Stewart and Colbert Pulled from Hulu: A Sign of Things to Come?

As a coincidental follow-up to yesterday's post, Viacom announced that they will be pulling 'The Daily Show' and 'The Colbert Report' from Hulu as of March 9, 2010, and forcing online users to only be able to view the streaming media via the show's Web site or through ComedyCentral.com. Could this be a trend of things to come, especially if Hulu and others like it begin to start charging for its services (as it had announced in late 2009)?

On top of that, will this change Hulu's business model? Daily Show and Colbert are both popular titles on Hulu. But I am not sure that they are big enough for Hulu to consider scrapping their plans to begin charging users for its services. If anything, since the decision to cancel these programs on Hulu was a financial decision, it may make the chances of Hulu to start charging more of a possibility to keep current and potential programming happy by having more of a revenue stream to offer.

The downside for us as users is that the ComedyCentral.com/dailyshow.com/colbertnation.com player doesn't allow for HD like the Hulu player. Also, users who have come to depend on the Hulu desktop will lose out on these programs.

However, as much as I hate to say it, I have a feeling this is just the beginning of things to come. As online intellectual property becomes more and more of a commodity, the companies that own the rights may begin to tighten their belts on who accesses it. Why send traffic to another site and give advertising dollars to that site's ad partners without proper compensation? That was Viacom's claim - the compensation wasn't worth giving the property to a third-party. The question is, will others follow suit or is this just a setback for Hulu. These programs may be the first to demand a higher compensation and Hulu balked but what if others start to follow? We will have to wait and see what the numbers look like for dailyshow.com and colbertnation.com once they regain control of this programming on their respected sites. If it spikes, don't be surprised that this is just the beginning and some of your favorite shows begin to leave Hulu.

To visit TheDailyShow.com -here

To visit ColbertNation.com - here