Hulu in decline?
October 29, 2012
By Chris Forrester
Data from Nielsen, ComScore and analysts at Wedbush Securities suggests that viewers are falling out of love with Hulu.
In August the number of hours spent watching Hulu was some 65 million hours. However, last March the total was 156 million hours. Meanwhile a report from TBI claims Hulu’s subscriber count fell from a ‘high’ last December of 19 million users, by 7 million in August, to 12 million.
While an initial defence could be that August was when Olympic viewing dominated, Netflix, a rival to Hulu, saw its consumption rise by 28 per cent during the March to August period, no doubt because of the Olympic-fest.
“We are at a loss to explain the decline [at Hulu], and we are dubious that it can be explained alone by a rapid shift to mobile consumption,” said Wedbush’s Michael Pachter.