start during which it was hazed as just another slick effort to upstage the fun, do-it-yourself YouTube, Hulu became great. The Associated Press just named Hulu its Web Site of the Year for 2008.
However, there are ads. All videos (TV shows, movies, clips, news) are prefaced on Hulu by unavoidable commercials; you can't click to shut them off or fast-forward through them. With longer videos, ads appear at regular intervals - but it's just one ad, usually a tightly produced 15- to 30-second spot, rather than a TV-style cluster. Some movies have sponsors who offer "limited commercial interruption" - about four ads per film. Cutting into "Wimbledon," this sweet, brisk British mood-lifter in which Paul Bettany falls in love with Kirsten Dunst, is an Ad Council public service announcement for healthful eating. Annoying. At the top of the movie, I swear Halls cough drops announced that it was presenting this movie without ads. Or was it without many ads?
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