Hulu and Disney+ are very different services. You can see this just by browsing through the content on the two apps separately. But now that Disney is working Hulu content into the Disney+ with its own section the differences become not just clear, but a problem.
How is the content from Hulu a problem?
The content itself is not a problem, but the menus and headings are. The rest of Disney+ is broken up into genres already. Marvel Content, Star Wars conent etc. There is no mystery as to what you will see in the Star Wars section. And if that is too much to sift through at once, the collections and genre breakdowns found in the search menu to break things down further. However I do miss the ability to search via decades.
But what is Hulu’s overarching brand? It doesn’t have one. Hulu pulls together content from multiple studios and networks. If you click National Geographic you won’t see anime and adult sitcoms and rows of action movies. You will see nature and science documentaries broken down by subject.
If Hulu is going to have a hub on Disney+ is needs to be searchable by genre like its stand-alone app is. Sure you can choose movies, but you can not zero in on Science Fiction or Romance or action adventure. You can go to TV but you can’t pull up a screen of just legal dramas. The scaled-down way that Hulu’s content is lumped in just forces users to scroll enlesly trying to find where their content could be listed and going from right to left trying to find it.
Disney will probablyy figure it out. But right now if you already have the Hulu app I would keep using it. Because the grab bag feel of the Hulu hub is not all a substitute for a searchable genre and network based way to browse. This can be a best of both worlds experience. Right now though its a worst case scenario. Warner Brothers Discovery realized that while it could add content from Discovery+ to Max, that there was still a reason to maintain the Discovery+ app and subscription service separately, even if various collumnists and reporters want to pretend that it doesn’t exist anymore. And it was the right move. Let’s hope Disney is not to pridefull to follow suit.
