A glitch involving a live stream of the Oscars on Sunday kept many users of the video platform Hulu from seeing key moments from the awards ceremony.
Around 9 p.m. Eastern Time (6 p.m. Pacific Time), many Hulu subscribers who tried to access a live stream of the Oscars were greeted with an error message, then logged out of the service. The Hulu Support account on X (formerly Twitter) said a few minutes later that it was aware of the problem and had deployed a fix, which allowed subscribers to log in once again.
But moments later, viewers across the country were greeted with a graphic that thanked them for watching the Oscars and informing them that the event had concluded. Except, it hadn’t — the awards for Best Actress and Best Picture had yet to be doled out, as the event went longer than Disney-owned ABC had expected.
It isn’t clear why the feed on Hulu was not extended to account for the spillover. ABC television stations continued to air the program uninterrupted.
The glitches left many Hulu customers frustrated, with several taking to social media to vent.
“New rule: if a streaming version plans to stream a live event and botches it, all subscribers should get a free month of their current plan. Looking at you, Hulu,” X user Ben Ash posted around 7:50 p.m. ET.
“Of all the streaming apps I subscribe to, none have given me nearly as many problems over the years as Hulu,” another X user named Randall Savage wrote. “Tonight is their magnum opus of failure.”
To say the Oscars broadcast did not go as Disney had planned would be an understatement. The event, itself, was fine, but Disney hoped to grow its Oscars viewership by reaching audiences on its streaming platform, at a time when more programming is shifting away from broadcast TV.
“It definitely felt like the time is now to make sure our big event programming is available to all viewers wherever they prefer to watch,” Rob Mills, the Executive Vice President of Unscripted Programming at Disney, said in a question-and-answer session posted by the company just before the awards show.
To make matters worse, some of Disney’s promotions for the Oscars led viewers to believe they could stream the event on Hulu and Disney Plus — which was true, but only if streamers had an active subscription to both services. Disney Plus incorporated a dedicated Hulu tile into its service more than a year ago, but it requires a subscription to the Disney bundle, or standalone subscriptions to Disney Plus and Hulu using the same Disney account. Those who only pay for Disney Plus were unable to stream the awards show through the Hulu tile.
Disney has yet to formally address the situation involving Hulu, or to affirm what lessons it learned from streaming the Oscars. But the company is unlikely to repeat the mistake in the future.
