You’ll forgive me if there happen to be a few more typos that usual in this musing. I’ve got some egg on my face and some of the yolk may at times drizzle into my eye.
Like quite a number of eager reporters and experts who waited all day Monday eagerly for the ratings results of Sunday night’s Oscarcast, I had already made my own observations and insights based on the winners and losers and the execution. Much like those who reach many thousands more than moi, I had those thoughts out there early Monday morning. But because I’m at times a relative Luddite, I wasn’t among those who watched it on Hulu. And apparently, an awful lot of tastemakers had an even more challenged experience than I did. The LOS ANGELES TIMES’ Meg James got equal time with her peers’ extended coverage of the personalities who emerged with this breaking news:
The Oscars’ streaming debut was marred by a series of Hulu glitches, leaving thousands of film fans unable to watch Conan O’Brien’s comedic antics, a “Wicked” musical performance by stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande and even the awarding of the year’s biggest award.
More than 33,000 users reported an inability to log onto Walt Disney Co.-owned Hulu as the 97th Academy Awards telecast was set to begin at 4 p.m. Sunday, according to Down Detector, which tracks app outages. For some, the log-in issues extended for more than half of the three-hour, 45-minute show. After the first problem was patched, thousands of others saw their streams abruptly cut off a few minutes before the final award of the night was announced by Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan.
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER’s Kevin Dolak couldn’t even wait that long, releasing what his editors would contend was “vox populi”:
Hulu’s big night at the 2025 Oscars was cut short on Sunday evening when the streamer’s red carpet coverage of Hollywood’s biggest night was followed by glitches in the stream of the broadcast of the ceremony, leaving its paying customers in the dark as the Academy Awards began.
Annoyed and perplexed Hulu subscribers were quick to take to X to complain about the glitches. One user pointed out that Hulu is prone to having issues when it comes to live events streaming on the platform.
“Reminder Hulu servers can’t handle live events,” X user @DogeCoinAud wrote in response to Hulu’s post about Best Actor nominee Sebastian Stan, which read; “Reminder that this always was and forever will be a Sebastain STAN account,” with the actor’s name misspelled.
So it sure seems like those 33,000 whiners were anything but a representative sample. And the demographics that Seitz then rattled off would seem to support that point:I don’t subscribe to this service any longer, so I’ll leave it to you to dig deeper if you choose. But I’ll merely ask this–if a younger audience that drives streaming adoption somehow was OK enough with whatever problems Hulu experienced to drive those increases, why are the older reporters and pundits who are reporting this so up in arms?
Maybe like me they remember the days when Nielsen overnights were less complicated to compile and the numbers would hit around lunchtime Pacific time. In fact, there were once reliable metered market overnights that would be released at dawn that would then be projected with some degree of accuracy what the final numbers would be. Those days are long gone and most networks usually ignore even the same-day overnights. Ironically, Nielsen has conditioned streaming services that valid numbers–in their view–aren’t “fully baked” until a live-plus-35 day window is completed. So Hulu rarely even acknowledges its audience delivery–this was clearly a move designed by ABC and the Academy strictly to set the record straight and put into context the near worthlessness of thinking that the small minority of those movitated to complain are anything representative.
I’m at least self-reflective enough to devote a lot more space to this than those who effectively made up their minds and used what turned out to be partial data as support. I’ve certainly learned that at least the next time something like this phenomenon occurs there needs to be that context more clearly spelled out. Maybe even avoid the temptation of jumping the gun.
So, Meg, Kevin and @DogeCoinAud, are you ready to join me?
Until next time..