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Hulu May Begin Charging For Video Content
An anonymous reader writes "According to Jonathan Miller, News Corp's CDO, Hulu may soon begin charging subscription fees for some of their online content. News Corp is the parent company of Fox, which owns a huge portion of Hulu. When Miller of Newscorp was asked if Hulu would begin charging for online content during an Interview with Daily Finance, he said that 'the answer could be yes.' He went on to say that he doesn't 'see why over time that shouldn't happen.'"
Since we still can't watch Hulu in Canada, I won't be paying anything. It's probably cheaper than cable anyways.
Jeruvy
I think what works for consumers most likely -- and this has to be tested, frankly -- is bundles. I think you have to figure out what are the right bundles that people buy and what's contained in that bundle. For example, you could have -- and I'm making this up entirely -- you could have a New York bundle, and that could consist of various papers or publications that are relevant to the audience in New York, and you could make that all, potentially, a bundle to a consumer at one price.
For what it's worth, he also made this statement:
I went from paying $14 to The Wall Street Journal to paying $10 to Amazon. Now the splits there, and I think this is relatively well known, are very, very much in favor of Amazon. So I became very much less valuable to The Wall Street Journal. That's part one. Part two is they don't know I exist. I went from being someone who's their subscriber to being someone who is an Amazon subscriber, which The Wall Street Journal has no visibility back to and cannot manage that customer relationship. . . . So they've lost both the customer management and, trust me, the lion's share of the economics.
You know I hate to be voice of calm reason, folks but this is all the original source reported:
Asked specifically about the future of online video joint venture Hulu, which is currently advertising-supported, he said it "is an environment for premium content." Pointing to the popularity of iPhone applications, he added: "We're seeing the beginning of a very strong app economy."
From there, you can trace a very hilarious wave of the telephone game from blog to blog of people slowly blowing it out of proportion as it's put together that this guy is talking about paid subscriptions and he's in charge of Hulu therefore Hulu must be becoming a paid subscription service.
My work here is dung.
Do they feel the need to add a subscription fee when they already show commercials....? Isn't that what drives dissatisfaction with cable?
real headline should be "Hulu expects viewership to drop off significantly."
If they charge for on demand content, then people will just go back to downloading it for free.
I came here for a good argument
Get them hooked with freebies - then hit them in the wallet.
Fine, but it's either subscription or ads. You don't get to do both.
Many of us outside the US can't use Hulu anyway; so it doesn't matter ;-)
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
The first hit's always free...
A black hole is where God divided by 0
Well- they don't exactly "give away their content for free forever" .
Commercials are interspersed throughout every movie and show. Also, for most shows, they only make a handful of episodes available at a time.
Back to TPB
Well I think ultimately the issue is this: Everyone sees the writing on the wall. TV shows and movies are going to have to be offered available online, or else people will get it through pirate channels. So the movie studios and everyone are starting to reluctantly jump on board, but they don't have the business model all worked out.
So can they make enough money from advertisements? Can they make enough money from subscriptions, or a la carte sales? Can they work out some kind of combination, or will consumers balk at the idea of paying for a subscription and still watching ads? People already do that with cable (pay for it and still watch tons of ads), so it's not unthinkable.
iTunes is doing the a la carte sales, Hulu is doing ads. If someone else isn't doing subscriptions, someone will probably try it soon.
The first hit's always free...
it's a great business model if you can afford front the startup costs without any initial customers. Attracts a lot more initial customers because you get a lot of people that normally would not pay for your service, but once they've had a sample of it they change their mind. Of course you'll lose a bunch of people when you switch to pay, but the only hit you'll take on that is what you've already fronted them with so it doesn't come as a surprise or a bad hit you didn't see coming or couldn't calculate/prepare for.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Also if the subscription meant the option to watch a full series without commercial interruption that would be great too.
I have to admit the only reason I downloaded a few Stargate episodes was because I didn't have a TV set I could watch it on. If instead I had the option to pay a minimal monthly fee and pick and choose the shows I wanted to watch with the plus of seeing the show the day it aired, I would have had zero desire to download anything. As it was, a few times I downloaded something, there were no sound or special effects added in, and many times I opted to just buy the video off iTunes, due to the quality of the content. A subscription fee on the range of $10-$15 month would be nice. Anything more, good luck with that Hulu, I'd rather just buy DVDs and episodes of iTunes.
