Hulu??? Really?

[Mattchisek]

Guys seriously, I'm pissed off.

I go to southparkstudios.com as I usually do in my time of need, and I see that it is now powered by Hulu.

Great, no big deal right?

No. Hulu does not allow adblock. I refuse to watch the best satire with frequent commercial breaks. I do not stand alone.

This site will lose traffic so quickly you won't know what to do with yourselves.

Please, do the right thing, and give us southparkstudios classic.

[tiberseptim]

They're commercials. It won't kill you to sit through 2-3 minutes of someone actually getting paid for the content you're enjoying.

[polaarbear]

I second this motion, though I think the adblock is a BAD argument. Half the reason they are going to Hulu is so people cant skip ads. The ads are what pay for watching the show and I am ok with them. In all honestly SPS is the ONLY website for which I have fully disabled adblock as I feel they deserve the support. But I absolutely REFUSE to support NBC/Viacom/Hulu therefore I will no longer be supporting them via ads. I watch at least 10 random episodes/week which should work out to 30+ ad breaks that they were making money off me which they will now be losing. I hope the Hulu deal ends up losing them money due to murdering the audience. If they are going to hide behind a paywall they should have at least gone back to Netflix where I feel my money is well spent, but paying almost 10 bucks a month to Hulu in order to STILL be presented with ads is flat out never going to happen.

[Big-Will]

They're commercials. It won't kill you to sit through 2-3 minutes of someone actually getting paid for the content you're enjoying.

It would be nice if Hulu worked that way all the time, but here's what I read this morning:

"I JUST WAITED THROUGH 5 MINUTES OF ADS BEFORE I SAW ANY SOUTH PARK, THEN I GOT 3 SECONDS INTO THE VIDEO BEFORE THE PLAYER CRASHED. I AM NOW WAITING THROUGH 5 MORE MINUTES OF ADS. I LOVE HULU."

[Mattchisek]

They're commercials. It won't kill you to sit through 2-3 minutes of someone actually getting paid for the content you're enjoying.

I mean you're right, they should have ads if they want to support the production of South Park, and we should be willing to sit through them to honor that.

However, this is directed at the internet community. The new generation who does not accept waiting any amount of time for content. I'm not saying this is how it should be, i'm saying that's how it is.

The site is going to lose its popularity and the sharing of South Park will become more difficult. Why not stick with the classic design?

[UhhIDontKnow]

They're commercials. It won't kill you to sit through 2-3 minutes of someone actually getting paid for the content you're enjoying.

Oh, so I can watch any episode I want on Hulu then and just have to see some ads? What's that, I can't? I have to subscribe to see them all? And even then I still would get ads?

And that Hulu player is famous for freezing, especially on ads. And when you refresh the browser to wake it up, guess what? It plays all those same ads again (and then probably freezes again for good measure so you can see the ads one last extra time).

Were the show producers poor before this move? Were they not getting paid enough? All the jokes that were made about greedy artists on the episode where the kids download music apply to the SP crew. Enjoy your gold plated toilets.

[nall]

No. Hulu does not allow adblock. I refuse to watch the best satire with frequent commercial breaks. I do not stand alone.

You know, it costs money to stream this content to you, and the ads pay for that.

[UhhIDontKnow]

No. Hulu does not allow adblock. I refuse to watch the best satire with frequent commercial breaks. I do not stand alone.

You know, it costs money to stream this content to you, and the ads pay for that.

I get that, but there has to be a way to show them that is less frustrating and disruptive to the viewer than what Hulu is trying now.

Put banner ads all over the player, I wouldn't mind. But don't make the player freeze and need to replay the ads, Hulu does that all the time and that's why I try to avoid their player like the plague. There is also no option to turn off Hulu ads, even their paid subscribers have to deal with them. If someone is already paying them $$, then ads aren't necessary, and it just seems like greed to force them on people.

And while yes, this site and the streaming bandwidth cost money, this site helps make the TV show more popular which in turn makes it more $$ and other South Park ventures that much more valuable. So in the end, taking away something free may cost this franchise. They certainly weren't hurting for money before this move.

[kfgg]

I don't know how to put this.

I've been registered with this site for 11 years. July 2003. Most of my time here, there was no option to watch full episodes. That was a perk that came along a few years ago.

