Why There Is No Hulu In Canada

One sign of how far the world wide web has revolutionized our lives in just 20 years is the popularity of hulu.com A joint venture between Fox and NBC where these old media TV networks put shows online. For those who forget to record favorite TV shows can watch online. As popular as hulu is with American web surfers, it's only available to Americans.

Despite demand from Canadians, those in charge of Hulu.com still will not make their service available North of 49th. Many of the shows produced by NBC and Fox that are carried on Hulu are also carried on Canadian networks, those Canadian networks also bought up the Canadian online distribution rights to these shows. Global TV makes some shows available to be watched online only the most recent episodes are available. Global doesn't have an archive of eposodes that Hulu does have.

CTV one the other hand has made absolutely no effort to provide online access to the shows they carry. BitTorrent is the only option for Canadians who need online access to shows they carry. CTV may carry a lot of programming from ABC and CBS who have been sluggish on putting TV shows online.

Internet Service Providers claim that putting Network TV online stresses their networks, but it should be known that Bell Canada one of Canada's largest ISP's is a minority stakeholder in CTV Globemedia.

Hulu is an excellent example of how copyright holders putting legitimate access to content gives a better alternative to piracy. I say that Global and CTV should let the American parent networks take care of the online content distribution so that Hulu can be made available to Canadians. Maybe CTV and Global can work together just like NBC and Fox work together. Could that work, given the mindset of Canadian broadcasting executives, maybe not. Hulu.ca has already been registred by a domain squatter.