paidContent.org - Hulu To Stream Dave Matthews Concert Live; What It Means For Cable

Discussion Policy

Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

Rory Maher

paidContent.org
Thursday, May 21, 2009; 5:06 PM

Clearly, we are a very long way from seeing Lost or 24 streamed live to the internet, but Hulu appears to be at least crawling in that direction. First, it streamed presidential debates and several of President Obama speeches live, as well as ball dropping in Times Square on New Year's Eve. But today it announced it will be streaming its first live concert, a Dave Matthews show next month. The broadcast will air a show (from the Beacon Theater in New York City) to celebrate the release of the band's new album Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King. The concert will later be available on-demand on Hulu for a limited time.

Cable and satellite operators don't need to start panicking just yet. The concert will also be shown on the cable channel Fuse TV. But the fact that pure entertainment content, a big profit center for TV, is also being streamed live online is notable. The Dave Matthews concert could easily have been broadcast on primetime TV rather than streamed on the web. It isn't a huge leap from concerts to more traditional TV-scheduled programming like reality shows or dramas, though cable operators, which pay the networks large fees to carry their programming, would for now likely squash any attempt to do that.