The 97th Academy Awards, one of the marquee nights in entertainment, became a frustrating one for many thousands of Hulu subscribers. As the event was broadcast live on ABC and Hulu, many users were suddenly logged out of their accounts and unable to log back in.
Viewers said they saw error messages asking for a valid email address and were barred from watching the broadcast. More than 34,000 complaints were filed within the first hour, according to DownDetector. Social media was besieged with furious responses, one user tweeting, “I subscribed to Hulu only to watch the Oscars and now I can’t even see it!”
The outage occurred at a critical juncture, with the awards for Best Actress and Best Picture set to be announced. Some found workarounds for watching, like ABC’s cable broadcast, or other streaming services.
Hulu confirmed the problem and said its technical teams were working to address it, but it did not offer any immediate solution. This points to casting doubt on the dependability of streaming services during major live events. With the growing migration to streaming, stable and scalable infrastructure is critical.
The backlash against Hulu underscores the perils that streaming services face when technical issues derail high-profile broadcasts. It remains to be seen if Hulu will provide compensation or address its livestream shortcomings.