.... ... }
int main (void) {
Did anyone really think they were going to give away their content for free forever?
What, you mean like broadcast television?
The whole reason I even watch Hulu is because I don't want to deal with getting the digital converter box when the change happens, and it's cool being able to watch things when you want to. Having to pay for Hulu just ruins the entire great idea of it being like DTV with the normal free channels. Hell, I'd even be cool with more commercials in their shows to keep it free for me. Plus I can watch all the Firefly episodes on there. That's just awesome .
People watched you because you were free. You were a simple way to watch a show someone had missed that maybe the Tivo didn't record due to electrical storm. Once you start charging, you lose your viewership. No viewership? No ad revenue. No viewership? No subscription revenue. And no, you're not Too Big To Fail (TM), so no bailout revenue either.
Too bad. You spent all that money on TV and movie ads about evil alien plots to get eyes on your site, just to screw it all up.
Then I see myself watching Hulu less and less
Really? If having paying customers allows them to post a better range of content, I'm all for it, especially if there is little to no advertising in the paid content.
My biggest frustration with Hulu today is that they don't have the full archive of shows that I'd like to watch. Since I don't want to start a new show in the middle, I have to find the earlier episodes elsewhere or wait for the DVD. I'd gladly pay, say, $15/month if it meant access to the whole archive of every show they have.
The long-term future of TV includes on demand access to whatever the consumer wants. Making content is expensive and risky and therefore must be compensated. Providing on demand access cuts into other revenue sources, like DVD sales, and therefore must be compensated.
/...
My biggest frustration with Hulu today is their use of horrendously inefficient and technically inferior player implementations.
Adobe Flash Player is a resource hog - I've had issues with 720p video playing smoothly even on a Core 2 Quad with a GeForce 9800GT under Linux.
The same video plays smoothly on my old Athlon XP 2800+ with a GeForce 7800GS if I use rtmpdump on a CBS high def stream and then play it back with mplayer. (Not an available option for Hulu.)
If they used a player that were:
1) As cross-platform as the existing solution (MacOS, Linux, Windows - this kills Silverlight for which Linux support typically lags at least one full version behind on)
2) Played back 720p video smoothly on my old Athlon XP 2800+ and 480p video smoothly on my Asus Eee 1000HE.
I would consider a subscription if reasonably priced and ads were removed. I would NOT consider pay-per-view.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Seriously I try to get this through people's heads all the time... for geeks we sure can be dumb. It is and has been free. If everyone ignores the service if/when it goes pay or even if only parts go pay only IGNORE them, also make it known you are NOT going to pay for the content... ads are enough to deal with for the content. Then Hulu (which is already successful) will find alternate avenues for revenue. If everyone just jumps in right off the bat you have instantly ensured all future video services like this will be pay-only. Wake up! Please.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
I have one of these already. It's called "cable." You pay a monthly fee and you get to watch a bunch of different channels with lots of different content. The only difference I can tell between a paid Hulu and cable is that Hulu is only "on demand," has less content, and wants to be PC-only. So, basically, Hulu will be the crappy version of cable.
Then I see myself watching Hulu less and less
Really? If having paying customers allows them to post a better range of content, I'm all for it, especially if there is little to no advertising in the paid content.
After all, cable, which only has paying customers, has been so good about having little to no advertising, even for the "premium" channels that cost even more to get.
I'll gladly pay for a service like Hulu if I can watch it from outside the US. No silly "this video isn't available in your region". Just show the damn thing and take my money. Preferably, there's a choice between a small fee per episode or a subcription model.
But I expect they won't do that. So in effect, they don't want my money, they like to trouble me online and would rather see me download tv series.
For a download based service, sure, I can see that. But streaming sucks, more so on video. Unless connections get a whole lot better, I'm not the least bit interested in streaming. With downloads, I can do HD, no problems. About 1GB per hour at the standard illegal sources last time I checked. It doesn't take a whole lot to screw up a stream with those sorts of bandwith requirements. Downloads just go a little slower for a bit. Unencrypted, 720p or 1080p, h264 video (3Mbit/sec minimum, probably about 6Mbit/sec for 1080p), AC3 audio, MKV container preferred.
