Hands-free streaming has Hulu viewers hooked, for example
LAS VEGAS – For years manufacturers have hyped the emergence of the smart home where everything in our lives, from our phones, thermostats, window blinds, lights, cars, and even toilets interact with each other. The rise of Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant smart speakers (and to a lesser extent Apple’s Siri and Comcast’s X1) have helped make automating the home easier then ever.
It’s also making it easier than ever to find content on new TVs so that viewers are now watching for longer.
“People who watch their TV using the voice function with Alexa watch 50% more TV,” said Hulu CMO Kelly Campbell at a CES conference session last Thursday.
She added that improvements in voice control technologies make finding content quicker and easier so viewers stay tuned for longer. Hulu claims that its partnership with Amazon to make Hulu available on the Alexa-powered Echo Show, has also increased the amount of time audiences spend watching its on-demand shows.
“You don’t have to get your phone out, open up your app, find what you want to watch, click it or pull out your remote and navigate to the app,” she explained. You just talk. She added improvements to voice technologies combined with the improvements to the quality of the Hulu service are encouraging users to watch more TV on demand.
Hulu recently announced it added 8 million subscribers in 2018 and closed its fiscal year with more than 25 million total subscribers across its subscription on demand and live TV plans in the U.S. For what it’s worth, there is still no word on whether (Ed note: It’s more likely, when, not if) Hulu will launch in Canada.
Campbell added that Hulu’s research has found that consumers don’t want to pay to watch live TV 365 days a year but do want to “jump in and out.”
“With cable you can’t just turn it off and off. We all know how miserable that experience would be if you were to do that every other month. With Hulu if you want to upgrade to live TV for a few months you can do that. Then in the summer of you are not into live TV you can turn it off, or you could turn HBO on,” explained Campbell.
One of the challenges of adding a live TV service to Hulu, which launched in 2008, was getting past viewers anxieties about the service she noted.
“When you talk to people about moving from cable to streaming their live TV sports and news that is so dear to them, there is an anxiety about ‘Is the picture quality going to be good?’ ‘Is it going to work?’ So we invested a lot last year in the quality of service and in marketing.”
Over the past year Hulu claims it has dramatically improved the stability and usability of its live TV service, reducing buffering by 90% and introducing new features like live game start notifications and an enhanced channel guide so viewers can get to their favorite content faster. It also expanded its local affiliate support to over 970 local live stations. This resulted in the average time spent on Hulu per subscriber increasing 20% in 2018.
Smarter TVs
TV manufacturers at CES were increasingly featuring far-field microphones, too, that can receive voice commands even in a noisy room, in their new sets for hands-free search and voice control.
LG announced at its press conference that all 2019 smart televisions will now also include Amazon Alexa and Apple AirPlay compatibility, in addition to Google Assistant. Samsung announced its remotes will still include a dedicated microphone button, but consumers now have a choice to use its Bixby smart assistant to change channels, adjust volume or search for content with just voice commands. Beginning this spring, Samsung TVs will also offer an iTunes Movies and TV Shows app along with Apple AirPlay 2 support.
In 2019 Chinese brand TCL will offer TV sets with far-field microphone to take advantage of its built in Roku streaming player. Other set manufacturers utilizing far-field voice control include Hisense.
According to the 2018 Global Consumer Streaming Habits survey from Brightcove, 58% of respondents stream content at least once a week via a smart TV or external streaming device, 51% on a mobile device, and 50% on a computer or laptop.
TV, however, is still the top device through which content is consumed for regularly scheduled news (68%), regular season sports (69%), breaking news (54%), special sports events including title fights and championship games (66%), concerts (53%), and fashion shows (45%).
CE editor John Bugailiskis was in Las Vegas last week covering the Consumer Electronics Show.
