Paying for Hulu
Is the No. 2 video site going to start charging to watch TV online? If not, maybe it should.
Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu
(Reuters/Corbis/Phil McCarten)
“We all groaned at the news about Hulu moving to a paid model next year,” says Chris Jacob in Gizmodo, but if the price is right—say, a Netflix-like $10 to $20 a month—it may be worth the cost. If Hulu owners NBC, ABC, and Fox make new episodes available right away, add more content, and give us set-top playback, “I might be willing to part with a few bucks a month and ditch my cable company entirely.”
Hulu “isn’t putting up a pay wall around its Web TV site,” no matter what the rumors say, says Peter Kafka in All Things Digital. What it is looking at is a two-tiered system, where the stuff already on the site now will stay free, but new “premium” shows will be added for a cost—or maybe pay-per-view movies and TV. Hulu is doing much better than expected, even “coming close to break-even” selling ads alone, so the extra revenue stream isn’t urgent.
That’s too bad—Hulu should charge us, says Chadwick Martin in The Big Money. It’s earned it by growing so fast and changing the TV industry, and putting up some sort of pay wall would keep NBC, ABC, and Fox invested in keeping the site up and running. And besides, the Internet has grown up, and so should we: if we want the Web to thrive, “we’re going to have to pay for things we really love once they become successful.”
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6 Comments
Posted by John_Gault, Monday, October 26, 2009, 1:47 pm They should watch out because if they try to charge for content available on the source site for free, they will quickly loose web viewership. If they could have devices allowing you to view content on you TV like Netflix does with XBOX 360 and other devices, then they really would take over TV. I barely watch any tv realtime anymore, and that would be the last nail in the coffin for me.
Posted by Nate, Monday, October 26, 2009, 3:42 pm I don't understand people who keep saying we need to start paying for internet content. We already do pay for the web through our internet service provider. Its not free! If companies want to start charging for internet content then our country should offer internet access to everyone for free. Just like with television how you can get basic channels free of charge and pay for extra cable content.
Posted by Sputnik, Monday, October 26, 2009, 4:41 pm It depends on what they choose to do. If say, for a fee, they start putting up shows as soon as they are released, no ads, premium movies then absolutely, maybe more live coverage. Absolutely that's worth money. If all of a sudden I have to start paying to watch the daily show with ads, a day after it's released then I will go back to torrenting my shows.
Posted by bon, Monday, October 26, 2009, 7:36 pm The problem with Hulu pay model or free model is that Hollywood still has artificial georestrictions. In other words, most of the world can't view the content. As long as those restrictions are in place, people will pirate content.
Posted by Jason, Tuesday, October 27, 2009, 12:30 am The second Hulu starts charging me to use it is the second I stop using it and go back to downloading torrent files.
Posted by nikita puhalsky, Tuesday, October 27, 2009, 7:38 am The advertising model for television is broken as many are now able to watch the content while fast forwarding or skipping the ads all together. The only way the big studios/networks will stay in business is to find a way to generate revenue online. Really just the same thing that's happened to the record industry.
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