I have the DVDs, and I have VHS tapes, and I watch the show on TV, so it's not really the full episodes I use this website for. Or initially did. It was mostly to get news, information, etc about the show, watch a few clips maybe, interact with other fans.

The Hulu thing disturbs me though. They took ownership of their own content by putting the shows here. All of them. And put a few ads here on the website. Prior to that, a lot of internet people were just flat out downloading episodes from torrents.

Now that they're on Hulu, people will be going right back to the torrents who normally would not.

[SEGAMew]

Hulu makes SEGAMew a really sad Panda.

[arrobles]

Let me put it this way: I would gladly PAY to remove Hulu and the ads. Is this an option?

Yes, I already own the DVDs, but it is very convenient to just stream the episode wherever I am, regardless of the device. Now I find it annoying and buggy. Yes, my Chrome already crashed twice between commercials.

Ditch Hulu, before you lose your fan base.

[Big-Will]

Let me put it this way: I would gladly PAY to remove Hulu and the ads. Is this an option?

You don't have to do this. Just get a VPN or proxy and set it to look for SP sites overseas.

But no, there's no option to pay to remove Hulu. Hulu wouldn't like that.

[emeraldangel523]

I usually just mute the Ads and play music until they end... Not a great compromise, but it's something.

Yeah, it sucks that it won't be ad-free anymore, but it could be much worse... They don't have to keep the episodes up at all, they could force us to use other, virus-filled sites, to watch episodes (they are much more annoying than Hulu, and half the time they also crash on you).

Shrugs Just trying to be positive.
But hey, maybe they'll listen to us and work something out.

[Big-Will]

they could force us to use other, virus-filled sites, to watch episodes (they are much more annoying than Hulu, and half the time they also crash on you).

No one would force you to use those site except your own desire to get the episodes. In the past, Matt and Trey encouraged fans to get the episodes any way they could. Soon after, this site appeared, but it was a few years before it began streaming the episodes, so fans didn't need to go to those sites anymore.

This site was created in order to keep fans interested in the show, but to stay afloat, it's gotta pay the people who run it, like nall and the other admins (moderators, like me, are not paid for moderating this message board). And for that pay to happen, it's gotta serve up ads (and the site gets some money back from the sponsors). So, it's us fans who keep this site up, not Matt and Trey. All they have to provide is the show.

[kfgg]

Why isn't The Daily Show, Colbert Report, and the rest of Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, MTV, etc also "Powered By Hulu"? You'd think they could make bank with that too.

It feels like we're getting screwed somehow. I can still go watch any episode of The Daily Show (which has way more episodes than South Park ever did) but I have to deal with Hulu in order to watch South Park.

I completely understand the fact that these websites cost money and people need to be paid.

But how much more money do they need? On TV, South Park still gets video games and movies to buy the entire first commercial break time. That's huge. Very few shows have that. Ad time is usually between 30 and 60 seconds an ad on TV. Higher popularity of the show, higher the cost for the ad time. The average commercial break on TV is about 4 minutes. I don't know how much they charge for an ad, but if one company buys the entire 4 minutes, they are competing with other advertisers on the TV network alone.

Then there's money they get from iTunes when someone buys an episode or a season. Same goes for Amazon and other video sites. Then there's the DVDs. Who's pocketing this cash? That's a lot of money.

They don't need Hulu for the website. Someone is being greedy.

I don't know how much money they were making from the ads on this website prior to Hulu, but they were also getting international ad dollars from the other countries this site serves.

Then again Hulu waved cash into their faces. Money is hard to turn down, even if it completely irritates the loyal fans.

I have nothing wrong with ad supported videos to support the servers and the web staff and the show. But I have a problem with Hulu. Their reasoning behind having ads on Hulu Plus talks about paying for content providers (and gave a list of shows from NBC, Fox and ABC as examples of "content providers")

NBC Universal/Comcast, Fox, and Disney/ABC own Hulu. A little over 30% a piece. They are the content providers.

Viacom or SPS should buy a stake into Hulu. If they did that, then it would make a little more sense. At least they can have a say in what can be done with it like they did here prior (minus what Viacom said "no" to after 200 and 201)