Sell me that, with a fast server to download from and an RSS feed I can automate the process from, for a reasonable price, and I *WILL* buy. Reasonable price would be about half what the season goes for on Blu-Ray. I'm not getting media, packaging, shipping, etc., so I won't pay for it either. And if I'm paying, it must be ad-free. If I'm not paying, or getting a significant discount, ads would be acceptable. I personally wouldn't take any more than about 5min/hour of ads though. If I'm paying, it must also include re-download rights. Perhaps restricted to off-peak, or with a small fee for using up said capacity, but a very small fraction of the original purchase price. I would also require that the episodes be made available by midnight of the original air date. If they want to compete with PirateBay and friends, they have to provide all of the above. People will pay for the convenience, quality, and knowing they are legal. Cause paying customers issues, and they will go elsewhere, or just not bother. The studios have the ability to take the online market by storm and keep it. They just have to step up. Not that they will.
Streaming crap quality with encryption... Not interested.
As a reader of a newspaper, his "customer relationship" is Not My Problem. I do not choose to be the target of marketers' "customer management" fantasies.
See subject.
Moderators: Before moderating a comment Insightful/Informative, check to see if a child post has already refuted it.
Here are the conditions under which I will agree to pay my money for Hulu:
1. No ads in the paid content. AT ALL. Not now, not ever.
2. Cheap, a-la carte subscriptions for individual shows. If I only need a few shows from Discovery, Nickelodeon and Food Network, I should be able to sign-up for only those shows.
3. Compatibility with an inexpensive hardware device of some sort (Apple TV, Xbox or PS3 will do).
4. Content is served in _at least_ 720p with high encoding quality.
These conditions are not negotiable. If all four are fulfilled, I, for one, will welcome our money charging overlords.
It'll change when somebody offers something better. Fiber service is helping in some areas... competition is a wonderful thing. If only people didn't use their video content provider as their ISP, I think competition would be even better. Nothing like the cable cos (and the telcos who offer fiber) limiting internet volume to keep people from downloading their video content.
There are a lot of IFs, such as:
...IF regulatory hurdles to video content delivery are manageable
...IF distribution is separated from content production (this, IMO, is the biggest hurdle -- the networks are canceling shows that they don't produce, in favor of less-popular but self-produced shows that are more profitable).
...IF a retailer of video programming is able to negotiate deals with enough of the content producers to have a decent selection.
I see video content as being where music was 10 years ago, except that more of the producers have limited online official distribution.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I dumped cable and live a-la-web tv. I pay for Netflix streaming and find it is worth it.
If Hulu got rid of the stupid 5 trailing episodes thing and had full catalogs of the shows, got some decent movies, and got rid of the commercials I would pay. I *will not* pay for a special section that gets a few bones thrown in every month or if I have to put up with their 8 commercials over and over and over..holy crap water torture over and over.
Go big, do it right, and I would pay.
AFAIK, all of the content on Hulu was made for original broadcast on TV. Of all the things on the torrent circuit, too, most of it was probably on TV the first time around. If you watch any professionally made video, odds are it was originally either a TV or cinema show the first time around.
TV over the airwaves/cable is 70 year old technology, and hasn't changed fundamentally at all in that time (just got higher quality and more plentiful). Its big draw back is the scheduling, being forced to wait until a given time to watch what you want, and not being able to pick what is shown. But the vast VAST majority of content available on any medium today will have passed through TV at some point.
Honourable exception is YouTube and similar made-by-anyone sites. Perfectly valid video content, but sometimes you just plain need programming by professional, funded film makers.
I think you'll find (rather quickly) that the whole point of having ads and the whole point of charging for content are one and the same.
($)
I want you off the fucking comments, you prick. Don't just be sorry, think for one fucking second. What the FUCK are you DOING? Are you professional or not?
Am I going to walk around and make off-topic shit comments, in the middle of your Canadian threads? Then why the fuck are you posting your shit here? Ah da da dah, no Hulu in Canada, like this in the background. What the fuck is it with you? What don't you fucking understand?
You got any fucking idea about, hey, it's fucking distracting having somebody modding up clutter at the beginning of the fucking comments? Give me a fucking answer! What don't you get about it?
How was it? I hope it was fucking good, because it's useless now, isn't it? Fuck-sake man, you're amateur. CmdrTaco, you got fucking something to say to this prick?
This sounds pretty good, pretty smart. So long as there are no commercials on the site or in the videos, I would gladly pay a fair amount for a TV show. Say, maybe ten cents per episode, or a dollar for a whole season.